Thanks to the insane traffic jam, the Uber ride could only take Sam past Queensboro Bridge. So he got out of the car at the exit to 21st Street and looked up to momentarily watch the plumes of smoke rising up the afternoon sky.

“What am I looking at master?” Sam asked.

The smoke’s the result of five explosions, kid, Chiron reported. The Noguchi Museum on Vernon, the UPS store on 39th, the Halal Kitchen on Broadway, Astoria Park, and the Mcdonalds on 21st — bastard, that’s my favorite one!

“Focus, please...” Sam dived into a street alley and began changing into his gear. “These aren’t just random bombings, are they?”

I think they’re smokescreens, Chiron deduced. Intended to split up Queens’ heroes and keep them away from—

“—Mount Sinai Queens...” Sam finished strapping the Thorn Axe into the new side-holster attached to his utility belt. “He’s gunning for Farsight... I have to stop him.”

Sam aimed his fist at the scaffolding directly above him. He cocked his arm back and then forward. This fist-reloading gesture triggered the gas-propelled grappling hook to launch from his bracer.

“How far is the hospital from here?” Sam asked as the grappling hook began pulling him up. “Show me the map, please.”

Triple-A’s map appeared before him. A green line charted the path from Sam’s location to Mount Sinai Queens, snaking up the entire length of 21st Street before turning right on 30th Avenue.

It’s about 2.5 miles if you take 21st at a run, Chiron replied.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Sam said just as his feet landed on the building’s rooftop. “I’ll take the scenic route...”

As Sam ran across one rooftop and jumped over to the adjacent roof along his route at a pace of an Olympic runner, the memory of Maeve’s broken prophecy flitted across his mind.

A shadow’s curse rises from the earth, Immortal in the land of its birth... The great horrors it shall awaken, to slay the source of all creation...

It didn’t help that an image of last night’s vision of a shadow rising from the ashes of the city superimposed itself on the Queens’ skyline.

“Get a grip, Sam,” he encouraged. “You’ve got this... right?”

After passing past three rooftops, Sam was finally faced with the dilemma of a much wider gap between buildings than he was comfortable leaping across.

You could probably make it with Herculean activated, Chiron suggested.

“I’ve got something else in mind...” Sam pointed his fist forward, aimed, and then fired his grappling hook at the top of the building facade across 41st Street. “I’ve always wanted to do this.”

He jumped off the roof and swung over to the other side of the street much like a certain spider-themed superhero from the movies. All the while, Sam was screaming his lungs out.

“This is amazing~~g!” he yelled.

The cars were backed up bumper to bumper in the street below while panicked people ran in the opposite direction of where Sam was swinging to. Many of them had looked up and seen him, forcing him to wave back at them in as chill a manner as he could manage.

“Hi, don’t panic!” he called. “I’m a good guy!”

Twice, Sam saw heroes fly by, although they barely paid him any attention. A nod of the head and then they were zooming past his rooftop and onto one of the giant plumes of smoke across Queens.

Sam ran across several more rooftops and swung over wide-lane streets. His excitement dulling with each step closer to the ongoing crisis, replaced by a worry that the Trickster might find Farsight before Sam reached her.

“What’s the situation, master?” he asked.

It’s really bad, kid, Chiron reported. There are horrors rampaging around my favorite Mcdonalds!

“Horrors!?” Sam skidded to a stop at the edge of the rooftop overlooking the McDonalds on 21st. “There are horrors down there?”

A thick plume of smoke obstructed his view of the ground, but the spine-chilling howl that reached his ears was unmistakably that of a horror’s dreadful cry.

“Styx,” Sam breathed. “I know only one kind of horror that howl’s like that...”

His visibility cleared, giving Sam a panoramic view of a caved-in roof and a giant yellow M that was on the brink of falling on the street below — a street filled with horrors.

Banshees were Sam’s least favorite horrors, but the creatures with faces that were a cross between man and wolf, their muscular bodies covered in fur, ranked number two on horrors to actively avoid.

“Hounds,” Sam hissed. “I hate Hounds...”

It was a beta-level Hound that had slaughtered the heroes Sam had been too weak to save, causing a trauma that would force him to quit the hero’s life. Now, as the sweat dripped from his furrowed brow, it was clear that Sam still hadn’t gotten over it.

Five Hounds... Low energy readings suggest these are just zetas, Chiron explained. You don’t need to worry about them, kid... There are heroes enough on this street.

It was true. There were several heroes down below. Sam even recognized two of them.

He decided Miracle Girl’s and Wolf-Woman’s team didn’t need his help, and so he moved on and swung over to another adjacent roof without looking back.

As Sam sprinted across a low-rise rooftop of a local Visual Arts school, he posed another question to Chiron, “Are there horrors in the other sites too?”

Yeah, kid, Chiron replied. Reports are coming in from the wire. Hounds mostly, but I hear there’s a beta-level Banshee at the UPS store on 39th.

Definitely not passing through there, Sam’s last encounter with a Banshee was still fresh in his mind. I don’t really need to see another horror that’ll remind me of mom...

“How is the Trickster doing this?” Sam asked just as he launched his grappling hook across 31st Avenue.

That’s the thing, kid... this isn’t just the Trickster’s doing, Chiron replied. While I was out looking for Farsight, I heard a rumor about some shady group planning something big in New York. I just didn’t think their timeline was today.

“Okay, hold on,” Sam sighed. “I just need to finish this next jump before I freak out...”

He jumped off another rooftop and then tucked himself into a ball just before landing on the adjacent roof so he could avoid body-breaking pain and roll onto his feet without slowing his momentum. Indeed, he was getting quite good at rooftop parkour.

“So... you think the Trickster actually has friends?” Sam confirmed.

A beta-level illusionist, no matter how deranged, doesn’t have the power to summon this many horrors, Chiron explained. Something like this can only be done with a Pandora’s Box... and those don’t come cheap... Besides, this kind of play isn’t like the Trickster... It’s too—

“Expansive?” Sam supplied. Then his eyes widened. “Oh, gods...”

A sixth plume of smoke was rising up from a familiar glass building just a block away from where Sam stood.

Go, kid! Chiron urged.

Sam ran the last rooftop like a hydra was chasing after him. The hospital grounds came into view at the end, and what he saw there just caused his anxiety to spike.

It was chaos by the hospital entrance with patients and staff rushing out of the front doors like a stampede of frightened mice. They would have been easy pickings for the two Hounds stalking the street if Crow-Man hadn’t just jumped out of an alleyway to engage the horrors.

“That guy has the best timing,” Sam noted.

Sam rappelled down from his building and landed on 30th Avenue with his brand new axe already in his hand. He was just in time too as a third Hound had rushed out of the hospital’s front doors and leaped at Crow-Man back with its jaws unhinged.

Whatever trauma Sam had over these particular horrors didn’t stop him from throwing his axe at the Hound.

It rolled around in the air, zipped by Crow-Man’s head, and buried itself into the Hound’s neck. The creature stumbled forward and crashed onto the asphalt right where Crow-Man could reach down and impale his feather-themed throwing knife between the horror’s eyes.

The Hound let out one final shudder and then fell limp.

Crow-Man then pulled out Sam’s axe from its neck and tossed it back to him as he came rushing in.

Sam caught the axe handle with his left hand because his right hand was busy swinging his hammer into the flank of the Hound to Crow-Man’s right. The Hound had barely yelped in pain before Sam’s left hand came rushing in and shoved the Thorn Axe’s bronze blade into its unprotected side, causing dark ichor to spurt out of the horror that greatly resembled the titular monster from a Wolf-Man movie.

While Sam was busy dealing another hammer blow across the side of his Hound’s face, Crow-Man was showing the remaining horror just how amazing a fighter he was.

Crow-Man ducked from a claw swipe aimed at his face. Then he kicked out at the Hound, forcing it back and right in the line of fire of his Shadow Crow which streaked under the horror’s jaw, its wings slashing the monster’s throat.

Seeing that this wasn’t enough to defeat his foe, Crow-Man aimed a palm strike at the Hound’s solar plexus, and then followed with an elbow up the underside of its jaw. Then he sent a right-handed haymaker into the horror’s cranium which finally made it crumple to the ground.

Meanwhile, Sam had abandoned his axe in his enemy’s side, opting instead to wield Cranium Smasher in both hands when he swung it toward the Hound’s right leg, forcing the horror to stumble backward.

Then Sam raised his arms high, and with a yell of, “Herculean!” drove his hammer down onto the horror’s skull.

He heard the bone-crunching sound that came with caving in the Hound’s skull. Then Sam watched, breathless, as the horror toppled over. Seconds ticked by with his eyes refusing to look away from his fallen foe.

I defeated a Hound... His hammer shook in his hand. Why couldn’t it have been this easy before?

“Are you done?” Crow-Man asked.

“Y-yeah,” Sam reached down and pulled his axe out of the Hound’s corpse. “I’m good...”

Crow-Man ignored the spoils he and Sam had just earned, opting instead to lead the way toward Mount Sinai Queen’s now empty entrance. Like Sam, he seemed to know that they were on a clock.

“Got a solid tip that the Trickster’s target was holed up here... Figured I’d check it out,” Crow-Man explained.

Of course, the tip was solid... I was the one who sent it to him through a contact we both knew, Chiron chuckled. I figured you would need the assist, kid.

Sam was grateful to Chiron for his foresight because he was definitely going to need the help.

A heavy, cloying amount of psychic energy leaked out of the front doors the moment they swung open for Crow-Man — enough energy to cause the hairs on the back of Sam’s arms to stand on end.

“The target’s name is Farsight... she’s the last of the Weird Sisters,” Sam explained. “We need to get to her before—”

They both saw the flash of brilliant light as it streaked down on the westernmost end of the hospital’s main building. The ‘Krak-ka-boom!’ of thunder arrived a split-second later.

“Oh, no...” Sam ran past Crow-Man and strode through the hospital’s front doors. “She’s not supposed to use her powers!”