He stayed in the clouds until the cold made his teeth chatter. Up there, the city looked small and quiet. He could pretend none of it happened. But pretending didn't change the shaking in his hands or the way his chest burned.
He dropped back to street level as the sun slid behind buildings. He didn't dare land in front of a crowd. He angled toward a darker block, an old strip of warehouses and shuttered shops. He touched down in an alley and stumbled, knees buckling. His legs felt strange, yet oddly unsteady, like they didn't belong to him.
"Okay," he told himself. "Walk. Just walk."
He kept his head down and joined the flow of pedestrians. The city had already started to move on. Sirens thinned out. People returned to arguing, laughing, checking their phones, posting videos he didn't want to think about. Streetlights flicked on one by one.
His stomach cramped. Not pain—hunger. Sharp and hollow. He hadn't eaten since that coffee he didn't pay for. He stepped into a small corner shop that smelled of stale mop water and fresh bread. The man behind the counter didn't look up.
He grabbed things without thinking: two turkey sandwiches, a bag of chips, a banana, a bottle of water, a second bottle of water, and another sandwich because the first two didn't look like enough. He dumped everything on the counter and pulled out the weird bills from his wallet.
The clerk studied the cash, then him. "You from out of town?"
"Yeah," he said. "Long trip."
"Lucky day," the clerk said. He took the mismatched bills and swiped a card without asking.
He ate outside because his hands were too shaky to sit still. He unwrapped a sandwich and inhaled it in five bites, then the second, then the chips, barely tasting salt. The banana felt like nothing. He finished the second bottle of water and it made no dent in the dryness in his throat. The alley beside the store had a metal railing along the loading dock. He leaned on it.
The rail bent under his palm with a soft pop.
He snatched his hand away. The steel had a clear fingerprint, five shallow dents pressed into it like clay.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no."
He looked around fast. Two teenagers smoking near a mailbox didn't notice. A woman with a stroller kept walking. The clerk inside watched a game on his phone. No one saw. He wiped his palm on his jeans even though there was nothing to wipe off, then stepped away from the rail like it was a live wire.
He tried to breathe steady. In. Out. Count. One, two. His heart didn't listen.
He walked. That was the plan. Blend in, walk, keep moving. He kept his hands open at his sides, fingers spread, afraid to touch anyone. Every sound banged into his head. A subway passed below, and the vibration rose through the sidewalk into his bones. A dog's collar jingled half a block away and he could count the links. Someone dropped a coin and he could tell it was a quarter without looking.
He crossed at a light with a group. A cab horn blasted too close. He flinched. The air around him warmed like a stove turned on. His eyes stung. He blinked hard and looked at the sky until it passed. He didn't know what it was—only that it scared him.
He needed a place to hide.
Two blocks later, he found a cheap motel squeezed between a pawn shop and a bar with a neon sign shaped like a fish. The motel office had bulletproof glass and a bored woman behind it. A little TV on the counter showed shaky footage of the battle: the red-and-gold suit, the giant metal monster, and then—him. A blur in the sky. The caption at the bottom said: WHO IS HE?
He kept his eyes down and slid a few of his new bills into the slot. "One night."
The woman chewed gum and didn't look up from the TV. "ID."
"I lost my wallet," he said, aware of the lie as he said it. His actual wallet was in his pocket with money that didn't belong in this world.
"No ID, cash only, fifty extra," she said.
He added more bills. She handed him a key on a plastic fob with the number 14. "If you smoke, smoke outside. If you bring guests, no parties. No fighting. Clean up spills. No refunds."
"I'm not, yeah. Thanks."
...
The room was at the end of the second-floor walkway. The door stuck until he put a little too much shoulder into it. The frame cracked with a soft snap. He froze, then eased it closed carefully so no one would see. The room had a bed that creaked, a table that wobbled, a window with a view of the alley, and a bathroom with a sink that took a full minute to turn hot. He stood under the shower until the water ran lukewarm and then cold. He didn't care. He needed the noise and the steady pressure to drown out everything else.
After, he dried off with a towel that felt like sandpaper. He sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and listened to his own breathing. Slow. Count. One, two. He opened the window a crack. Air moved. Somewhere, a train horn blew long and low and the sound slid straight down his spine.
His phone was still dead. He plugged it into the wall just to see, and a tiny light blinked. The screen stayed black. Wrong charger. Wrong sockets. Wrong world.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling. He tried not to think about the word they shouted. Superman. He tried not to think about the way Tony Stark looked at him. He tried not to think at all.
Sleep didn't come. He got up again and paced. The shadows in the room moved when cars went by outside. He did push-ups because motion felt better than stillness. On the twentieth, the carpet bunched. On the fortieth, the bedframe rattled. On the sixty-first, his palms sank into the floorboards and the wood snapped. He jerked back, heart pounding.
He wrapped his hands in the towel and sat on them.
A nearby siren wailed, its sharp pitch slicing through his head. He clenched his eyes shut until it faded. Across the wall, behind the headboard, a couple argued in Spanish, fast and tired. He understood the meaning even when the words blurred: money, trust, tomorrow. Someone upstairs dragged a suitcase. A TV laugh track rose and fell like a wave.
He couldn't shut it out. He pressed the heel of his hand against each ear. It helped for a second, then didn't.
The air in the room felt warm again. Not heat from outside—heat from him. He could feel it, a slow build from somewhere behind his ribs, like a furnace with the door left open. He went to the sink and turned on the cold. He splashed water on his face. It steamed when it hit his skin. He stared at his reflection. His eyes looked normal. His skin looked normal. Inside, nothing was normal.
He laughed once, a sound with no humor in it, and shook his head.
He had to get out. The walls were too close. He walked back out, closed the door with both hands like he was disarming a bomb, and took the stairs slow. On the landing, a man in a worn jacket sat with a paper bag bottle. The man's beard was gray and his eyes were the color of the river after rain: muddy and dark.
"You the flying guy?" the man asked without looking directly at him.
"No," he said too fast. "I'm nobody."
"Good," the man said. "We got enough somebodies."
He kept walking. The street felt cooler. He went back to the bodega and bought more water and a cheap hoodie with no logo. He pulled the hood up even though the night wasn't cold. A patrol car rolled by. He turned his face away, not because he had done anything wrong, but because he didn't know what he was.
At the corner, a trash can overflowed. A stray cat hopped up and pawed at a sandwich wrapper. The smell hit him hard and sharp and his stomach clenched again. He went back inside and bought another sandwich, a bigger one. He ate it standing by the door. The clerk glanced at him once and then pretended not to see him.
When he finished, he took the empty wrapper toward the can. A hand shot out of the shadows and grabbed the sandwich bag he hadn't thrown away yet. A homeless man in three jackets glared at him, eyes wide.
"That mine," the man snapped. "You got money. Leave it."
"It's empty," he said, holding it out anyway. "I have nothing else."
"You got everything," the man snarled, stepping closer. He smelled like stale beer and wet. "You flew today."
The words hit him like a slap. He didn't know this man. He didn't know how he knew. He took a step back and the man followed.
"You fly, you don't get to eat our food," the man said. It didn't make sense. It didn't have to. The anger had nowhere else to go. "You think you better? Think you god?"
"I don't think that," he said. He held his hands out. "I don't want trouble."
"Then leave," the man said, shoving him.
He didn't move. It wasn't pride. The shove just didn't move him. The man looked down at his hands like they had betrayed him and shoved again, harder. This time the man stumbled and almost fell because it was like pushing a wall. A second homeless man stood up from the curb, ready to join in.
"I don't want to hurt anyone," he said. The words sounded like begging.
"Then you hurt me," the first man said. He swung.
The fist hit his jaw. He'd been hit before in his life. This was different. He barely felt it. His body reacted before his brain did. He caught the man's wrist.
The bone under his fingers creaked.
He yanked his hand back like it was on fire. The man shouted and cradled his wrist, eyes wet, rage turning to shock. The second man froze with his mouth open.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice breaking. "I'm sorry, I didn't—" He took two steps back and bumped the trash can. It tipped and clanged, lids rattling across the sidewalk.
The patrol car that had passed earlier looped around fast when it heard the noise. Red and blue smeared the street. The officers got out with hands near holsters. The clerk leaned out of the door, eyes wide.
"What's going on?" an officer called.
"Nothing," he said too quickly. The homeless man held his wrist and glared at him like he wanted the earth to open and swallow him. "It was my fault. I bumped it. I'll pay for whatever I broke."
"You break his wrist?" the officer asked, looking at the angle of the man's hand.
"I don't know," he said. "I touched him. It was... I didn't mean....."
The officer took a careful step forward, palms out. "Sir, I'm going to ask you to take a breath and keep your hands where I can see them."
He obeyed. He lifted his hands, fingers spread, palms open, like he had nothing to hide and nothing to hold. His chest felt tight. The heat was back. It rose behind his eyes.
Not here. Please not here.
"Let's all slow down," the other officer said, voice steady. "Call an ambulance for you," he nodded to the homeless man. "And you," he said to him, "you're going to stand right there and keep breathing."
He did. He counted. One. Two. One. Two. The heat eased. The edges of the street came back into focus.
"What's your name?" the officer asked.
He opened his mouth and nothing came out. He didn't know if his real name belonged in this world. He didn't know if names meant anything right now. He shut his mouth again.
"Do you have ID?"
He shook his head.
"Okay," the officer said. "Then I'm going to ask you to move along once the EMTs get here, and not come back to this block tonight. Understood?"
"Yes," he said. He meant it. He couldn't stay here and pretend to be normal.
The ambulance came quick, lights strobing. The paramedic looked at the homeless man's wrist, wrapped it with care, asked patient questions, didn't judge. He left the sandwich bag on the ground. The stray cat came back to sniff it and then lost interest.
He slipped away while everyone was watching the wrist, not the man who caused it. He didn't run. Running would draw eyes. He walked, steady, counting, hands open, shoulders down.
He didn't go back to the motel right away. He couldn't stand being in the room. He kept moving until the blocks turned into places without storefronts, just brick and iron gates. He found a little playground behind a school with a fence you could climb without anyone caring. He stepped over it without touching it and tried to pretend that was normal too.
The swing chains creaked. He sat on one and let it sway. The night pressed close. A plane slid across the sky as a line of light with a red blink. Somewhere, a dog barked three times and then stopped. In the apartment building across the street, someone laughed at something on TV.
"I can't stay here," he said, not sure if he meant the playground, the city, or the world. "But I have nowhere else to go."
He pushed off and swung higher. The chains moaned. He eased back because he didn't trust the metal not to snap. He stared at his hands. They looked like anyone's hands. He remembered how the rail bent and the bone cracked.
He pressed his palms together and prayed without words, because he didn't know what to ask for. Quiet, maybe. A little quiet inside his head.
It didn't come. But something else did. A decision.
No more shoving crowds. No more touching anything without thinking. No more pretending this isn't real. He would find a way to control it or he would lock himself away until he could.
The first step was simple. He would go back to the motel. He would sleep, if he could. He would get up in the morning and find work that kept his hands busy and away from people. He would keep his head down. He would listen. He would not fly.
He stood and left the swing. The fence rattled when he stepped over it, but nothing broke. He walked back through streets that looked different now that he knew how thin everything was. He took the stairs slow again. The man on the landing was gone. A cigarette butt smoldered in an old cup by the railing.
At his door, he held the knob gently. He turned it without pressure. The door opened without a sound. He exhaled. He closed it with the same care. He leaned his forehead against the wood and shut his eyes.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Just get to tomorrow."
He lay down fully clothed and stared at the ceiling again. He kept his hands flat on the blanket, not the mattress. He counted breaths until the numbers blurred.
He didn't sleep so much as drift. In the space between waking and not, sirens bled into ocean waves, and the city's heartbeat turned into one steady line. He floated in the sound. For a few minutes, it almost felt like rest.
Then a dream caught him—a flash of red and gold, a metal giant, and a word the crowd chanted that he didn't want. He jerked awake with his heart in his throat.
He stayed still. The room was dark. His hands were where he left them. The door hadn't cracked. The window was closed. He was still here.
He turned his head and looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. The numbers glowed soft and blue.
3:12 A.M.
He took a breath. He let it out. He did it again.
He was nobody. He needed it to stay that way.
He closed his eyes and tried again for sleep. It didn't come, not fully. But he held still and waited for the sky to lighten, one slow breath at a time, careful hands open, careful not to break the world.