The school doors groaned open, their hinges protesting like they always did. That sound hadn't changed. Neither had the hallway—the same scuffed tiles, the same fluorescent lights flickering overhead, the same banners sagging from the ceiling like tired memories.
But the moment Stephen stepped into the school building, he felt it.
The air wasn't the same.
It wasn't the sterile, fluorescent buzz he'd grown used to. It wasn't the usual chatter and energy of teenagers running on caffeine and stress. No. This was different. The atmosphere had weight now. Tension. It clung to his skin like humidity before a storm.
He took two more steps forward, and the silence hit like a wall.
Conversations halted mid-sentence. Chairs stopped squeaking. A distant laugh choked itself out. Every sound—the shuffling of feet, the crinkling of paper—died in real time. It was like the building itself was holding its breath.
Mark, beside him, looked around slowly. "What the hell…"
Stephen kept walking. He didn't want to stop. Stopping meant acknowledging the shift, and right now, he didn't know if he could handle what came next.
Eyes locked onto him.
Hundreds of them.
Students, teachers, janitors—every single person in sight turned their attention toward Stephen. Some stumbled backward. Others stood rooted, hands gripping lockers or books like shields.
A girl near the lockers let out a strangled gasp and dropped her phone. Another grabbed her friend's hand and practically ran.
Stephen's steps slowed, taking a closer look at the people around him.
This wasn't surprise.
It was fear.
Despair.
Pain.
Disgust.
Then—anger.
A boy's face twisted into something ugly. "Why is he even here?"
Another voice cut in—sharper. Older. "He's the one from the video."
Stephen turned his head slightly.
Video?
Before he could ask, before Mark could speak, a voice called out: "Hey! Freak!"
Mark's eyes flared. "What the hell did you just say?"
A boy—a senior, Stephen thought—stepped forward. "We know what you did. We saw everything."
Stephen said nothing. He didn't know what to say.
Then someone shoved through the growing crowd—William. Dishevelled. Out of breath. Panic in his eyes.
"Mark! Stephen—" he held out his phone, shoved it toward them. "Look."
Mark took it, confused, and watched the screen light up.
_ _ ♛ _ _
A drone's-eye view of the city.
And then—
Stephen.
Locked in brutal combat. Buildings cracked, streets shattered.
Each punch sent shockwaves across blocks.
Screams echoed.
Fires burned in the distance.
Blood misted the air.
It wasn't like the news broadcasts. It wasn't cropped, filtered, or unclear.
This was raw.
Brutal.
Unmistakable.
Stephen's body slamming another through a skyscraper. Their fight toppling a bridge. A crowd crushed under debris as the battle spilled onto a highway. A man screaming over a mangled loved one, the gore of it all, felt unreal, almost like a movie that everyone played a part in.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Mark stared in disbelief. "Where did this come from?"
"Someone leaked it," William said. "Reddit, TikTok, Discord—it's everywhere. Everyone's seen it. This morning, before first bell."
Mark slowly lowered the phone. "Oh… shit." He looked around.
The muffled silence in the hallway was gone now.
In its place—screams.
Cries.
Sorrow.
Accusations.
"I lost my cousin in that building!"
"My dad worked downtown—he still hasn't come home!"
"You destroyed our city!"
"You destroyed my family!" wailed another voice choked between tears.
Stephen didn't move. He couldn't move.
He felt them.
The words.
They weren't just spoken. They were heart-wrenching.
"I defended you!" someone shrieked. "You're supposed to protect us!"
"You could've saved more people!"
"You didn't care! You didn't care enough—instead you were showing off!"
"You're a monster!"
Mark raised his voice. "Hey fuck off! He risked his life! He fought that thing so none of you had to!"
The crowd didn't care.
They turned on him too.
"Oh great, you're his brother right? It's only fair that freaks of the same nature defend each other!"
"You his backup plan?"
"You planning to destroy the school next?"
"Maybe you're both ticking time bombs!"
Mark's jaw clenched. "Back off."
A girl screamed. "No! Get them out of here!"
Stephen stood still, his gaze dimming.
It wasn't the noise.
It wasn't the words.
It was the absence inside him.
He heard them—every insult, every plea, every tear-stained accusation.
And he didn't feel anything.
No guilt.
No pain.
No sorrow.
Just… nothing.
He watched them—faces twisted in agony, in rage—and it was like watching strangers grieve on television.
Detached. Cold.
He hated himself for it.
Why didn't he feel something?
He saved as many people as he could. He blocked that punch. He forced himself through wounds that would've downed tanks. He'd done everything right.
Hadn't he?
Hadn't he?
'I don't feel bad,' he thought. 'Why don't I feel anything?'
A bottle flew from the crowd—plastic, half full. It smacked Mark's shoulder and bounced off.
More students stepped forward.
A riot was blooming.
Ms. Nieves—English teacher, posture like a metronome—stepped into the space between Stephen and the crowd. She didn't touch anyone. She just existed there like a line. "Back to class," she said to the air. Then, lower, to Mark: "Side exit. Now."
A plastic bottle thumped Stephen's shoe, spun, hissed a little water where it leaked. Mark flared—shoulders up, chin ready.
"Go," Ms. Nieves repeated. She checked corners and cameras instead of faces.
Stephen's hearing narrowed. The fluorescent buzz did a bzz-bzz-bzz stutter then steadied. He could feel the weight of all the looking. He let his field tuck in tight to skin—no edges, no ripples, nothing for a lens to love.
Don't speak in hostile rooms, he told himself. Don't teach. Don't explain. Move.
The girl with the wet hair said, not louder but sharper, "He was on the phone with me. And then—" She stopped like she hit a wall in her own throat.
Mark's hand found Stephen's sleeve. Not a pull. A suggestion.
Stephen stepped back two, left one, the way you do when you don't want a camera to get a clean angle. William angled his body like a shield that doubled as an accident. Ms. Nieves widened the gap with teacher gravity alone.
They slid into the service hall. The door swung shut on the noise, turned it into a TV in someone else's house.
The hallway smelled like dust and fruit cleaner and a mop that had done too much. A vending machine hummed with coins in its belly. Stephen let his back find the bit of wall where the camera couldn't stare straight.
Mark's voice was calm the way bridges are calm. "Breathe."
Stephen obeyed because it was easier than arguing. In four. Hold four. Out four. His hands were steady, then not. The steadiness left in pieces, like a stack of coins falling one by one.
He didn't feel guilt. That was the wrong word. He felt… misfiled. The math had been right: catch, redirect, break the net before the node, hold the line up. He could still see the woman's shoe in the street—no foot in it—not because it was his fault but because the world had torn in front of him and he was too small to stitch every seam.
He swallowed. Words arrived without their cousins. "I thought I did it right."
"You did," Mark said. He didn't sound proud. He sounded here.
On the other side of the door, someone pounded once and then didn't again. A distant announcement tried to start and failed. Ms. Nieves's voice cut clean and low: "Class. Now." The floodgate holding.
Stephen blinked hard and one tear made a hot line he didn't consent to. Then another. He hated both for being early to a feeling he hadn't chosen yet.
Mark's hand stayed on his sleeve. Not squeezing. Not letting go.
"I tried," Stephen said, quieter. Not an argument. Inventory.
"I know."
"When I hit him through the tower…" He stopped. Air snagged. He rerouted. "I did the math right."
Mark nodded. "I saw."
The door opened a crack; Ms. Nieves slid in, closed it with her hip. She looked like a flag in wind. "Admin wants you in the office," she said, eyes on the vending machine instead of their faces. "You're not going to the office. You're going out the science wing and going home."
Mark almost argued on principle. She cut him off with a small shake of her head. "Grief doesn't negotiate in hallways." She pointed with her chin. "Five seconds."
Stephen exhaled. His body remembered it was twelve and shook once more to prove it. He let it. He let the shake happen. He let the second tear burn and be done.
He thought about saying sorry. To whom? The air? A camera? The girl with the wet hair?
'Sorry for not being enough' felt like a lie. 'Sorry for being here' felt like something monsters say.
He said nothing.
"Ready?" Mark asked.
'No.' He nodded anyway.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The science wing door breathed them out into cold. The kind of cold that closes arguments. The bike rack made a shadow that was almost a room. Mark steered them into it.
Stephen looked back once through glass. The hall had returned to movie volume. Faces blurred by reflection. A phone raised. Another. A third. A teacher's arm across a doorway like a bar.
He didn't feel like crying anymore. The tears had done their job: mark the moment, proof of life. The emptiness that followed wasn't numb; it was a table cleared for something else.
'They don't deserve it,' slid through his head with the softness of a thought that thinks it lives here. Not Mom. Never Mom. Not Mark. Not Debbie's hands, not her garlic-warm kitchen, not the way she says eat like a prayer. But strangers. Strangers who would watch a drone clip and decide your soul from a compression artifact.
He pictured Debbie at the sink, smiling at nothing in particular. The thought stepped on the other like a heel.
'Not yet,' he told the cold part. 'Not around her.'
A siren went by somewhere not near enough to matter. The Sun sat low and uncommitted behind ragged cloud. He could feel its hand anyway.
William jogged up, breath clouding, hair worse than five minutes ago. He stopped a careful distance away, like approaching deer. "I'll talk to… I don't know. People."
"You'll start a comment war and get suspended," Mark said, not unkindly.
"True," William said. His mouth twitched. "For the record, the video is cropped to make you look huge and him small. It does… narrative work."
Stephen shrugged without feeling his shoulders. "I am huge."
"In spirit," William said, pointing at him. Then softer: "You okay?"
Stephen looked at the chain of the bike rack. One link was slightly bent. Probably a truck had backed up wrong last week. He liked that there was a boring story inside it. "I'm going home."
"I can walk you," William said.
"Class," Mark told him. "Please."
William hesitated. "Tell your mom I brought cookies and they were great."
"You didn't bring cookies," Mark said.
"Tell her anyway," William said, and jogged back toward the doors, body already angling for a fight he wouldn't win but needed to try.
Mark waited. He didn't try a speech. He didn't ask Stephen to forgive the hallway or understand a video or grow up faster than he already had.
"Car?" Mark said.
"Feet," Stephen said. He didn't want the sky yet. He didn't want the unfair luxury of it. He wanted concrete that didn't have opinions.
They walked. Past the side lot, past the trash bins where the lids bang in wind, past the new camera on its smug pole. Stephen kept to the fence line; the camera would get a nice shot of chain link and the top of his head if it tried to love him.
At the corner, a woman in a minivan looked at him too long and then pretended she hadn't. He made his mouth do the smile that says I'm ordinary, please return to your groceries. She did.
"Do you want me to call Mom?" Mark asked.
"No," Stephen said, quickly. Then slower: "I want to be the one to tell her."
They cut behind the baseball field. The ground there remembers games when no one shows up. A wadded line-up card lay wet near the dugout. He bent and picked it up because litter makes the world feel dishonest. He set it in the trash can like a small kind thing and felt stupid and correct at the same time.
Mark kicked a pebble. It went obediently where he asked. "You know you did good."
"I know I did math," Stephen said. His voice came out even. That made him proud for a reason he couldn't explain.
They reached the street. Houses that had been there yesterday kept being there in the same order. A dog barked twice at nothing and decided it had won.
Halfway home, Mark said, "You don't have to go back tomorrow."
"I'm going back," Stephen said.
"Why?"
"Because I live here," Stephen said. Then, after a beat, because telling the truth isn't always a speech: "And because if I don't, they get to write the story without me standing in the frame."
Mark considered that and didn't argue. "Okay."
A little farther, Mark tried again, because big brothers don't retire easy. "You don't owe them."
"I know," Stephen said. He tested the taste of the next sentence and let it sit on his tongue a second. "I'm not doing it for them."
Mark nodded. He didn't ask who for. He knew.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The Grayson front door had one hinge that squeaked and one that didn't. He'd been meaning to fix the squeak; he left it. Right now he liked that their house made a sound only they knew.
Debbie was at the sink, apron on, hands in soapy water like something out of a gentler book. She looked up. Her face did that micro-change it does when she reads weather before you say anything.
"Hey," she said. "How was—"
"The internet is bad," Mark said, cutting it like a wire.
Debbie dried her hands on a towel that had peaches on it and moved to them like a tide. She touched Stephen's cheek with her knuckles first—the soft hello—then pulled him in proper. He let his head find the space between her shoulder and her collarbone where the world gets quiet.
She didn't ask for the story. She didn't offer a moral. She smelled like garlic and laundry soap and a life that kept happening anyway.
"I'm making soup," she said into his hair. "You're staying for soup."
"I don't get a vote?" he said, voice muffled. It sounded almost like a joke. Good.
"No," she said. "Dictatorship."
He laughed, small and grateful. Then, just for a second, he let the cold thought from the bike rack float up where he could see it properly.
People don't deserve your effort.
It looked reasonable. It looked like armour that had been left on his porch with a note that said put me on and you won't get hurt so much. He reached for it.
Debbie's hand rubbed a circle on his back, absent-minded and perfect. The armour didn't fit.
Not her, he told the thought. Not here.
The thought didn't leave. It stepped back a little and leaned against the wall like it was willing to wait.
Mark dropped his bag by the couch and found the remote and didn't turn the TV on. Nolan's footsteps did their upstairs pause like they always do. The house kept being the house.
Stephen pulled away enough to look at Debbie. "I want to go back to school tomorrow."
"You don't owe them," she said, echoing Mark without knowing it.
"I know," he said. "I still want to."
She nodded like he'd told her something about weather she'd already expected. "Soup first," she said. "Then the world."
He managed a real smile. "Yes, ma'am."
_ _ ♛ _ _
Later, when the bowl was empty and the house had decided on quiet, Stephen stood in the backyard where the grass remembers feet. The sun had settled into the fence; the cold had opinions again. He let the field sit tight around his skin, a second shirt, no edges.
He looked at the sky and did not take it. He didn't need the height. Not tonight.
He closed his eyes and said nothing to the air. He didn't promise to be better for them. He didn't promise to be harder, either. He filed the day like a tool and put it in the drawer where he keeps sharp things.
'Next time,' he thought, 'I don't stay to argue with a camera. I don't explain. I do the math. I leave.'
He pictured the girl with wet hair and the way Ms. Nieves had stood like a door you couldn't push through, and he let both pictures live in him without picking a side yet.
A moth tapped the porch light and failed with dignity. Somewhere, a wind chime practiced vowels. His phone buzzed once: [William]: Debbie's dictatorship is a humanitarian miracle.
Stephen typed back: [...affirmative.]
He put the phone away. He breathed. The backyard stayed where it was.
He was not okay. He was not ruined.
He was a boy with a field under his skin and a mother who made soup and a brother who made space. The rest of the world could wait its turn.
He went inside.
End of Chapter 40.
(A/N: look this chapter took a lot out of me, i wrote 5 drafts and I went over them, had to choose which one was best, then decided to merge them, only for it to not turn out the way I wanted and in the end I ended up rewriting the whole thing, anyways this counts as two chapters, so please enjoy, if I have enough energy to write another chapter later on today or tmr I will and will post it today, until then enjoy! and please leave feedback, so I can keep improving, and your support goes a long way and truly keeps me motivated! after all I am not getting paid, I am doing this to improve and for the love of the game!)
END OF VOLUME TWO!