Alex Thorne awoke to golden sunlight piercing the blinds like judgement.
His first thought wasn't about dreams or hunger or the stiff neck from his secondhand mattress. It was about dread. Familiar. Crushing.
Today was the day he'd lose everything.
The knock came thirty minutes later.
Sharp. Professional.
He didn't need to open the door to know what it meant.
Still, he did. That's what you do, right? You face things, even if they're already over.
Agent Meryl stood there in her midnight-blue suit, badge pinned like a guillotine on her chest. The government's Hero Oversight Agency didn't do casual visits.
"Alex Thorne?" she asked, holding a clipboard she didn't need.
He nodded. "I've got coffee."
She didn't smile. "You're relieved of duty. Effective immediately. Your credentials are revoked. Final review's been logged."
Alex stood still. "I wasn't responsible for the fire."
She didn't blink. "Knuckleduster says otherwise."
That hit harder than the words themselves.
Knuckleduster—his assigned Hero. The one he'd believed in. The one he trusted with his career and reputation.
Last week, the two of them had responded to a bank robbery gone volatile. Knuckleduster, with his kinetic gauntlets and meathead bravado, charged in to save civilians. And in the chaos, he'd knocked over a power grid while trying to showboat for a news drone.
The result?
Explosion. Fire. Half the bank gone.
And now, he'd told the Agency that Alex had misrouted the power systems. That Alex had ordered the push without warning.
The review board had believed it.
They always believe the Hero.
By evening, his access codes were revoked, his name tagged with a "reckless operations" flag in the global registry, and his apartment—owned by the Dispatcher Alliance—was no longer his.
Alex wandered the streets with a single duffel and a résumé that meant nothing now.
Hero Dispatching wasn't just a job. It was a calling. And now, he was blacklisted.
He tried minor guilds—reject tables, basically. No one wanted a scapegoat, especially one tainted by Knuckleduster's name.
A lesser man would've cried.
Alex didn't. He was too exhausted.
That night, he returned to the one place that hadn't kicked him out yet: his old apartment building, now half-emptied by evictions. The landlord had given him until sunrise to pack his things.
He didn't get the chance.
The fire started just after midnight.
He'd gone upstairs for one last shower, one last moment of something close to peace. Then he smelled smoke.
And then—chaos.
Screaming. The roar of fire climbing the old stairwells. People on balconies shouting for help.
Alex acted on instinct.
He helped carry a child down three flights before the stairs collapsed behind him. Flames kissed his heels as he guided an elderly woman through a side door. He lifted a man with a broken leg down a makeshift rope of curtains and belts.
But when he turned to go back for more—
The roof gave out.
Alex fell with it.
Trapped.
Pinned beneath beams and swallowing smoke like broken glass.
His lungs burned. His vision swam. He whispered one thing before everything went black:
"…help."
And something—someone—answered.
It wasn't firemen. It wasn't a cape.
It was light.
A raw, brilliant white that split the air like a blade of heaven.
It wrapped around him. Lifted him. Pulled him through space, through heat, through something older and stranger than either.
He blacked out again.
---
The beep of hospital monitors greeted him.
He woke to fluorescent lights and the sterile hum of life preserved by machines.
His entire body ached. His ribs were bandaged. His throat raw. But he was alive.
The nurse said they'd found him outside the building in a clear alleyway, untouched by flame or smoke.
No one had seen who brought him there.
They'd just found him, unconscious, still clutching a melted doorknob in his hand.
Alex barely registered her voice.
Because something inside him… had changed.
There was a pulse.
Not of pain, but of potential.
A tug just below his heart. A heat behind his eyes. A whisper in the back of his mind.
Dispatch now.
He blinked. The world shimmered.
And then—reality split.
The air in front of his hospital bed cracked open like a door between worlds.
Out of it stepped a man.
Tall, lean, dressed in green and white jumpsuit. A chrome pole slung over his shoulder. Goggles on his forehead. Smirking like someone late to his own rescue.
"Vault," he said. "Pole-vaulting Hero, dimensional tier five. Deployed and ready."
Alex gawked. "Wh… what the hell are you?"
Vault stretched. "Your first summon. You're a Dispatcher. A real one. Welcome to the deep end."
The world shifted around Alex. He felt it now—not just the whisper of summoning, but the reach. The pull. Like he was touching doors that weren't supposed to open.
He wasn't just calling heroes from this world. He was drawing them from others. Timelines. Dimensions. Forgotten corners of creation.
"And you… are mine?" Alex asked.
"Yours to command," Vault said. "Situation?"
Before Alex could reply, a nurse barged in—panicked.
"Fire," she gasped. "West wing. Something exploded in the oxygen room—patients trapped—"
Vault saluted.
"Say no more."
Then he was gone.
Vault launched through the open hallway window, using his pole to bounce, swing, and vault his way down the hospital's side like a silver arrow. Seconds later, Alex heard screams turn to cheers.
By the time orderlies reached the burning wing, the patients were safe. Vault had rescued eleven people.
He vanished before anyone could ask how.
Alex stared at his trembling hands.
What had awakened in him?
---
Over the next twelve hours, more emergencies followed.
And more Heroes answered.
Each time, Alex focused on that tug—that invisible command inside his soul—and whispered one word: "Dispatch."
The second to arrive was a blur of pink wheels and silver sparks.
A girl in rollerblades, arms lit with static, zipped into the trauma wing like a comet.
"Zipline, reporting in," she chirped. "Where's the rush?"
"Traffic accident, north overpass. Jammed vehicles. Power lines," Alex said without thinking.
"On it." She winked.
Gone.
News footage showed her skating across flipped cars, lifting civilians with magnetic pulses and redirecting emergency bots to safety. She left before the cameras could track her name.
The third came when Alex tried to sleep.
He had a dream—of darkness, of circuits humming. A flicker of light. He jolted awake and whispered, "Dispatch."
Out stepped a broad-shouldered man in navy overalls. Tools crackled on his belt. His fingers were literal wires, twitching with voltage.
"Name's Circuit. Class: Electrician. Orders?"
"Lightning storm outside," Alex said slowly. "Generator's failing. People are—"
"I know," the man grinned. "I'm already there."
Another blink. Another flash. Gone.
The hospital's backup grid sparked to life within seconds.
Alex didn't question it anymore.
---
By nightfall, he'd summoned four.
The last one came when a child coded in the ICU. No powers. No chance.
Alex gritted his teeth and tried something different.
Not a Hero of speed.
Not of strength.
He thought of knowledge.
Of miracles.
"Dispatch," he whispered.
This one arrived in a swirl of ink and violet smoke.
A woman in dark robes, silver tattoos glowing on her hands. A wide-brimmed hat sat on her head like a crown. A tome floated beside her, its pages flipping with arcane wind.
"Magician," she said, voice like crystal chimes. "Healer class. Soulbinding permitted?"
Alex didn't even know what that meant.
"Do it."
The child survived.
Of course he did.
---
The world had changed for Alex Thorne.
But the world itself was already used to change.
In this universe, power is law, and power can bloom anywhere, anytime. One second you're a noodle vendor. The next, you're controlling soup temperature with your eyes.
Some people are born with abilities. Others awaken them by accident. And some—most—gain them through Items.
A locket may give its owner time-stopping powers.
A cracked broom may grant hyperspeed sweeping.
A mirror could split the soul.
It's unpredictable. Wild. Strange.
Alex had studied these anomalies as a Dispatcher. He knew the risks.
But his power wasn't tied to any Item.
Or so he thought.
That melted doorknob—still beside his hospital bed—pulsed faintly.
An object from his near-death moment.
It had sparked something.
And now, Alex could reach across time. Across space. Across reality itself.
He could summon.
And he could upgrade.
The broom might become a tornado-staff in someone else's hand.
A ring from the future might evolve a Hero's powers mid-fight.
Alex didn't just call warriors.
He armed them.
He was more than a Dispatcher now.
He was a forge.
And the world was on fire