Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction, created out of passion and inspired by the universe of My Hero Academia, created by Kōhei Horikoshi.

  It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected in any way to the original author or rights holders.

  All characters, locations, and events presented herein are original or reimagined for narrative purposes.

  “HEEEELP!!!”

  The roar that followed shortly afterwards didn’t come from the ears, but from the bones.

  In the depths of Umeda Station, where the lines intertwined like a spider's intricate web, the world was turned upside down in a brief and frantic moment, without anyone noticing any warning signs.

  The dull rumble of the earthquake shook and cracked concrete walls, transforming the composed buzz of thousands of commuters into a single, piercing scream of terror.

  Then came darkness, thick and heavy, interrupted only by the electrical crackling of a transformer that had exploded at the end of the tunnel.

  “Damn it!” A figure struggled to its feet, coughing. The air had already become suffocating, thick with concrete dust and the chemical smoke that heralded the start of a fire. “Wayfinder, reboot.” A low hum shivered through his temples. The system logo—a perfect square crossed by a lightning bolt—appeared for a moment on the blue lens before the augmented reality interface projected a cobalt-colored vector grid over the black smoke.

  The man looked at his hands, covered in thick, padded cyan gloves, turning them over a couple of times as if trying to make sure there was no visible damage.

  “Calibration complete. Icon detection within a ten-yard radius... active.” The synthetic voice of the visor was the only orderly sound in that chaos of metal and screams.

  “Now we're talking.” The man stood up straight, clenching his fists tightly. He was slender but well-built, tempered by calamities far more severe than the one he was now facing. “Stay calm and I assure you that in a few minutes you will all be out, safe and sound!” he shouted, but his voice, despite its serious tone, was drowned out and swallowed up by the growing panic.

  People were crowded around the escalators, which were out of order due to a power failure, in a desperate mass that offered no escape and risked crushing itself.

  “What a shitty situation,” the man admitted, and without wasting any more time talking, he ran with all his might toward the wall of the platform and struck the backlit panel of the emergency exit with his gloved palm. “Icon Reality: Activation.”

  Under his touch, the green rectangle seemed to liquefy. The stylized little man running toward the door detached itself from the plastic, becoming a three-dimensional figure of pure emerald light. Then another. And another. Ten, twenty little men of light began to run above the heads of the crowd, projecting a luminous trail that cut through the smoke like a laser.

  Those beings didn't utter a sound or a word, yet their gestures were unmistakable: they motioned for people to crouch down and pointed with their radiant arms toward the secondary, less crowded escape route.

  The crowd, mesmerized by this supernatural guidance, began to flow in an orderly fashion. Panic gave way to instinctive obedience to this universal language.

  But the danger wasn't over yet, and others would need his help.

  “Glyph! Over there!” shouted a hoarse voice.

  A conductor pointed to track 4. A train car had derailed and, in the jolt, had tilted dangerously against the platform, trapping a man between the metal sheets and the concrete edge. The space narrowed with every settling vibration.

  “Never a moment's rest,” the man grumbled as he sprinted, his head spinning frantically in every direction, desperately searching for signals to interact with, though he found none that could serve his purpose. Not even his Wayfinder had been able to fulfill its function this time.

  “Hold on, please.” With a quick movement, he tore off his short cloak and spread it on the ground, hearing heart-rending cries coming from where the man was lying. Symbols resembling road signs appeared on the fabric, sliding to the right one after the other in time with Glyph's fingers.

  “Found it!” exclaimed the man shortly afterwards, and without even pausing to consider his aim or trajectory, he grabbed a red No Parking sign from the tactical map and hurled it into the small gap between the train and the platform.

  “Icon Reality: Expansion!”

  The symbol enlarged until it became a disc of pure force with a diameter of six feet. The metal of the wagon, pressed by tons of weight, collided with the icon. There was a screeching noise, like two titans battling each other. The words ‘NO OBJECT MAY OCCUPY THIS SPACE’ was an absolute law, now as it kept the gap pried open.

  The wagon stopped moving forward, as if it were truly blocked by an indestructible authority.

  “Get him now!” ordered Glyph, his arm muscles tense as he tried to maintain the projection for as long as possible.

  The paramedics pulled him from the rubble. Their movements were expert: their hands controlled his spine before he could even protest. He still had four limbs and a head, which, they said, was a victory. It was good news, but as the distant wail of more sirens echoed through the tunnel, he knew he couldn't claim victory just yet.

  Of course, the earthquake had stopped, but the subway was still feeling the aftermath. And although most of its occupants had been evacuated, there were still a handful of injured people who needed urgent medical attention and had to be transported to the nearest hospital.

  But, all things considered, there had been no casualties, and that was what mattered most in the life and work of a Hero.

  Glyph raised his head to his right, toward the stairs. A section of the ceiling had collapsed, creating a wall of rubble that blocked the passage of the stretchers.

  “Ugh... After this, I definitely need a vacation.”

  He looked for one last visual cue. On the supporting pillar was a simple blue sign: a white arrow pointing upward. The Hero touched it, rotated it forty-five degrees, and stretched it out into the empty space. The arrow lengthened, transforming into a solid, translucent ramp that crossed over the rubble, connecting the platform to the upper floor.

  When the last civilian was rescued, the man remained alone, leaning against the wall as if he were exhausted and wanted to recover what little energy he had left.

  His icons still shone brightly, silent guardians of a world that today had risked crumbling further and dragging down with it anything that had fallen victim to its overwhelming fury.

  He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, watching one of the greenish figures remaining on the platform, who, before vanishing into thin air, gave him a small wave of greeting.

  ***

  “EVERYONE OUT, ABANDON YOUR VEHICLES, NOW!”

  The rain on Sendai was no longer water; it was a liquid wall, gray and lashing, blurring the boundaries between the sky and the mountains of Miyagi Prefecture.

  The terrifying typhoon that had been battering the coast for days had decided to become bolder and advance, and now it was roaring through the gorges and along State Route 48, which climbed like a ribbon of asphalt through the pine forests.

  It seemed as if nature had decided to reclaim the area that had been taken away from it.

  A huge figure stood in the middle of the road, as if he wanted to face the fury that was descending on the area himself. His legs—or rather, his armored feet—felt a low-frequency tremor.

  It wasn't thunder. It was more like the visceral sound of a layer of rock sliding over a bed of mud.

  “Did you hear me? Everyone out!” roared that creature, whose Herculean features resembled those of a rhinoceros beetle, a rather famous coleopteran in the Japanese archipelago. His deep, cavernous voice resounded above the roar of the storm like the tolling of a bronze bell.

  A tour bus headed for the Osaki Hachiman shrines was stuck on a hairpin turn. The engine roared, the rear wheels struggling in vain for traction in the slippery mud that was already spilling over the edges of the road. Above them, the hillside was swelling and expanding, like a poultice of mud and uprooted tree trunks ready to explode.

  The creature lunged forward with the typical movement of a battering ram and with each stride, the ground shook as if struck by a small earthquake.

  The reddish-brown chitin exoskeleton covering every layer of his body was furrowed and polished by the tears falling copiously from the sky. The armored plates adorning his biceps swelled under the extension of the muscle fibers granted to him by his mutation quirk.

  “Watch out!” A titanic boulder, the size of a small car, broke away from the upper slope. It picked up speed, bouncing with a dull thud that shook the road. It was heading straight for the center of the bus.

  The mutant lowered his center of gravity. “Grand Horn: Impact Zero!”

  He rammed his enormous forked horn—a spear of diamond-hard chitin—under the edge of the boulder at full speed. The collision was terrifying. A flash of sparks flew from the friction between the stone and the horn. For a moment, his legs sank ankle-deep into the asphalt, but his spine, reinforced by overlapping plates, didn’t bend. With a brutal twist of his neck, he hurled the boulder sideways.

  The rock flew several yards before crashing into the void of the opposite embankment.

  But the real danger made its triumphant appearance a few moments later: a river of black mud, debris, and tree trunks was sliding down, a mass weighing hundreds of tons.

  “Crouch under your seats! Don't look outside!” he then ordered the terrified passengers.

  He positioned himself between the mountain and the side of the vehicle. He opened his elytra, the heavy protective wings on his back, but not to fly or move faster. He opened them a few degrees, wedging them against the bus body to distribute the load, and then planted his arms in the mud, becoming a living buttress.

  The wave struck. It was a muffled, dull sound followed by the noise of a thousand claws scratching against his shell. The mud pressed against his chest, the tree trunks hit him on the shoulders with the force of a thousand hammers, but the giant did not budge an inch.

  His eyes, small and black under the natural helmet of his horn, were fixed, focused only on maintaining his balance.

  The mud ran up his legs, covering his knees, then his hips. The heat emitted by his muscles under extreme strain caused the rain to evaporate on contact with his armor, enveloping him in a cloud of white vapor.

  It was like watching an iconography of some legend: a bronze demon holding back a landslide with his bare hands.

  “Now! Head for the bridge! Hurry!” he shouted, clenching his teeth as if he wanted to crush them into tiny pieces.

  The driver, though terribly terrified and gasping for breath, drew on his last reserves of strength and, with one final effort, found a foothold. The bus slid away, freeing itself from the grip of the earth just as the giant felt the pressure of the landslide becoming unbearable. Only when he was certain that the vehicle was on the reinforced concrete of the bridge did the hero known as Rhino let go.

  Instead of being overwhelmed, he used the residual thrust of the mud to propel himself forward. With one last powerful blow of his horn, he deflected the rest of the flow into the void, clearing the roadway with the power of a bulldozer.

  When the storm finally subsided, only the mammoth chitinous creature stood out against the backdrop, standing in the middle of the devastated road. He was completely covered in slime, branches, and other debris, making him even more menacing and frightening than he already was, yet his exoskeleton hadn't a single scratch on it.

  He slowly turned his head toward the bridge, his reinforced joints creaking.

  The bus passengers got off, trembling. An elderly man approached, bowing deeply under his broken umbrella. Rhino said nothing, merely repeating the same gesture and, with a sound like a puff of steam, folded his wings under his armor.

  ***

  “PLEASE, I DON’T WANT TO DIE! NOT TODAY, NOT LIKE THIS.”

  The words of Hiroshi, a man in his fifties who worked as a driver, died in a strangled scream against the cracked windshield.

  Below him, the emptiness of Nagoya roared with car horns and sirens; above, the sky was an open wound of purple and orange. The tanker cab groaned, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle over the edge of the Higashiyama viaduct.

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  Every beat of his heart, every moan and breath seemed to give the vehicle an invisible push toward the abyss.

  About two hundred yards below, a figure skated along the shopping streets. She wore a pressurized suit that reflected the neon lights, pearly white and crisscrossed with electric blue lines that looked like integrated circuits. Her face was hidden by an aerodynamic helmet, a dark visor concealing every human feature.

  “Magnetic pressure detected. Structural failure in eight seconds,” said a synthetic voice inside the helmet.

  “Finally, some action. I was seriously starting to get bored.”

  At the same time, an asymmetrical movement in the reflection of a shop window caught the hero’s attention: four men wearing ballistic masks were coming out of the ‘Yume’ jewelry store, dragging heavy bags and pointing guns at the terrified crowd.

  “How stupid can you people be?” Under her visor, the woman's eyes narrowed. For her, time wasn’t a flowing river, but a series of frames she could choose to inhabit.

  “Calculating trajectory... complete vector optimization,” she murmured, her voice filtered through the modulator. Her breathing slowed and became rhythmic as the world around her began to slow down. “It's time to accelerate. To become speed.”

  As if it were a gesture that had become mechanical, she put her hands on her hips and threw a medium-sized, circular device she called a Pole-Marker toward the edge of the viaduct. At the same time, she kicked another one toward a fire hydrant, right where the criminals would have escaped if she hadn't managed to stop them.

  “Maglev Charge: Activation!”

  The sound that followed didn’t sound like anything familiar; rather, it was more like a physical roar, almost as if the air itself had been torn away from the fabric of reality.

  The woman became a trail of light, a kinetic projectile that shot vertically up the concrete pillar of Higashiyama. In three-tenths of a second, she reached the suspended cabin.

  All that the terrified man's eyes saw was a blue flash and a streamlined helmet. The woman didn't even need to open the door to pull him out; the speed she was traveling at was such that the matter around her seemed to surrender.

  She grabbed the man by his uniform, enveloped him in her magnetic field to protect him from friction, and threw herself sideways toward the safety of the roadway.

  In no time at all, Hiroshi found himself sitting on the asphalt, while the roar of that white lightning bolt was quite far from his view.

  There were only a few seconds left before the tanker crashed, not to mention those ugly thugs who could have done something else rash.

  As she fell from the viaduct, the woman twisted her body in midair. The world became a series of frozen frames: the condensation droplets on the air conditioners, the expressions of terror on the passersby's faces, the robbers' fingers pressing the triggers.

  She threw a negative polarity magnetic marker onto the bottom of the cistern and one with the same polarity onto the road.

  Magnetism is an honest force: opposites attract, equals repel. As the tank fell, it encountered an invisible cushion of magnetic repulsion that deflected its trajectory by fifteen degrees, pushing it away from the crowd and toward the sand of a construction site.

  Now only the bottom remained.

  She joined the flow toward the hydrant. Her speed increased again. The robbers saw only a distortion in the air.

  She passed through them at a speed equal to that of a shinkansen. The air pressure generated by her passage threw the first man against a pillar.

  With a fluid movement, she grabbed the bag of stolen goods from the second man's hands, while with her armored heel she disarmed the third before he could sense her presence.

  The remaining robber, a burly man, only had time to widen his eyes. She placed her hand on his chest for a fraction of a millisecond, reversing the polarity of her gloves. The man was thrown backwards as if he had been hit by a speeding train.

  She reached the hydrant. “Maglev Charge: Induction Braking!”

  The magnetic plates on her boots activated, creating such violent friction that the asphalt beneath her melted instantly, emitting a swarm of golden sparks. She stopped in less than two yards.

  Time resumed its normal flow.

  The roar of the cistern drowned out the groans of the robbers on the floor. The woman slowly got up, absentmindedly brushing the dust off her jumpsuit. Only then, with a metallic click, did she remove her helmet.

  Her long black hair, wet with sweat, fell over her shoulders. She had ice-blue eyes peeking out from under her bangs and freckles that stood out on her face like tiny specks of paint.

  The woman took her first real breath of fresh air.

  “Here, Railstrike. Perimeter secured,“ she said into the communicator, then flashed a big smile. ”Send a couple of ambulances for the driver on the viaduct and for four armed but unconscious men near the Yume jewelry store. They're a little shaken up, but all in all, in good health."

  She laughed again at her joke, before skating down the road and disappearing into the horizon.

  ***

  “PLEASE... SAVE THAT TEMPLE... IF IT BURNS... OUR HISTORY WILL BURN WITH IT...”

  The elderly keeper's voice trembled, drowned out by the roar of the flames devouring the wooden structure of the Kōdai-ji temple.

  Kyoto, usually quiet and enveloped in the scent of incense, stank of burnt resin that night.

  The sky above the Nishijin district was stained a dirty orange, while embers flew through the narrow alleys like crazy fireflies.

  A man of imposing stature stood behind the main gate. His muscular physique was clad in a dark uniform topped with a moss-green haori, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His impassive gaze rested on the burning inferno that grew fiercer by the minute.

  “Don't worry, good man. History is engraved in the hearts of anyone who wants to remember it. However, I will do my best to protect this symbol and save anyone trapped inside it,” he replied, his expression and voice as calm as the surface of a Zen pond.

  He moved quickly toward the main pagoda. Inside, cries of terror signaled the presence of humans trapped on the second floor, unable to descend because the stairs had been consumed by fire.

  The man held his palms upward, fingers spread, summoning an energy that smelled of fresh mats and centuries-old tradition. “Tatami Shield: Way of Refuge.”

  With a sharp crackling sound like pressed straw, a series of thick, rigid rectangular panels emerged from the air itself, fitting together with millimeter precision. In a matter of seconds, he created a suspended ramp that started in the courtyard and led directly to the upper balcony.

  It wasn't a crude structure; on the contrary, each section was finished with dark silk edges, giving off a sudden and reassuring scent of igusa that momentarily dispelled the acrid smell of smoke.

  He climbed the steps with a light step. A load-bearing beam, incandescent and weighing hundreds of pounds, gave way just above the ramp. Without turning around, the hero moved his left hand outward. “Tatami Shield: Straw Veil.”

  A massive panel, nine feet wide, sprang from his arm. The beam struck the woven surface with a roar, but the material's proportional strength worked its miracle: the heavier the weight, the denser the fiber became, like titanium. The impact was absorbed completely, and the beam slid away without even scratching the shield.

  He reached the balcony. Inside the smoke-filled room, eight people were coughing desperately. The man did not simply invite them to come out. He banged his hands on the wooden floor, which was about to give way.

  “Is anyone injured?” he asked, and after making sure that no one had suffered any injuries or anything else, he proclaimed, “Don't be afraid. I'll get you all out of here. Walk on the safe path.”

  Beneath their feet, a layer of cool, rigid surfaces instantly spread out, insulating them from the heat. He shaped the panels to create side walls that enclosed them in a protected corridor as he escorted them along the external ramp.

  Once on the ground, as firefighters began to extinguish the flames, a section of the perimeter wall threatened to collapse toward the adjacent historic houses.

  The hero positioned himself between the temple and the alleyway, pressing his back against the crumbling stone. Dozens of perfectly fitting joints began to sprout from his spine, fanning out to form a massive buttress. He became the cornerstone of an instant fortress, supporting the weight of the structure until the last ember was extinguished.

  Only when the emergency was over did the man dissolve his power. The surfaces vanished into the air like golden dust, leaving behind only that lingering, sweet scent of summer straw. He turned to the elderly caretaker, lowered the collar of his haori, and bowed deeply.

  “I saved those men and, above all, the temple, Mr. Keeper. And with it, your history is safe too.”

  “What is your name?” asked the man, intrigued but also intimidated by this giant of a man with impressive strength and temperament who had just tamed the flames and supported the temple itself.

  “Everyone calls me Washitszu.”

  ***

  “Stay with me. Breathe in the scent of the forest, not the smoke. Just a little longer.”

  The voice was like a melodic whisper, almost a song, that seemed to emerge not from anyone's lips, but from the very heart of the mountain.

  The hiker, trapped under a pile of branches and mud after a sudden landslide in the Yoshino Valley, looked up through blurred vision.

  Before him, in the damp fog of Nara Prefecture, stood not a rescuer in uniform, but a vision that seemed to have stepped out of an ancient painted scroll.

  The woman possessed an otherworldly grace. From her rosy hair sprouted two cream-colored, velvety pointed ears, straining toward the sounds of the forest, and a pair of ebony horns that branched upward like young cherry tree branches. Small silver bells hung from the tips, producing a crystalline chime with her slightest movement.

  “Your fear is preventing the poison in your lungs from diminishing. Let me remove it and give you relief,” she said, kneeling in the mud without caring about her immaculate dress.

  She stretched her hands over the man's chest. Suddenly, her horns began to vibrate, and in less than the blink of an eye, thousands of tiny pale pink buds appeared out of nowhere, as if in accelerated bloom, opening and then detaching shortly thereafter to float in the air.

  “Cerise Drift: Healing Mist.”

  The whirlwind of flowers seemed to dance and move according to a precise will, rather than being carried by the wind. The flowers surrounded the man, settling on his open wounds and blue lips. Upon contact with his skin, the petals did not wither, but glowed with a faint light, releasing a bioactive nectar that sealed the capillaries and neutralized the excess carbon dioxide in his blood.

  The hiker felt a sudden warmth, as if he had been immersed in a hot spring, and the excruciating pain in his leg turned into a bearable tingling sensation.

  However, the dangerous situation had not been averted at all. Above them, another section of the muddy ridge was about to collapse, threatening to bury them both.

  But the female hero didn't flinch; on the contrary, she raised her gaze toward the wall of mud and lifted both arms. From her horns erupted a storm of petals so dense that it obscured the view.

  “Cerise Drift: Wonderful Whirlwind.”

  Millions of pink fragments became lodged between the rocks and the sliding earth, acting as a biological glue. The petals intertwined, creating an incredibly elastic and resistant network of plant fibers that held back the landslide, slowing its advance just enough to allow rescuers to approach.

  “You are safe now. The forest has decided that your time hasn't come yet,” she declared, helping the man to his feet as her petals created a soft, fragrant path over the slimy mud.

  When the ambulance arrived at the base of the path, the fog cleared completely, giving way to a ray of sunlight filtering through the ancient cedars. The woman tucked a strand of hair behind her pointed ear and bowed with a solemnity that seemed to belong to a bygone era.

  “My name is Sakurime. Come back and visit us when the cherry trees are in bloom. They will be less combative, but rather welcoming.”

  With a light leap that left almost no footprints on the ground, she disappeared into the foliage, leaving behind only the scent of spring and the distant sound of a silver bell.

  ***

  “Heroes... the guardians of our time. Those who, in the deepest darkness, have chosen to become the light that illuminates it.”

  The camera slowly pulled back, revealing that everything seen so far was nothing more than pixels set in a metal and glass frame.

  On the ultra-flat high-definition screen, the images flowed rhythmically, edited in an almost cinematic sequence.

  The final sequences followed one another in rapid succession: the tired but satisfied face of the hero Glyph under his Wayfinder visor in Umeda station; the immovable bulk of Rhino shrouded in steam amid the mud of Sendai; Railstrike's dazzling smile after defying physics in Nagoya; Washitzu's solemn bow before the temple in Kyoto; and finally, Sakurime's ethereal silhouette fading away among the ancient cedars of Yoshino.

  It was all part of a documentary called “The Five Columns: Chronicles of a Protected Nation,” which celebrated the exploits of the heroes who ardently protected the island of Honshu.

  The triumphant music of the documentary then faded, mingling with the hum of air conditioners and Tokyo traffic.

  “... because thanks to their sacrifice and dedication,” proclaimed the narrator's warm, deep voice, “Japan is a better place. Heroes make our land, and above all the whole world, a place that is finally safe.”

  In front of the shop window, a figure wrapped in a long dark coat stood motionless. The hood cast a sharp shadow over the upper part of the face, leaving only the hard line of the jaw visible.

  “... But a safer world for whom?” murmured the man, clenching his gloved right fist. His voice was dry, however, betraying no emotion. However, it was his thoughts that were piling up one over the other “For those who sleep peacefully knowing that someone else will fight in their place? For those who buy gadgets, watch documentaries, and wear the smile of someone who believes that goodness is a registered trademark? How pathetic.”

  He then began to walk, but the Japanese metropolis seemed unwilling to give him any respite. A few steps ahead, a giant screen nestled between two skyscrapers displayed a statuesque image of Railstrike, posed in a way that further accentuated her dynamic quirk, as if the documentary and other derivative works weren't enough.

  The crowd around the figure slowed down, some smiled, others clapped frantically. A child pointed at the screen with a look of admiration.

  “Heroes...” said the man, spitting out the word as if it had a bitter aftertaste. “The most elegant lie that humanity has ever created so as not to admit that it is afraid, so as not to admit that it isn't up to the situations it faces.”

  He didn't stop, continuing to move like a predator stalking his prey.

  “But look at them...” His gaze fell upon the crowd, scanning their happy, carefree faces one by one. "Society sees them as beacons, yet in my eyes they are nothing more than lightning rods. They serve to deflect the anger of the masses, to give a clean face to a system that is rotting from the ground up. Heroes are the opium of the mediocre, distracting them from the inevitable truth that permeates this shitty world, that heroes don't really protect it. They protect the illusion that it is right, that it is fair. They are shiny band-aids on wounds that no one gives a shit about healing. They fight the symptom, never the disease. They arrest the criminal, yet leave the same system that gave birth to them unchanged. As long as there is someone lifting a bus or putting out a fire with petals, people can afford to remain small, weak, lazy. They don't have to evolve, they don't have to fight. They just have to... watch and applaud."

  A group of kids ran past him, excited by the giant face still looming on the screen.

  “Yeah... people applaud...” he continued “They applaud... because it's easier to believe in a spectacular and powerful quirk than to wonder if they can contribute. Rather than face their own boring banality. And it's more comfortable to idolize than to take responsibility.”

  He stopped under the flashing light of a sign. “They call them symbols of peace. But a symbol serves to distract. To draw focus towards a single point so that no one looks at the rest of the picture. As long as the hero is there, up high, shining... no one wonders why he is needed.”

  A faint smile curved his lips. “And when he falls... because they always fall... they'll find another one. Younger. Stronger. More photogenic. The machine never stops. It needs idols to keep grinding out hope.”

  He looked up at another sign, this time glorifying the hero known as Glyph, as he placed his right hand on a road sign and raised his thumb with his other hand.

  “You aren’t saviors at all. You’re just products. And the masses don’t want safety… they want spectacle.”

  Suddenly, a low buzz interrupted his uninterrupted stream of thoughts. The man slipped his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a black cell phone. The screen lit up his cold, almost lifeless eyes for a moment.

  He answered without hesitation.

  “Speak,” he said curtly.

  On the other end of the line, a metallic voice, distorted by a frequency modulator, croaked a few simple words. GPS coordinates and a name, at the sound of which a spark flashed in his glassy irises.

  He didn't utter a word, staring into the void of the adjacent alley, where the darkness seemed to grow denser, as if it wanted to swallow him whole. The reflection of the blue and fuchsia neon lights died a few inches from his boots, unable to illuminate the abyss of cynicism he carried within him.

  “Got it,” he finally said, his voice reduced to a sharp hiss. “And now, while I take care of this, you take care of that other matter. It's vitally important to our mission.”

  He ended the call with a sharp flick of his thumb. The cell phone screen went dark, returning that corner to its natural gloom.

  The man lifted the collar of his coat slightly, further covering his clenched jaw. One last glance was cast toward the main street, where Glyph's face continued to shine on the pillar, a beacon of artificial optimism that now seemed more fragile than ever.

  “Do you want the show?” he whispered, and this time the smile that curled his lips was not one of mockery, but of macabre anticipation. “I'll give you an ending that no documentary will ever dare to broadcast.”

  He detached himself from the wall and, instead of returning to the light of the metropolis, ventured even deeper into the bowels of the city, disappearing into the shadows of industrial air conditioners and tangled electrical cables.

  “Let the hunt begin.”