CHAPTER ONE: THE GENESIS OF TRUST
"Do you think superheroes ever get tired of saving us?" asked a weathered cab driver named Tito as he turned onto Fulton Street in Brooklyn. His question wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but the cab was silent long enough to make the weight of it hang in the air like the heavy Brooklyn humidity.
"They don't have a choice," came the answer. It was a passenger in the backseat—mid-30s, navy suit, clenched jaw. Government issue. He didn't say more, just looked out the window as the cab passed a mural of White Steel—Brooklyn's golden son, Olympus's shining knight.
Above them, traffic lights blinked lazily, and a massive LED screen on the Barclays Center displayed an Olympus advertisement: White Steel standing tall, cape billowing beside Sophia Queens, the enigmatic CEO of Olympus. The words "Hope Has a Face" shimmered beneath them.
White Steel was everywhere. On TV. On soda cans. On the posters of children's bedrooms. The man born Antony Jackson Shaw had become legend—the first Genesis. The golden boy with glowing red eyes, the only known super who didn't need enhancement injections or synthetic serum. He was the power.
And no one knew what he truly was.
Five blocks away, the bassline of A$AP Rocky thumped through a pair of cheap speakers in the back of a liquor store. Tevin Hearts crouched behind the register, scribbling something into a torn leather notebook. He was of average height, lean, black-skinned, with black dreadlocks . His hands shook slightly, not from fear, but a gnawing itch he couldn't place.
"Ayo, Tevin! You zoning again?"
The voice was Sammy—mid-20s, sharp tongue, sharper curves, rocking box braids and a black leather crop jacket. She sauntered in with a bottle of Arizona in one hand and two bacon-egg-cheese sandwiches in the other.
"Nah," Tevin replied, shutting the notebook. "Just thinking."
"That don't pay the bills," she said, tossing him a sandwich. "You want to keep crashing on my couch, better start thinking with some hustle."
"I got hustle," he said with a grin, biting into the sandwich. "I'm just... pacing myself."
Two hours later, the world flipped upside down.
Barclays Center exploded.
Not a bomb. Not a gas leak. Not even an act of terrorism by the usual suspects Olympus used to justify their budgets.
It was a Genesis.
Eyewitnesses later said it was a blur of lightning and screaming, someone flying at supersonic speeds through the main stage of an Olympus youth charity event. White Steel had been giving a speech about hope. That moment, captured in 4K and shared across every screen in America, showed White Steel blinking.
Just once.
The camera caught him a second too late before he sped off, a sonic boom cracking across the Brooklyn skyline.
"He's after the rogue," said Sophia Queens from Olympus's private underground war room in Manhattan. Dressed in a silver pantsuit, her heels clacked as she walked the floor like a general commanding an army of minds and screens. Her voice was a calculated scalpel. Sharp. Controlled.
"Junior Scout will bring them in," she added, using the nickname White Steel loathed—but secretly kept.
Down in a narrow alley behind a bodega on Atlantic Avenue, Tevin Hearts stood frozen, staring at the scorched imprint of a body on the wall. The man's face was gone. Burned clean off. His eyes still open.
He wasn't a civilian. He was wearing the Olympus crest.
Tevin had felt it.
The moment the explosion went off, something inside him clicked. A surge of heat behind his sternum, a soundless scream in his skull. Not a voice. A pressure. Like something ancient had blinked.
He didn't know it yet, but this was the first sign of his power.
"Get in. Now."
The voice belonged to Cookie Lora Savage.
She stood behind him in a trench coat, one hand on her hip, the other holding a glowing piece of Olympus tech she shouldn't have had. Her hair was short, coiled tight, eyes sharp like someone who'd survived one too many wars.
Tevin turned, surprised but steady.
"You CIA? FBI? Olympus?"
Cookie smirked. "Worse. I'm the cleanup crew."
"That supposed to scare me?"
"No," she said, pulling out a photo of him standing near the Barclays Center five minutes before the blast. "But this might."
He paused. Considered running. But something in Cookie's stance—hell, her presence—told him that wouldn't end well.
"Alright," he said, tossing his sandwich into a trash can. "Where we going?"
Cookie's eyes gleamed. "To meet people who don't think Olympus is the second coming of Christ."
"Then they're smarter than most."
Back at Olympus, Sophia Queens was reviewing security footage. Her team filtered out the irrelevant details—crowd panic, bystander screams—until only one thing remained. A small energy pulse. Barely visible. But real.
"Track it," she ordered.
Her second-in-command hesitated. "It's not one of ours."
"That's the point," Sophia said, tapping her temple. "Find him. Before he finds himself."
White Steel landed behind her silently, boots crackling against the marble.
"Do I kill him?" he asked, his voice a velvet growl.
Sophia looked up at her most prized monster. "No, Junior Scout. Not yet."
She walked toward the window, gazing out across the city.
"But do bring him to his knees."
And from somewhere deep in Brooklyn, under flickering lights and broken dreams, Tevin Hearts was beginning to understand that being numb wasn't the same as being normal.
Something inside him had survived what others couldn't.
But he had no idea what it was.
Not yet.
Not until White Steel came for him.