The alley was finally quiet.
It was a heavy, listening kind of silence, broken only by the groans of the two unconscious thugs and the distant, lonely wail of a city siren.
Miles leaned against the brick wall, his rough, uneven breaths sounding way too loud in the sudden silence.
The one who ran wasn't coming back.
He was alone.
He felt pain all over his body.
His left arm, twisted and limp like a broken noodle, filled with pain and hanging uselessly on one side.
His ribs felt like they were made of shattered glass, sharp and painful with every breath.
He needed to move.
He had to get out of here before someone got curious and called the cops.
Leaving a trail of unconscious bodies wasn't exactly part of the "invisible high school student" persona he'd so carefully cultivated.
He pushed himself away from the wall, but a wave of dizziness hit him, making everything around him spin, bricks, shadows, all of it.
His legs shook like a baby animal trying to stand for the first time.
He took one step.
Then another.
Each movement was a negotiation with misery.
The voice in his head, the architect of his impossible survival, returned.
It was back to its crisp, digital, and frankly unhelpful self.
[CRITICAL INJURIES CONFIRMED]
[HOST'S PHYSICAL INTEGRITY AT 34%]
"No kidding," Miles muttered to the empty alley, his voice a dry rasp. "Got any other stunning revelations for me?"
[HIGH PROBABILITY OF SYSTEM SHUTDOWN IF MEDICAL ATTENTION IS NOT SOUGHT]
Medical attention. Right.
He could just see himself walking into the Northwood General emergency room.
"Hi, I seem to have a compound fracture, several broken ribs, and probable internal bleeding from a street fight where I may or may not have developed telekinetic punch-powers. Can you fix me up and also promise not to ask any questions?"
That would go over well.
He was so screwed.
He stumbled out of the alley's mouth and onto the street, sticking to the shadows of the buildings.
The city lights felt too bright, too accusatory.
Every passing car was a potential witness.
Every pedestrian a threat.
The sharpest edges of his pain began to dull, receding into a strange, numb distance.
[ACTIVATING LOW-LEVEL BIO-STASIS PROTOCOL]
The system's voice was flat, like it was announcing a software update.
[OBJECTIVE: PREVENT HOST EXPIRATION VIA HEMORRHAGE AND SHOCK]
[PAIN RECEPTORS TEMPORARILY SUPPRESSED BY 60%]
Miles blinked.
He could still feel the damage—the deep, structural wrongness of his body—but the screaming had been turned down to a dull, manageable roar.
"Oh, fantastic," he thought with a surge of bleak sarcasm. "A built-in morphine drip."
He wondered if it came with a subscription fee.
This "protocol" gave him just enough clarity to function.
He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head with his good hand, hunched his shoulders, and shuffled down the street, trying to look like just another tired citizen heading home.
A tired citizen who happened to be bleeding internally.
The fifteen minute walk to his small, barren apartment felt like an arctic expedition.
He lived on the third floor of a drab, anonymous brick building that smelled perpetually of boiled cabbage and damp carpet.
It was a place designed to be forgotten, which was precisely why he'd chosen it.
He finally reached his door, number 3B.
Fumbling for his keys with his trembling right hand was a Herculean task.
His fingers felt like clumsy, disobedient sausages.
He dropped the keys twice, the faint clatter on the worn hallway floor sounding like a gunshot in the quiet building.
Finally, the key slid into the lock.
He turned it, pushed the door open, and practically fell inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
Click.
He was safe.
For now.
He slid down the door and onto the floor, the last of his strength deserting him.
The apartment was dark.
He didn't bother with the lights.
He just lay there, a broken heap in the entryway, listening to his own heart hammer against his shattered ribs.
The Bio-Stasis was a temporary fix. A patch on a gushing wound.
He could feel its limits.
The cold was starting to feel less like a comfort and more like the grave.
He was so tired.
Maybe he could just close his eyes for a minute.
Just rest.
Then, the voice came again.
But it was different.
The cold, digital cadence was gone.
In its place was a whisper.
A voice that cut through the pain, the fear, and the years of solitude.
A voice he hadn't heard outside of a fading photograph and a half-remembered dream.
"It's okay."
The whisper was warm.
It was gentle.
It was real.
"You're strong enough."
It was his mother's voice.
Mira Vane.
A choked sob escaped Miles's throat.
It wasn't a memory fragment this time.
It wasn't a data packet unlocked by trauma.
It felt... present.
Like she was right there in the darkness with him.
Tears streamed down his face, hot and real, carving clean paths through the grime and dried blood on his cheeks.
The system wasn't just some freakish military tech his parents had invented.
It was her.
It was them.
This wasn't just a weapon he carried.
It was a tomb. A legacy. A ghost in his own machine.
And it knew him.
The realization didn't make him feel better.
It made him feel terrified.
He wasn't a student with a secret anymore.
He was a project. A creation.
And his creators were speaking to him from beyond the grave.
The comforting warmth of the voice faded, leaving an aching emptiness behind.
He couldn't stay on the floor.
He had to get up.
He had to be smart.
Rule number one of living a double life: leave no trace.
With a groan that was half pain and half pure determination, he used his good arm to push himself up, using the wall as a lever.
He peeled off his bloody, torn jacket and sweatshirt.
They were evidence.
He couldn't just throw them in the trash.
He balled them up, carried them to the kitchen, and stuffed them into a black garbage bag, which he then buried at the bottom of his overflowing bin.
Next, the bathroom.
He flicked on the light and recoiled from the reflection in the cheap, medicine cabinet mirror.
The person staring back at him was a stranger.
His face was a swollen, discolored mask.
A cut on his forehead oozed blood.
His lip was split.
His eyes were wild, haunted.
This wasn't Miles Vane, the quiet bookworm.
This was something else.
Something dragged out of an alley and remade into a weapon.
He had to fix this.
He couldn't go to school looking like he'd lost a fight with a cement mixer.
The arm was the worst part.
He couldn't go to a hospital, which meant he had to set it himself.
A wave of nausea rolled through him at the thought.
He rummaged under the sink with his good hand, finding a dusty first-aid kit.
It was woefully inadequate. A few cartoon-character bandages, some expired antiseptic wipes, and a roll of gauze.
He needed a splint.
His eyes scanned the tiny apartment.
He found what he was looking for in his closet: two cheap, plastic rulers from a dollar store.
Perfect. Or, at least, perfectly pathetic.
He sat on the edge of the bathtub, the cold porcelain a shock against his skin.
He took a deep breath.
Then, with his right hand, he gripped his broken left forearm and pulled.
A deep, painful scream escaped from his throat, but he quickly covered his mouth to keep it quiet.
A sharp, burning pain shot through his body, so intense that it briefly overpowered the Bio-Stasis system.
His vision went black.
[ANALYSIS: IMPROPER MEDICAL PROCEDURE]
The system's digital voice returned, speaking at the perfect moment.
[PROBABILITY OF IMPROPER HEALING AND LASTING DAMAGE: 67.4%]
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Miles gasped, sweat pouring down his face.
He clenched his teeth and pulled again, trying to push the broken bone ends back into place under his skin.
He screamed again, the sound rough and wild like an injured animal.
He managed to get it mostly straight.
His hands trembling, he awkwardly placed the rulers on both sides of the broken bone and started wrapping his arm with the whole roll of gauze.
It was a terrible, lumpy, amateurish job.
But it was done.
He cleaned the cuts on his face, hissing as the antiseptic stung his raw skin.
He stared at his work in the mirror.
He looked like a mummy who had been in a traffic accident.
There was no way to hide the splint.
He'd have to come up with a lie. A really, really good one.
Fell down the stairs?
Kitchen accident involving a runaway blender?
Attacked by a flock of unusually aggressive pigeons?
His mind, exhausted and traumatized, was drawing a blank.
He stumbled out of the bathroom and into his main room.
His school backpack was sitting by his small desk, exactly where he'd left it that morning.
A lifetime ago.
Textbooks. Notes. Homework.
A normal life.
The sight of it was so jarring, so completely alien to the blood and violence of the last few hours, that he almost laughed.
He had a physics quiz tomorrow.
He was supposed to be worried about calculating projectile motion, not about a new quest to "eliminate" a man named Spike.
The duality of it was insane.
He was the Avenging Phantom. Project Revenant.
He was also a high school junior who was dangerously close to failing gym class.
Feeling strangely serious and disconnected from reality, he walked to the desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down.
He opened his physics textbook.
The words and equations blurred in front of him, just a bunch of meaningless shapes on the page.
His thoughts were a chaotic storm.
Warehouse 7.
The Crimson Serpents.
His mother's voice.
His father's hands.
The impossible, terrifying power humming in his very soul.
Then, suddenly clear and vivid in his mind, the system's message appeared, searing itself into his thoughts.
[SUB-QUEST GENERATED: ELIMINATE THE SERPENT'S HEAD]
[OBJECTIVE: LOCATE AND ELIMINATE THE INDIVIDUAL KNOWN AS 'SPIKE']
He stared at the page, but he wasn't seeing it.
He was seeing a mission.
He had survived the alley.
He had patched up his broken body.
He had hidden the evidence.
But as he sat there under the single dim lamp of his desk, he realized the truly difficult part of his new life was just beginning.
Tomorrow, he had to go to school.
He had to face the crowds, the teachers, the crushing normalcy of it all.
He had to pretend to be Miles Vane.
And that, he now understood, was going to be the hardest fight of his life.
Lost in all those troubling thoughts, he didn't even notice when he passed out on the table, fast asleep.