This didn’t sit right with Adam. He sat in his trailer counting the minutes and waiting for someone to come in here and tell him that it was time to get out there and put on a smile and wave at the cameras, chin up and chest out and do the thing that makes him look like Zeus—you know, the pose. Fists on hips, smile on face until his cheeks hurt, and let the fans built into the floor make his cape flutter and snap. Adam stared at his reflection, a dying cigarette in his mouth quietly smoldering. His hair was a mess. The concealer under his eyes wasn’t doing its job anymore.

  And all he could hear was the nervous excitement coming from the dozens outside. They weren’t waiting here for him. No. They stood under the glaring lights and the bitter cold for someone else. For the New Big Thing that had filled the news for days on end. He was old news. The thing from yesterday apparently. He’d never had to share his trailer with someone else before either, but she was in the bathroom popping her pain medication for her leg that still gave her problems. His nose wrinkled when she flushed, pretending to have actually used the thing.

  Velocity came out of the bathroom, tie loose and tucking in her shirt. “Never eating anything that Barb cooks ever again, I swear. I mean, who fills chili dogs with ranch dressing?” She stood in front of him. Her zipper wasn’t up, letting her striped undies peek out from her trousers. “What’s gotten you into such a bad mood, huh?”

  Adam doesn’t move when she takes the cigarette from his lips and drags on it until it’s dead. She breathes out smoke and flicks the butt into the trailer’s sink before she straddles him. He leans back because it’s what he’s used to doing as she runs her fingers through his hair and makes sure her crotch is as close to his as possible, too. He hates her. Hates her so much that he wants to put his hand through her. But this is his prize. His winnings. He gets paid an absurd amount of money to fly around the country doing nothing. Fuck, his biggest problem wasn’t even the money or the women or the days he spent seeing a world he’d only ever dreamed about from travel brochures.

  His biggest fucking problem was the staged Kaiju fight that Cassie had orchestrated.

  Both of them.

  Look at me, Veronica, he thought, staring at himself as Velocity began kissing his neck and nibbling on it, even though her teeth barely moved his skin or even left marks on it—all she did was put her spit on his throat. I got the big bad monster, just like you always told me I’d be strong enough to do. Just like you created me to do.

  Velocity stopped when he sighed and turned his head. She got off and rested an arm on his shoulder, her legs folded underneath her on the couch. “You’re being a bummer. What do you want, a bj this time? The wax?”

  Adam looked at her, really, really looked at her until she got her arm off his shoulder and moved an inch or so away, maybe scared, maybe playing it safe—who knows, and who really fucking cares? “What am I, Sash?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “A guy who’s got the world at his feet.”

  He smiled thinly. “Not the line they paid you to tell me.”

  Velocity sighed through her nose and reached for the packet of cigarettes. “Well,” she said, taking one out and lighting it. “If you want the truth, then here it is: you’re a stubborn bastard who’s got a lot of mommy issues.”

  Adam nodded, still staring at himself. “What else?”

  “A half-assed superhero, too.”

  “You mean that?” He looked at her reflection. “I’m not a good superhero?”

  She paused, the cigarette hanging from her fingertips. “Oh, no. I was just kidding. Nobody else stopped the Kaiju when it mattered, and that brat with the nepo-powers wasn’t even here to lift a finger to that chaos, either.”

  Adam shook his head and stood, his golden cape brushing the floor. “You’re pathetic.”

  “And you’re a poser who didn’t actually kill a Special Grade Kaiju,” she muttered, smoking. “Congrats.”

  He pushed a hand through his hair, but a loose strand didn’t want to stay in place. It hung down from his forehead, unruly and long. He touched his jaw, his nose—stared into his own eyes, slowly shaking his head.

  I wish I could have my own face. At least that way, he’d actually know who he is.

  Because the man he was created to be never felt like this, did he?

  The door to his trailer swung open. A man in a winter jacket said, “You’re up.”

  Adam nodded. The man waited at the door. He turned and said, “I’m coming, now get out.”

  He left without a second need to hear it again.

  “You better go before she loses her shit,” Velocity said, arm on the couch. “I’ll be watching.”

  Adam didn’t believe that. She had a backlog of reality tv shows she wanted to watch on her phone, but he didn’t bother with that argument today. He left the trailer and walked through the yard, his boots squelching in the disgusting mix of snow and mud. Trailers. Camera crews. Sound and lighting and the growing noise of a cheering crowd that’s being sung to by an old Supe from the Eighties who lost her voice a decade ago. Dani Danger, he thinks her name is, but who gives a shit? Old news is old news, and she’s expired and past her prime by twenty plus years. Adam walked past the crew of runners beside the stage and strode up the stairs, cutting her melody short.

  But not before a young blonde girl grabbed his cape. He wouldn’t have felt it if he hadn’t seen it happen. He stopped, one foot above the other, and looked down at her. She was pretty and lean, a little curvy and more than beautiful. College-looking girl, he figured, with a perky smile and small nose. Her Olympia hoodie, though, was what really made him stop and pause in the first place. He looked at her hand, and then she let go of his long cape.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling. “I’m a really big fan of yours.”

  He smiled thinly. “Great.”

  “I’m Harper,” she continued, making him stop again. “My dad is, like, one of your investors.” One of those kinds of chicks, then. He looked over her shoulder into the tent behind the stage, the special one with VIPs and guards and men and women in expensive winter coats that stood around smoking cigars and chattering quietly.

  Adam, though, couldn’t stop staring at her Olympia hoodie. “Why’re you wearing that?”

  She frowned, then looked at her chest and the graphic name illustrated in red and blue. “Oh, this?” she asked, grinning even wider. “I made it myself. There’s so much tacky stuff online these days, and I thought—”

  “Take it off,” he said. “Your dad’s not investing in her, is he?”

  “No…” she said. “But, you know, she’s Olympia.”

  Adam stared at her, a smile still pestering his lips as he chewed his tongue. He couldn’t do anything to her even if he wanted to, because he wasn’t made to harm normal people, however annoying, and the last thing Cassie would want from him is ruining one of her trustees or whatever. He sighed quietly, then said, “Have a good night.”

  She stuck out her arm and pushed up her sleeve. “I got this, though.”

  He glanced at her forearm, trying to ignore the terrible singing coming from the stage. A lightning bolt, small and sharp, right there on her wrist in a circle. Not my symbol. That was Olympia’s. He’d avoided having anything on his chest, because it was meant to be implied, according to Cassie, about what he represented and who he represented. You need to earn Zeus’ symbol, she had told him. If we move too fast, the world isn’t going to like that a stranger is wearing his sign of hope. He’d almost asked her why Olympia got to wear it, then, considering she was almost the furthest thing from hope he’d ever come across. But that wasn’t his place to argue about it.

  So he turned and left, heading onto the stage to stop the melody.

  Not that it was a very good melody, anyway. The crowd was shifting on their feet, silent.

  He grabbed the microphone from her, momentarily blinded by the sudden lights in front of him. He winced and waited for his eyes to catch up to his brain, for the sudden burst of applause of his arrival to quieten before he could speak again. Roughly eighty or so people were standing in front of the stage. Even more of those watching from home, and a , very very select few were watching from behind the stage in a VIP section, where the wealthy and very powerful who’d made sure that his life was as cushy as possible and his tongue was as much theirs as it was whatever agenda they wanted pushing could have their boots licked by Cassie and her mother for an hour straight.

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  Adam glanced over his shoulder, catching a pair of green eyes sparkling just like the thread of diamonds that Cassie had around her throat. She nodded and raised her slender champagne glass, and he turned around, trying very hard to keep the smile on his face and his emotions in check. Two minutes, then you get your announcement.

  Tonight was a very big night, because the whole of New Olympus was watching. Cassie hadn’t grabbed hold of Olympus 24/7 and damn nearly every other news platform in the State just so nobody saw what was coming.

  “Thank you!” he said. Feedback. They winced. Fuck it. He switched off the mic and tossed it to a runner off the stage, then patted Dani’s frail and bony shoulder. “How about that, huh? Give her another round of applause for the road, because she might’ve been way before I came around, but she’s also the foundation of what’s new!”

  She plastered on a veneer-shaped grin and spoke through her teeth: “I want my full pay.”

  “Talk to someone who fucking cares,” he said, making sure she got off the stage. He walked to the edge of the red platform, the wind biting against his cheeks. He stared over the crowd, at the kids sitting on shoulders and the journalists furiously scribbling away in their notebooks, recorders out and eyes staring dead at him. The world is watching. Just like they had with the Kaiju fight. Just like they had when he’d been smacked into the ground in his first public appearance. His shoulder ached. Still ached. A sort of throbbing pain that just wouldn’t go away.

  “We love you Adam!” a woman cheered. They erupted again, snapping him out of his thoughts.

  “And I love you, too!” he said, pointing at her. She went red in the cheeks. A sister, maybe a young looking mother, shook her excitedly. Hm. “But we’re not here for me tonight, unfortunately. We’re here tonight to grieve the many, many lives that were sadly lost during the Kaiju attack just a few days ago.” Like clockwork, the giant screens behind him rolled through pictures of the dead—not of the destruction, but of the families that had been lost and the individuals that weren’t alive to consent to having their pictures used for commercial purposes. “What happened was terrible. What happened shouldn’t be happening. How many more lives does New Olympus have to lose for the government to finally allow superheroes to deal with the city we all love?” A chorus of cheering and jeering, turning into one loud mess. “Mr. President,” he said, making them louder, making the journalists push and shove against each other, as if being closer means they’ll get the breaking news first. “How much more blood?”

  Adam watched them yell and raise their fists, passive, empty, to the masses that throbbed and surged against one another like the pulsating heart of some giant creature. The news cameras swiveled to survey the crowd, just like they’d been told to do. He waited until the cameras were back on him and he got a thumbs up to continue.

  “That’s why,” he said, “together, as pure-blooded Americans who want this country to be strong, to not have to fear for our lives as we walk the streets, as we take our children to school”—more cheers of agreement—“as we go to work, as we play, as we love, we have to come together and make Washington hear our call. We shouldn’t have to cry and beg and plead anymore. No! The land we step on is the Birthplace of Superheroes. Zeus himself died on our soil.” He waited, the crowd slowly getting quieter. Here comes the line Cassie wanted most. “This is the holy land. Not for Divergent and Non-Divergent people. Not for the rich. Not for the poor. For all of us. The Olympians sacrificed their lives until their leader fell to his knees dead.” The screens changed to footage of the fight. Footage that Adam had grown up watching. Footage that had seared itself into his memory. “Don’t we deserve to at least be somewhat respected?” he asked. “New Olympus is dying, and her superheroes aren’t here to save her.”

  A heavy silence sat on the crowd. Their cheering had died and so had their enthusiasm.

  Then came Cassie, long strides, elegant dress, cold to the bone, he could tell, but she wasn’t meant to look human right now, she was meant to look ethereal. The jade satin that oozed down her body and the diamonds that laced her throat screamed of a difference, but screamed that she was someone who wasn’t going to be swayed by the weather. God himself couldn’t make her shiver or shudder or have goosebumps trailing along her arms and neck.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” she said, standing beside him. “That’s why, on this very December night, as we turn to face the lives who were lost and the graves still being dug, those in the emergency services who’ve died trying to save the ones who needed them most, I come to you with hope.” Adam’s saliva bittered as a chill went down his spine. He felt her appear in the sky several seconds before the clap of sound made the entire crowd look upward through the drizzle of snow. He wanted to fold his arms. He didn’t. He put his arms behind his back and didn’t move when she landed hard on the stage on Cassie’s left, sending his cape snapping harshly in the wind.

  A very loud silence seeped into the air as her electricity crackled and the golden light around her body slowly faded. She stood from her crouch, running a hand through her short, wild hair, then smiled for the masses.

  “This,” Cassie said, her voice surging in the silence. “Is not just Olympia, but the kind of Olympia our city has needed for years.” She held up a finger. “But she’s not our only hope.” The screens changed once more, this time showing the Olympians, each and every one of them in their costumes, together and whole and in a new series of pictures that were so perfectly AI generated that nobody could tell the difference from the real portraits they’d been stolen from. Adam spared a glance at Zeus, his arms folded as he hovered above Cleopatra, Ares, Heka and Hermes. He caught the girl looking at him from the corner of his eye, smiling at him. “My love letter,” she said, “my most dearest Christmas gift to New Olympus after a year that’s taken, and taken, and taken from us in magnitudes that none of us can fathom.” Hand on heart, smile on her face. Adam felt sick. “The Olympus Initiative, everyone.”

  The crowd swelled as individual pictures of each Olympian filled one of each screen around them.

  “No longer will we do substandard,” Cassie said. “No longer are we going to be battling the inefficiencies of a superhero who can’t even help her fellow hero in saving our city!” Boos, now, when the real Olympia showed up on screen, holding her ribs as she knelt underneath the Kaiju that had attacked just a few days ago. This angle showed her face—the pain she was in and the look in her eyes; nothing but fear and worry and a voice in her mind telling her that she still wasn’t strong enough. “We can’t rely on Zeus’ illegitimate daughter to save us anymore. What we need are our champions. Earth’s champions. Adam was the test”—his brow furrowed; that’s not part of the script you gave me—“and our newest Olympia is the start of a new chapter, of a new story in our great city’s tale.”

  She waved her arm at the screens, at the dead superheroes and their stone-faced expressions as they looked into a glowing hope that illuminated their bodies. “Cleopatra. Hekka. Hermes. Shrike. They will all be there to save us once more,” she said. The crowd was mixed. Some excited. Others fidgety, asking questions amongst themselves. “But why stop there? Alexander the Great.” A picture of a bare-chested man in suit pants and sneakers came up next, his long black hair around his face, and his large sword on his shoulder. “The Rangers. The Krieger Twins, The Overwatch League and the Olympian team who never made it far enough to shoulder the responsibility they had been trained for! All of them will stand proud again. All of them will protect us again.” Her voice was getting louder. More excited. It was starting to work on the crowd, massaging the unease away and turning their discomfort with a weird sense of wonder. “A new Golden Age is upon us!” she said. “But how can we have one without Zeus?”

  Adam lifted his chin some more, taking a step forward—

  “And he will come,” she said, spreading her arms, stopping him dead. Adam looked at her. But she wasn’t looking at him. The crowd had her eyes glimmering and her pupils electric. “And soon, he’ll save us all again.”

  The screens went black. The lights went dead. Adam looked around. What’s happening?

  Then a sound, slow, steady, and rhythmic, filled the air. A heartbeat.

  Soon after came the eyes, pure and golden on each and every screen.

  They went black again, the sound of his heartbeat quaking into silence.

  To that, the crowd cheered, and to that, Jade smiled.

  “You never told me about that,” Adam said through his teeth as he waved.

  “Keep smiling and then go and wipe the saliva off your neck,” she said, blowing kisses to the crowd as she led the way off the stage, giving way to a tall, handsome man to prod the crowd even more. “You look like a mess.”

  She was swept up in the swell of the rich and powerful the moment someone draped a fur coat over her shoulders. They applauded her and patted her back, asking questions that only got one answer: Come to the after party and let’s have a chat. Adam stood there, motionless, as the runners hastily got to the news cameras and gave them their next run-throughs for the next few hours. USBs full of edited video they could play and handouts on ‘exclusive’ information that would go against each news channel, only making the part of the public who hated this the most even angrier with the part of the public that loved this idea to death. More arguments meant more eyes, and more eyes meant more attention to the story. You play both sides and get them on common ground, Cassie had told him on the way over here. If they’re all talking about one thing, then at least you’re doing something right.

  But…Zeus wasn’t meant to be someone else. There wasn’t meant to be a new Zeus.

  His ears rang. His heart was all he could hear over the dull noise around him.

  Until the new Olympia patted his back. “Great job out there, B-Team.”

  He scowled. “I’m set for the Olympians when the Initiative happens.”

  She folded her arms. Shorter than the real deal, visibly younger, too—but that’s what the masses wanted. They want a sweet-faced blonde girl with freckles and a gap in her teeth who can carry a building and take care of a Kaiju big enough to tower of the tallest buildings in New Olympus. They wanted an All-American kid. The girl next door that’ll sell your grandma a box of cookies and make sure that your lawn is cut in summer and your driveway doesn’t have snow on it during winter. Her eyes glow. They shine like the real one’s do, bright and terrible and a mockery to him, like she wanted to show him everything she had that he couldn’t even begin to grasp.

  “We both know where you’re heading, gramps,” she said. “Shady Oaks isn’t too far from here.”

  He shoved past her. “Fuck off and go get on your knees for some rich old guy.”

  “Mad that you can’t do that anymore?”

  Adam stopped. He tensed his jaw, then rolled his shoulders. Not worth it, Adam.

  “Sure, just keep walking,” she called. “You’ll be in a hospital bed soon!”

  He hated the real Olympia, but having two around made his blood boil.

  If his hair wasn’t already white, it probably would be soon.