Slow down, kid, Chiron’s disembodied voice sounded as agitated as Sam felt, or you’ll slam right into—

Sam had just turned the corner at the end of the empty hospital lobby and slammed headfirst into a Boar.

Told you, Chiron added.

Luckily for Sam, this latest of horrors didn’t have the same red pigmentation on its thick hide that the cannibal Boar had. It was just some random low-level monster he could handle in a jiffy. Well, that was what Sam initially thought, but then the horror sent him stumbling back with a backhanded fist, and he was forced to reassess his situation.

I really don’t have time for this, Sam thought as he picked himself off the floor. Thunder needs—

“Help!” someone cried.

Sam’s gaze drifted over to the huddle of patients and hospital staff cowering by the elevators. The Boar’s bulky frame had been blocking their way to the lobby.

It’s not just about one life, kid, Chiron reminded Sam. It has to be about all of them...

“I know,” Sam sighed, finally calming down from the panic that had fueled his mad dash across the hospital’s front doors. “What am I looking at, master? How tough is this thing?”

The energy it’s leaking off is pretty weak... a zeta, Chiron reported. You got this.

And Sam did have it, although he didn’t have to do it alone. Crow-Man had caught up to him and beat him to it with a well-placed flying kick that smashed onto the side of the Boar’s snout and drove its head into the marble-tiled wall.

“What in Hades is your boot made of?” Sam asked as he too slipped into range and drove his hammer up the underside of the Boar’s snout. “I heard bones cracking from all the way back there.”

“It’s not the boot,” Crow-Man replied while he flung feather-shaped throwing-knives at the Boar’s back, embedding them along its spine. “It’s what five years’ worth of training under the Iga-ryū can turn a man into...”

“Sounds ninja-ish... cool,” Sam replied.

It is ninja, kid... the Iga is one of the two forerunner clans of ninjutsu, Chiron chimed in.

There were several low popping noises that announced the detonations of Crow-Man’s knives. More than just hurting the horror, they propelled it forward like a pig with a jetpack.

As the Boar came staggering toward him, Sam pulled his hammer back baseball-bat-style, yelled “Herculean!” and then swung for the fences.

There was an audible ‘Boom!’ that came with the impact of the hammer striking thick Boar hide, and then the horror was blown back all the way to the open elevator at the far end of the corridor while leaving the scent of roasted pigskin in its wake.

“Huh, I didn’t expect that,” Sam commented.

You’re level fifteen now, the master reminded him. Zeta-level horrors might as well be phantoms to you.

“If only they were all this easy to bring down,” Sam sighed.

Funnily enough, neither Sam nor Crow-Man dealt the horror a final blow. That honor belonged to Nurse Ortega. The brown-haired, middle-aged woman had jumped out from the huddled mass of civilians and tapped on the elevator’s controls. She forced the doors to a close and sent the horror down into the basement parking lot.

“That was kind of anti-climactic,” Sam noted.

He and Crow-Man helped people get on their feet and told them to get out through the front lobby.

A young girl in a brown ponytail walked up to Sam and said, “Thanks, Mr. Herculean... cool name by the way!” before she joined her fellow patients on their march to safety.

“Um, that’s not my name!” Sam called after her, but the girl had already run out of earshot. “Seriously... gods, I hope that doesn’t stick...”

Nurse Ortega was the last to go, giving Sam the opportunity to ask her about Thunder’s whereabouts.

“Fourth floor... same wing as the healing gardens,” Nurse Ortega answered. “There was a red one up there... it... it ate my friends. Thunder saved us... she held it back so we could escape in the elevators...”

Nurse Ortega grabbed Sam’s arm. She gave him a worried look.

“She’s not supposed to use her powers,” Nurse Ortega said.

“I know,” Sam answered.

A second of confusion flitted across the nurse’s face before understanding dawned on her. It only increased the worry lines on her brow. She might have even frowned.

“No, you don’t... today, the doctor told her,” she tightened her grip on Sam’s arm, “he told her that if she keeps using her powers then her condition will worsen much quicker... He said she was like a candle that had melted halfway through...”

“I...” Sam wanted to scream and rage and smash something, but he did none of these things because he knew a hero could never show his own fears to a civilian. So instead, Sam squeezed Nurse Ortega’s hand, and in a reassuring tone, said, “Don’t worry. I’ll save her.”

Sam strode into the elevator Crow-Man had commandeered and then tapped the button on the control panel that would take them up to the fourth floor. He waved to Nurse Ortega, waited for the doors to shut, and then finally let go of the mask of calm he’d shown her.

Silver’s Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang began to play as the elevator started to rise up. Funnily enough, it was the perfect reflection of Sam’s mood.

“Styx,” Sam sighed.

“You and Thunder are close,” Crow-Man said.

It wasn’t so much a question, but a statement of fact.

“I’ve been reading up on your recent exploits... Herculean,” Crow-Man answered Sam’s unasked question.

“Oh, gods...” A new worry had momentarily blown concern for Thunder out of Sam’s mind. “Not you too...”

He noticed the smirk underneath Crow-Man’s cowl.

“Ha-ha, you’re funny...” Sam wrapped his arms over his chest. “It’s not a name I’d willingly choose... too big...”

That’s an understatement... it’d be like calling a little gecko a fire-breathing dragon, Chiron chuckled.

“With everything that’s happened and everything that’s about to happen, I think the world could use a reminder of the old myths... and from what I’ve seen of you, Sam, you wouldn’t put that legacy to shame,” Crow-Man said.

Sam didn’t know what to say to the nicest thing anyone has ever said to him. And for it to come from Crow-Man of all people, it was quite the spine-tingling thrill for the young hero.

Looks like you’ve got a fan, kid, Chiron said.

Luckily for Sam, the elevator doors opened, and he didn’t have to reply. There were more important things to do now.

Both heroes stepped out of the elevator and saw that the hospital had been redecorated to look like a set from a horror movie.

Part of the ceiling by the nurse’s station had caved in, causing the lights overhead to flicker erratically. More than a dozen half-eaten bodies lay strewn across a cracked white floor Sam had often thought was too clean. Now, as twitching bodies and pools of blood littered the ground, Sam almost wished someone would come to clean it all up — preferably before he puked his breakfast onto the floor.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about this whole scene was the dark-haired teenage girl standing in the middle of all the destruction in her immaculately clean white pajamas and fluffy rabbit slippers.

Her hair was cut short, pixie-style, and framing a fair-skinned angular face that had lost the glassy expression Sam had seen when he’d first glimpsed her.

Ashley Day, the underage hero called Farsight, strode over to the two heroes with a dimpled smile plastered on her face.

“You’re late,” she said, addressing Sam.

He gazed back at her clear amber eyes with more than a little confusion.

“Aren’t you—”

“—I got better,” she interrupted.

“How—”

“—I saw what happened to Maeve,” Farsight snapped her fingers. “And the shock of it snapped me out of my self-made prison of endless probabilities.”

“Um—”

Farsight raised a hand to stop Sam’s reply. “Hold on.”

She walked over to the right side of the corridor just as another Boar burst through the doors at the other end of it. It wasn’t the cannibal, but the energy it leaked off wasn’t one Sam could shrug off either.

“I’ll take care of it,” Farsight said.

A fist-sized hole appeared where her hand touched the wall. These same holes appeared on other parts of the wall, causing cracks to spread out like spider limbs across the wall and ceiling at breakneck speed. This led to the collapse of the corridor ahead, trapping the Boar in a cave-in of plaster, steel, and concrete.

“Um, how—”

“—I don’t see definite futures like Maeve can. I see probabilities... Seconds of future time that can change at the drop of a hat by the whim of man and god alike, giving birth to countless possibilities and a multiverse of headaches,” Farsight explained.

“And you just plucked one of those probabilities out of their timeline and superimposed it into our reality?” Crow-Man asked.

“You’re smart, I like you,” Farsight gave Crow-Man the thumbs up. “I saw a probable future where Sam collapses the corridor with his fists and brought it over to the here and now.”

“That—”

“—sounds crazy, I know. It’s the whole point of why I was a patient here,” Farsight answered.

Crow-Man brushed his gloved fingers on a chunk of cement on the floor. “Is this permanent?”

Farsight shook her head. “I can only hold it for so long before the scene snaps back to normal reality. The effects will be permanent though, but I seriously doubt a gamma-level Boar will die from just a cave-in.”

“How long do we—”

“You need to go that way, Sam.” Farsight jerked a thumb behind her. “She needs you now.”

Sam glanced over to the left side of the corridor where he knew the door to the healing gardens would be.

“Will you—”

“—We’ll follow you after we deal with the Boar...” Farsight patted him on his right shoulder. “I know talking to me can be tiring, but I expect you’ll get used to it soon.”

Sam’s wasn’t sure what to make of this teenage girl who sounded like a self-assured middle-aged science professor, and he wasn’t entirely sold on leaving them behind either.

But then Crow-Man patted him reassuringly on his other shoulder. “We’ll handle this... you can handle the ‘red one’ that nurse was talking about.”

Once again, this wasn’t so much a question, but a statement of fact.

Yup, he’s definitely become a fan, Chiron deduced.

“You should probably get her,” Sam jerked his own thumb at Farsight, “out to safety first...”

It was an unconscious thought that made him raise his arm forward. Luckily, Crow-Man wasn’t opposed to bumping fists.

As Sam ran off in the other direction, Farsight yelled, “Watch out for the Trickster... he knows you’re coming!”

This, Sam thought, was the worst thing a seer could ever say to someone racing toward danger alone. Gods, I hope I’m not too late...