As soon as I had regained consciousness, my attention went straight to my leg. At first, I was elated, because the numbness had gone. I felt that I could wiggle my toes against the bedsheets and even shift the limb back and forth with only minor pain. This relief of mine lasted for some time. That was, until I finally mustered the strength to sit up and see for myself.

It was a cruel feeling as I threw back the covers to realize the truth then. What I had felt was not there. In actuality, my whole right leg, up to just above the knee, was gone, and a bandaged stump was all that remained. The feeling was a phantom sensation and nothing more.

When the medical staff saw that I was up, they quickly came to speak to me. The nurse droned on trying to tell me about what had happened during the surgery, but I barely heard her.

"Carrion infected a large mass," she explained. “There was nothing we could do…”

"Right," I said. "Of course..." I was too burnt out to be surprised at this point. In the last few days, I had seen piles of bodies. I had seen monsters that didn't resemble human beings anymore, and worse yet, humans who were so hateful and so apathetic to their own kind that I feared just being in their presence might rub off on me.

I knew now that my power tended to make imprints of those nearby. Just as I had learned to hotwire a truck naturally from being next to Sixes - and just as Passthrough's torture had so negatively affected me - I wondered if I could learn that hatred by accident. I wondered how deep these influences might run...

Had all my courage since the start of this been inspired by those around me? How much of me was really me at this point? Was the very reason that I was calm now merely because I was in the presence of those who felt so little at the sight of injury?

I tried to keep my expectations sober. I couldn't allow myself to spiral into self-doubt right now; not when I had come so far. I'd been through hell and back, and I was grateful to be alive, but I needed to have learned by now not to get my hopes up.

And so, I swallowed my misery and nodded along to the nurse’s speech.

"We don't have the equipment here, but we will be getting you scheduled for a nerve scan and a consultation for a prosthesis. As you are not officially employed by the state department yet, the status of your insurance may reflect on your options.”

"Is that what you call an incentive?" I dryly asked.

The nurse had no response for me. Instead, she asked if I needed anything, and when I answered no, she left the room, leaving me to quiet and contemplation.

Luckily, I wasn't stuck in that position long, as there were people waiting to see me, just as Stumblebum said there would be.

I was greeted then by none other than Debra Smith. She had a smile plastered on her face, but I could see immediately that it was hiding an aura plagued by grief. Last time I had seen her she was steely. She presented the image of a real hardened veteran of the hero world. One rampager had not been enough to shake her iron will back then, but something had changed in the meantime. She had a softer edge about her now, sweet, but no less tense.

"Glad to see you're alive," she said. "The same can't be said for others."

Ah, I thought, she's lost someone. Maybe just a coworker, but it hit home.

"Mostly alive," I responded, gesturing to my missing leg. It still didn't feel real, though.

Debra offered her condolences, bringing on a moment of awkward silence. Then, she was right back to thinking about work. "I'm sorry... and I'm also sorry we're back in this position again so soon, but we need to talk about the ongoing problem."

"Ongoing problem? I thought the city was finally fucking safe. Weren’t you going to debrief me about that again?"

"No, not exactly. We have a timeline that gives us information about most of your actions due to the surveillance equipment we recovered out of Sixes' suit, so there are very few things we need to discuss on that front."

My jaw dropped at hearing her. "You were recording everything?"

"It was an added security measure. Anti-psychic materials don't always work, and we needed to know if you had attempted to influence our assets at all. We couldn't tell Sixes because you might have read his mind."

She didn’t mention the torture or the twisting of orders, I noted. Apparently, she didn’t care.

"Wow," I marveled. "You guys really are paranoid as hell, aren't you? Maybe I should be flattered." Though I was groggy from the anesthesia, I belatedly picked up on an important detail. "You recovered his suit but not him, then." So, Sixes was either dead, or...

"Yes, he's been taken."

Shit.

My heartbeat monitor started beeping loudly beside me. I had to take a moment then to collect myself and settle the anger I felt. My boiling blood reduced to a simmer, and I asked, "Do we know if he's still alive?"

"No. We just know that they stripped his armor and stored him somewhere that his embedded tracker lost signal. He has built in systems that will cause his body and cybernetics to chemically deteriorate if captured. A kind of suicide pill. If he hasn't activated them then he's probably being held in stasis for a black-market buyer."

"They're going to... sell him? Jesus Christ."

"The technology he has inside his body is as valuable as it gets. He's a walking billion-dollar man, really."

"Yeah, I figured that, it's just... I feel awful. He needed my help, and I wasn't able to get to him in time. I left him fighting a battle he couldn't win and... Wait, wait… I thought the villains were being tracked down. Shouldn’t you have found them by now?"

"As you well know, the situation is more complicated than we originally thought. We were able to liberate most of the hostages, but a significant number were lost in the battle. A factory burned down near the villains' hideout with over five hundred people inside. Bodies charred beyond recognition, and we have yet to identify a cause. In all the chaos, we lost track of the out-of-towners that Passthrough told you about, along with a number of key supers."

"If you've recovered Sixes armor, you still haven't learned the full story. Stumblebum and I ran into some mercenaries at the hospital, and I used my power to learn what I could from them. They said that it was important investigators not look too closely. That something else was going on."

Debra gazed off into space for a minute, thinking long and hard about this information. She continued at last with little recognition of what I had said. "Noted. We're trying to find the enemy, but with these three unknowns in the mix we have no idea what kind of power to bring to the table. The Saviors are attempting to assist, and we are assured by the intelligence agencies that they have their best supers from Project Insight on the task, but for now it's no use."

"Why not put me on the job, then? Put me in a helicopter and fly me above the city. I bet I could find them."

"You're in no shape to work right now," Debra countered. And when she saw the look of daggers I gave her, she sympathetically added. "You have to look at yourself, Adrian, from my perspective. You may feel invincible, but I see a young man who has given this city enough for a lifetime already, and he's got nothing more to give. You're too weak to work, and you know it. You can barely hold your head up right now."

She was right, as much as I hated to hear it. I wasn't getting a range out of my power further than a hundred feet in any direction. In my current condition, I had to come to terms with my own limits. "So, what then?"

"Wait and pray. In the meantime, there's someone else who wants to see you."

"And who is that?"

Debra pulled up her phone and sent a quick text that she had already prepared. She tried then to act coy, but again her expression was covered by the same tiredness we all felt. Naturally, it didn't reach her eyes. "You'll see," was all she said, and then stood to say goodbye.

"Please let me know as soon as you hear anything about Chris," I told her, using Sixes real name. I hoped that it might conveyed how much I cared.

"Of course. And I am not just obligated when I tell you, thank you for the work you did throughout this whole shitshow. I had my doubts before, but I'm certain now that I was wrong. You'll make a decent hero, Adrian. I’ll make sure of that."

“Thanks…”

As she left, I waited patiently for the next person to arrive.

Maybe it’s the mayor. I wonder if he’s still alive, even?

When he came into my range, I was confused and a little concerned at first. Then, as I saw his face coming around the curtain and into my room, my confusion turned to joy.

No matter how dark and gloomy I felt right now, I couldn't suppress the pure childlike excitement I felt over seeing this man up close. There was nobody more popular in the entire English-speaking world. No one more universally admirable or admired.

The quintessential superhero.

Bigshot gave me a beaming smile as he approached, arm extended, and took my hand. Unlike Debra, his pleasantness seemed uncompromised. Though he switched quickly to a somber tone, owing to the seriousness of the fight, he kept a light in his blue eyes that was captivating.

Sue me, but I was a diehard fan. I just couldn’t help it.

Seeing him in person, I could only stutter out, "You're… the guy."

He had a white suit with accents of gold. Nothing fancy, but his chest was emblazoned with his symbol, a swirling depiction of the sun. With his long black hair pulled back in a knot and a rather plain face, he was not someone you'd recognize on the street. He was not nearly as physically imposing as some of the other members of the Saviors, either. Yet, this was by all accounts the most powerful human being on the planet.

At last, he said his encouragement, completely ignoring my inane starter. "What you've done here in New Marian is really special. I just wanted to tell you that personally, Headcase. All of the Saviors know about you and we're big fans. It wasn't long ago that we were saying how great it was that you took down the rampager. We were just about to deploy back then before the news came to us that an unknown super stepped up and saved the day. I'm just sorry it ended up coming to this, in the end. But we had your back like you had ours."

I drew a blank on what to say. It wasn't the compliments that stopped me. Actually, I had been floored since before he had spoken a word. It was his aura that was throwing me for a loop, because it was pitch black.

Dark as night.

He was the one I must have seen flying overhead whilst going into the hospital. Perhaps it was some form of permanent psychic protection they had placed on the Saviors? That theory made sense, but if that were the case, shouldn't he have been a blank nothing just like Sixes had been with his helmet on? I dared not try and influence him, but I really wanted to know, as my curiosity was mixed with fear.

Most auras gave me a feeling as they reflected off of me. Red felt like anger, blue like sadness, and so on.

But this just felt like screaming.

Seeing that I was speechless, Bigshot took up the slack. "Well, I'm also supposed to tell you that you've been invited to the White House. Presidential Medal of Freedom and all that. Fair warning, they'll probably want you inducted first so you can get your picture taken in uniform. Good press and all. You know how it is. Ha!"

"Uniform..." I said, dumbly.

"Yes indeed. You've got to get costumed, Headcase. You're a superhero, after all. Who else saves the day so bravely?"

"Right," I said. "I never gave c-costumes much thought."

"Humble as well as brave." He patted me on the shoulder. "Your powers are just in their infancy. I won't be surprised if we meet again, young man. Remember the gift and responsibility you've been given."

I decided not to mention what I was seeing. Instead, I stuck out my hand, wanting to savor one more shake, not distracted by my overthinking.

Bigshot was happy to oblige me. "If you ever need anything, anything at all, I'm going to leave you with my number. They tell me you don't have a cell phone right now, but I'm sure you'll get that sorted. I want you to think about requesting a station in DC when you get done with your training. Excuse me if that's too forward."

To be honest, it was too forward. I didn't expect that kind of request from someone I viewed as so far above me, let alone the fact that I had always had the intention of staying in New Marion, whatever my options ended up being.

"Why?" I had to ask.

He just chuckled. "Because, Headcase. You're special."

Hearing that word repeated gave me an uneasy feeling, almost like guilt.

I thanked him again and gave a lame wave as he strolled confidently out, just the way he'd came. It was safe to say that I was now shellshocked in more ways than one. Between my leg and this encounter, I was beginning to think I had strayed into a dream.

Tired as I was, I did manage however to close my eyes after that, though. I'd need my rest to recover. The path ahead of me was long and full of hard work. After surviving so much, I knew in my bones that I had to be destined for something more. Before, when last I visited a hospital, I had said that there was no way I could top myself. No way I could go any further than I already had, saving the city once, and so I assumed that my career had already peaked on day one.

Then, hearing Bigshot's encouragement, I began to think differently.

I could be one of the greats, I mused. Now that's not a humble thought.

Despite everything, I found myself with the slightest smile.

No, not humble at all, but pleasant. Pleasant enough to sleep on.