It was to be a normal night on patrol for the two rookie heroes. Just patrolling the outskirts of Lord’s Port, seeking out the gangs and criminals who seemed to enjoy causing trouble on a nightly basis. And indeed, it had not taken long for Gold Sparrow and Shock Jock to find trouble.

  “Well, shoot,” Sparrow said, beating her gold-hued wings at the air. She focused intently on a spot only a modest distance away, the back door of an electronics store. Three men, adorned in dark clothing, were intently examining the sturdy door. “A bunch of late night shoppers,” she said, smirking.

  Shock Jock grinned at her, standing calmly on a metal disc held aloft by a continuous charge of electromagnetism. “Man, Black Friday isn’t for a couple of weeks.”

  “Try tellin’ them that,” Sparrow said, letting out an irritable snort.

  “Oh well. Guess we oughta do our heroic duty and stop them.” Shock Jock sighed. “Man... when are we going to get a real challenge? Doing superhero work for a couple of months, and it’s still the same crap. Burglars and break-ins.”

  “Eh. It’s fun stress relief. C’mon,” she flashed her partner a wry smirk. “Let’s kick their asses.”

  The scene at Lord’s Port was a damn massacre. When the police report had come in, there had been a lot of details with regards to the gore and destruction confined to a little back alley. Naturally, as it was an alterhuman crime, the LPPD had quickly shot it up the chain directly to ANVIL.

  A perfect way for Jon Carver to start his first day as director of the department.

  The doorway room was abuzz as he stepped inside, flanked by a shorter red-haired woman in a finely tailored white suit. Her almond-shaped face was affixed to a tablet in her hands, but she strode with confidence and purpose. “Local PD reports finding two masks at the scene. Locals kids who only got their start a few months prior. One of them is still alive, but... shaken.”

  “I can imagine. I saw the photos from our men in the field,” Jon replied. He was a tall man, broadly built, adorned in a pinstriped black suit. The man with his slicked-back auburn hair, at a glance, looked totally normal. And yet the longer one looked at his skin, or the lines of his face, the more they would feel something was fundamentally... off about the man. “Anya, prep some our trauma people. See if they can’t calm him. Ideally without meds or mental suggestion. Whatever went down there, sounds like he’s our sole witness.”

  Anya nodded, her slim finger tapping elegantly across her tablet. “Done. They’ll be ready to move in instantly. Assuming, at least, that you want to speak to him first.”

  “I do.” He lowered his sunglasses, focusing intetly on a tall dark-skinned man behind a large metallic console. “Travers, you got the door charged?”

  “Fully charged, coordinates set.” He looked up, adjusting the thick glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Good to go, Director Carver. Only, uh... well you haven’t used doors in the past, and they tent to be... rough on the first trip.”

  “I’ll be fine, Travers. I’m built tough, in case you haven’t heard.”

  A mechanical whine echoed through the steel-lined chamber, before a rift opened on a platform in he centre in the room. A rectangular wound in space that glowed with blinding white light. An electromagnetic aroma wafted from the edges, which crackled and hummed.

  Jon stared at it, fixing his sunglasses into place. “Okay. Let’s go.” Jon felt a modest jolt on his body as he stepped through, like an elevator coming to a lurching halt. The air around him shifted in an instant, the musty clinical aroma of Fort Argent replaced with the coal and brine stench of Lord’s Port. Soft rain pattered his face, the traditional Lord’s Port greeting.

  His eyes adjusted to the light, and that was when he saw the bodies. Three figures in dark clothing were spread apart the alleyway, left strewn in craters and gullies that had been carved into the concrete. Spatters of dark blood were splashed about, forming great pools in some places.

  It didn’t take long to see Golden Sparrow either. Or, rather, what was left of the poor girl. Her torso, distinguished by the golden wings protruding from her back, was at least largely in tact. But her limbs had been pulped, spread far and wide across the alley. Of her head there was no sign at all.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  A few of the local cops stood behind a cordon of yellow tape, keeping an eye out for any inquisitive civilians, while ANVIL’s lab techs scanned the area for any viable evidence.

  And there, seated on the stoop of the scorched back door, sat Shock Jock. He was shaking, wrapped in a thermal blanket, and had the wide eyes of a man who had seen things no man should ever see. He was shuddering, sucking air through his teeth, ignoring the officer at his side who was trying to calm him down.

  Jon sighed and strode forward. Anya followed after, the doorway closing soon after. She looked non the worse for wear. He gave her a flat look, to which she smiled and shrugged. “I travelled through the doors with the former director a few times. It’s nothing new to me.”

  “Lucky you,” Jon flatly replied.

  He took a moment to examine the men in black in passing. They, at a glance, did not look like supervillains. Or even particularly distinct. They lay dead and broken, but their faces were placid masks, as if carved from stone. And, Jon steadily noticed, they all looked near-identical. Same height, same build, same wardrobe, same facial structure. He made a mental note of that.

  Shock Jock didn’t look up as Jon’s shadow fell over him. He just kept muttering and huffing, speaking in a terrified murmur.

  “Shock Jock, right?” Jon asked. They knew his real identity, of course. Most rookie heroes were shockingly easy to figure out. But he figured letting him know that the American government already knew his secret identity wouldn’t do his nerves any favours in that moment. He moved to crouch, heedless of the filth beneath him, and tried to meet the young hero’s eyes. “Can you hear me.”

  “Tore her apart. Like wolves, pack of wolves. Didn’t say a word, didn’t make a fucking sound, but Tara screamed so fucking loud, never heard anyone scream like that, oh god, oh fuck, Tara.”

  “Sounds like you had a hell of a night,” Jon said. They didn’t make a sound, huh? That seemed about right for men who had managed to die with serene, placid looks on their faces. “Can you tell me what happened? In detail?”

  “The blood, the screaming... the fucking screaming. Oh god, Tara,” Shock Jock’s chest heaved, tears streaming from his eyes to match the snot bubbling from his bloodied nose. “Tried to help. Shocked one of them... didn’t go down. Zapped him with enough volts to drop a man, the bastard didn’t stop. He just... he just kept going, and... and...”

  Jon narrowed his eyes. “Alterhumans,” he murmured. Dreadnought-class, if they could apparently ignore voltage that strong. To say nothing of how Sparrow had been pulled limb from limb. He looked beyond Shock Jock, to the damaged doorway. “So... what? They were trying to break in here? An electronics store?”

  Small time, even for rookie villains. This wasn’t even a chain store filled with oversized TVs or fancy computers. Unless they wanted something very specific. He’d tell the lab boys to comb their possessions, see if they had anything on them that could give some insights.

  “Jock. Need you to focus.” He snapped his fingers in front of the boy’s face, but he scarcely reacted. Kid was a thousand miles away. Seemed he’d need to be a bit more forceful. But Jon reminded himself to be mindful of his own strength lest he take Shock Jock’s head clean off. “Alright. Sorry about this.” He smacked him across the face, the sound of the slap cutting through the air like a knife. A few ANVIL agents looked up from their work, the nearby cops gawked, but nobody said a thing.

  He may have only just started as the director, but the title alone made it clear he was allowed to do as he pleased.

  “Wuh... wha-” Shock Jock blinked, seemingly startled back to reality.

  “Sorry. But this is serious, kid, and you need to tell us everything that happened. Exactly as it happened.” It was better, Jon reasoned, to get the witness to talk. Better that than trying to enlist a Psion to go digging around in their head.

  “I... we... Tara and me, we were patrolling the city. Saw these guys... trying to force the door.” He spoke through ragged breaths, too torn up to even bother with codenames. “So, we flew down. Thought they were burglars. I told ‘em to surrender and they just... just fucking stared at us. The same face, all focused one way. Then they came at us. Two of them knocked Tara to the ground. She- oh fuck- she... she had a little super strength, but they overpowered her. Pummelled her. I tried to blast ‘em, but the energy did nothing. Then the third one was on me, throwing me like a fucking ragdoll.”

  He screwed his eyes shut, shuddering with revulsion at the memories. “I was scared out of my fucking mind. So I hit him with everything I had, smelled his skin burning... but he was still struggling on me for a few seconds before he dropped. And that was the same for the r-rest of them I blasted.”

  Jon nodded. “Did what you had to do to survive. No shame in that.” No matter what the sanctimonious pricks had to say about heroes killing.

  “And when I finally go up, Tara, she... those things had. Oh Christ...” he fell into a series of wracking sobs, his face buried in his palms.

  “Alright, that’s enough.” Jon rose to his feet and brushed some dirt from his slacks. “Anya, get the trauma guys over here.”

  “On it, Director.”

  He strode from the sobbing young man and made for the nearest corpse. Sparrow had put up a hell of a fight, for all the good it had done her, leaving great craters and gouges in the ground.

  An ANVIL field agent, adorned in the standard black and orange power armour, glanced up a bit at his approach. “Director,” he said, his voice muffled by his gas mask, “we’ve done some preliminary checks, but the lab boys say we should move them to the Lord’s Port lab. They’re uh... decaying at an alarming rate, apparently.”

  “Fine. Get it done,” he replied, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets. “Christ, kid wasn’t kidding, that stench is potent.” But it wasn’t, Jon noted, the smell of burned skin. He had enough experience to know that.

  He watched as the guard started to turn the body over. Then, suddenly, the flesh lurched beneath the blackened clothes, the corpse’s jaw hanging open to release a low droning noise. His eye blazed red hot, flames billowing from his mouth as his chest expanded more and more.

  “Jesus-!” the soldier cried, just as Jon grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him to safety.

  In an instant the director was above the corpse, a split second before the alley was lit up by a blindingly bright flash. The screams of those gathered was drowned out by the roar of the explosion, which shook the whole alleyway and set off several nearby car alarms.

  “Director!” Anya called, waving the smoke from her face. “Christ... Director, are you alright?!”

  The smoke cleared. Jon stood over the smouldering remains of the corpse, largely unbothered. Save for the fact that his right sleeve of his shirt had been burned away. His skeleton glowed faintly under his skin, altering the hue of his flesh, before the glow faded away. “I’m fine, Anya. I absorbed the brunt of the blast. But nobody is to touch these fucking corpses! Not until the techies can set up containment bubbles. Anya, get me another jacket,” he huffed, shaking some of the soot from his palm.

  Jon spent several moments staring at the sizzling remains. The explosion, whatever it had been, had shredded the corpse down into indistinct chunks of blackened meat.

  “Well, shit,” Jon muttered. “Hell of a first day.”