Young Writers Society

The chill autumn breeze sliced over Eli's skin, winding its way through the mesh-like material of his suit. He shivered and pressed closer to the building faces. The streets glowed with neon signs and streetlights, and it was eerily quiet for the downtown, with only the occasional car drifting past, headlights flashing. Eli felt utterly exposed as he limped along the side of the scarred sidewalks in his black-and-white supersuit, and he was grateful for the mask that obscured his features to the wandering eye.

His whole body ached from the various bruises Zenith had dealt him, in addition to those earned by personal efforts: running into couches, flawed dodges, and repeated intangibility stunts. The one shot she'd delivered to his shoulder blade was the worst. It would twinge with pain every time he moved his arms.

In the end, he'd never made it to the heating system, but he supposed that exploding the entire store would have been overkill, anyway. And given how Maplestone had dropped him mid-fight, he didn't feel particularly loyal to their cause anymore.

Maplestone Furniture was an absolute ass.

I bet that their furniture is low quality, outdated, and uncomfortable, he thought bitterly as he kicked some broken glass shards out of his path.

Given the amount of time it took them to dump him, leaving him to fend for himself against the well-funded Zenith, he could only imagine how their stinginess and sour attitudes were reflected in their products. He would never support that kind of company. Honestly, if you're going to trigger an auction war with an enemy business, you should at least be prepared to win.

He sneered at the ground, numbly observing the shadows that his boots cast on the shattered concrete. Whatever. This only happened all the time. Villains weren't known for their frequent victories, were they?

Police sirens sounded in the distance. Eli glanced over his shoulder, his heart jumping to his throat despite what logic told him. Five blocks away from the scene already, following the back roads, and moving fast, so there shouldn't be a problem, but if he were spotted... That would just be the cherry on the cake of a fine evening.

"Clothes," he muttered. Where the hell had he stored his backpack this time, again? Somewhere along Elm Avenue, he remembered abruptly, in an alley behind one of those not-so-great fushion restaurants.

A car rushed by, and Eli flinched, turning intangible just long enough to blend into the shadows as the vehicle passed. As he returned to his normal state of matter, he spotted the restaurant only a block away. A surge of relief washed over him. Time to clock out.

The alley beside the restaurant, which advertised "Extra Spicy Sushi Burritos" in a threatening red sign, was pitch black, damp, and smelled strongly of days-old sushi burritos. Eli wrinkled his nose and plunged inside. He felt the slimy brick wall besides the dumpster until his hand found a single backpack strap poking straight out from the red stone. Aha.

He made his bag intangible with a single thought, the aching pain that radiated up his arms serving as the ever-present reminder that his powers were far from natural. He yanked the bag from where it had been shoved directly into the wall with a satisfied exhale.

He'd gotten used to changing in gross back alleyways over the last year and a bit, and soon he was back into his worn jeans and pullover hoodie. He shoved his costume into the recesses of his bag, rougher than was strictly necessary. Rift was finally gone for tonight, thank god.

He finished the transformation by sticking his phone in his back pocket, gripping car keys in one hand, and slinging the backpack over his shoulder.

When Eli emerged back onto the street, he was back to his regular, unassuming, average college student self, complete with purple bags under his eyes and anxiety about his Anatomy test the next day.

Now he just needed to remember where he'd parked his car.

He clicked the lock button a few times, straining his ears for the cheerful "I'm over here, you idiot" double beep, but nothing happened. He cursed his awful memory under his breath and paused, running his hands through his already mussed black hair. He'd probably parked in that overnight garage that he usually used for downtown excursions, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what part of town he was in now.

He pulled out his phone and squinted at the blinking GPS app, biting his lip. Where--?

The screen went dark unexpectedly, then lit up with the phone call icon. Eli frowned at the name on the display.

Atlas Beckett was calling. Why would one of his roommates want him at this time of night? Maybe he'd left the windows open and cockroaches had infiltrated the beds again. He answered.

"What's up?"

No response at first. There was a hissing, scuffling sound in the background that he couldn't quite place, like something steaming on the stove.

Then a voice, so strangled and rough that Eli didn't recognize it as Atlas' at first.

"Eli?"

"Yeah? It's me, man," Eli said, his chest immediately constricting in concern. He leaned against a wall covered in obscene graffiti and gripped the phone in both hands, so as not to miss any of Atlas' words. His roommate didn't say anything else for a few more moments. Eli licked his lips, trying to calm the sudden anxiety in his stomach.

"You okay?"

"I need... I need help," Atlas said, his voice warped with pain. "Providence Street."

"Oh- okay. Okay! Just hold on, dude."

Eli held the phone out and pulled up the GPS app again, tapping in the name with frantic strokes. "I'm on my way, alright? Stay with me. I'll be right there."

He put Atlas on speaker phone and pushed off the wall, hurrying back the way he came, following the little blue arrow on his screen. Atlas' breathing was ragged, shuddering through the speakers of the phone like rusty hinges swinging shut. It sent shivers down Eli's spine.

He followed the instructions and turned right, his exhausted muscles protesting with each step. This area looked a bit better than where he'd just been, with apartment buildings stretching into the night sky, and a section of duplexes. A kid's blue bike leaned against a set of porch stairs.

"I'm going to die, Eli."

Atlas' voice cut through the night air like a blade. Eli shuddered, clutched the phone with white knuckles.

"Look, man, I'm on my way. Tell me what's wrong."

"I--"

The hissing sound again, and then a strangled cry of pain. Eli broke into a run, taking a sharp left. Only a few more blocks.

"Atlas?" he cried, breathless. "Atlas?"

The call dropped, and he was left with a terrifying silence. He bit his cheek so hard that he tasted blood. He kept running.

When he finally arrived on Providence Street in what felt like hours later, his mind was flipping through all of the horrible things that could have happened to his friend. He tried to shove them away, tried to focus on figuring out where the hell Atlas could be on this entire street. This road was nearly pitch black, with the few streetlights that weren't busted out at intervals so few and far between that they were almost completely useless.

"God," he whispered, whipping around. He couldn't see Atlas anywhere. He picked a random direction and sprinted down the street, scanning every corner, every alley between the run-down houses and crumbling buildings.

"Atlas!" he called, trying to ignore how his voice was rising in pitch. "Atlas!"

Then, finally, there. At the edge of a huge, fragmented parking lot beside a decrepit apartment complex lay a young man's crumpled form.

"Atlas!"

Eli ran to him, picking his way over the ruined asphalt, broken glass, and past a rusted car skeleton to crouch at his friend's side. His breath caught in his throat at the sight before him.

Atlas lay with his head on a patch of dead grass, his dark skin coated in a sheen of sweat. He was wearing his supersuit and mask, to Eli's surprise, and the material was absolutely ruined. It was filled with holes, and... smoking. Eli realized with horror that the material had melted and darkened into a bloody red mess around Atlas' torso, even fusing with his skin in some places.

Eli swallowed back a gag at the smell of burnt flesh.

Atlas' eyelids fluttered, and he shifted his head towards Eli. There was gravel in his curly black hair, and blood streaked across his sharp cheekbones.

"Eli..." he croaked. His voice was like rusty nails on a chalkboard.

"Atlas, oh god, I--" Eli fluttered his hands helplessly at his sides, then raked them through his hair. "I don't know what to do. Oh god."

The wounds all over his torso were not cuts, or blasts from plasma, Eli realized, but burns. Atlas tried to push himself up on his elbow, his face tense with focus, but he hissed in pain and collapsed.

Eli's frown deepened, confusion spiking through the fear. This didn't make any sense. Atlas was fireproof, one of the best pyrokinetics in Ohio. He was Pyro, for goodness sake. Where Rift got furniture shops, Pyro got multi-million dollar companies. Pyro wasn't beaten, and Pyro certainly couldn't be burned.

"How did this happen?" Eli whispered, his mouth dry. The skin around Atlas' neck was red and blistered, and the worst burns in his chest were charred and blackened, oozing clear liquid that made Eli's stomach turn.

God. He was studying biology. He saw gross things all the time. He should be able to handle this. But it was different when it was his friend, and he had no idea what the protocol for deep tissue burns would be, especially in this situation.

Atlas seemed desperate to tell him something, his mouth gaping opened and closed a few times before he could force it out. "They know, Eli. They know that I know."

"Who knows?" He needed to call 911. He fumbled for his phone in his pocket.

"The Program."

Eli paused, tilted his head. The Program was the in-between that hired heroes and villains out to companies like Maplestone Furniture. As much as Eli hated the job, the Program was employing him, and it even provided scholarships to help further relieve his ridiculous amount of student loans. The few villains he knew personally were also in the same boat, facing a common conundrum: student loans + scarce job availability = turn to villainy through the Program. And it was never real crime beyond property damage and threats, and they were so frequently thwarted by Program-hired heroes that it hardly mattered what they did. But that didn't explain Atlas' claim.

"The Program?" Eli shook his head. "That doesn't make sense, Atlas."

Atlas suddenly reared up and gripped Eli by the front of his shirt with hands slick with blood. Eli flinched, throwing his arms back into the gravel before he fell over.

"Hey--!"

Atlas' left eye was red with broken blood vessels, but his expression was fierce.

"We can't leave, Eli," he hissed, breathless. "We can't leave."

Fear spiked through his lungs, and Eli tried to scramble back, but Atlas held tight, his crazed, scorched face inches away from Eli's. "Leave what?"

But before he could answer, Atlas burst into flame.

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