Morning news is cruel.
Every channel runs the same jittery street footage on loop. A crane tilts against a grey Midtown sky, its cable fraying. A bundle of steel drops like a meteor, scaffolding rips free from a building's face, cars jump the curb, a hydrant geysers the street into a river. In the middle of it all there's a flare of gold, a curved wall of light that turns falling steel aside for a breath and then vanishes. People run. Someone cries out. The clip ends before anyone breathes again.
The footage is bad. 2009 bad. Pixels smear everything that moves. The microphones choke on sirens. All you can really see is the glow, bright and unnatural, swallowing the figure at its center. Me.
No one can make out my face. Even the people I dragged clear don't remember it right. They all say the same kind of thing.
He glowed.
The light hit the scaffolding and it slid away.
I couldn't look straight at him. Like staring into the sun.
The anchors still treat it like a circus.
"New York's own vigilante, if you can call him that, is lighting up Midtown. Some are calling him a guardian angel, others insist it's experimental tech gone haywire. But the internet has already chosen one name." The anchor smiles into the camera like she's about to unwrap a present. "Glowstick Man."
The studio laughs.
I press the coffee mug to my forehead until the ceramic cools the pounding there. My ribs ache from holding up a city's worth of bad luck. My hands feel like someone pounded the bones with a mallet. Now I'm a punchline.
More panels. More opinions.
"A hoax," one insists.
"Military prototype," another says.
"Religious omen?" a third wonders, softer than the rest.
Then a late-night clip where a guy mimics snapping a glowstick and shakes his hands while the audience howls. I kill the TV before the laugh track eats the room.
The black glass throws me back a blurry silhouette. No glow. Just a tired kid who looks like he lost a fight with a construction site.
Stark Industries pretends to be calm. That's how you know it isn't. The building hums like a hive. Phones buzz. Doors hiss. Heels click. Whole departments have learned to speak in whispers.
I keep my badge straight and my head down. Interns huddle over their phones when they think no one's watching.
"Look at this freeze-frame. He's just a blur."
"Has to be Stark tech. PR stunt."
"Please. If Stark made it, it would look cooler than a party toy."
Laughter trails me until I turn the corner into the bullpen and Pepper Potts slices past with a phone at her ear and a stack of folders balanced on one hip. She talks while she walks and never misses a step.
"Yes, we're pivoting to clean energy initiatives. Yes, Mr. Stark will make a statement. No, I can't give a date yet. Because he's in meetings, that's why."
Her gaze sweeps the room. It pauses on me for a fraction of a second. I straighten without meaning to. She gives the smallest nod that says you exist and I saw you and then she's gone.
It's the first time anyone here has looked at me like I'm more than a rolling chair.
Tony shows up after lunch and the temperature changes. Sunglasses indoors. Suit jacket open. The sort of grin that lives halfway between genuine and deflection. Colonel James Rhodes sticks close, the only person in a fifty-foot radius who isn't charmed by the gravity well called Tony Stark.
"Tony," Rhodey says as they push into a lab, "you can't just close the weapons division and call it a day. The brass are losing their minds."
"The brass didn't wake up in a cave and meet my poor life choices," Tony mutters, sliding the glasses up into his hair. "I'm done making things that kill people. Personal growth. Very on trend."
I'm at a side bench with a stack of sheets no one will remember. Tony's glance snags on me like a coat button on a doorknob.
"Hey, intern. You catch the Midtown light show?"
My stomach knots. "Wild," I say. The word tastes like metal.
"Wild," he echoes, amused. "Glowstick Man. You can't buy a better brand accident." He looks back to the bench display. "People keep asking if it's my tech."
Rhodey snorts. "They asked me too. I told them if it was yours it would fly."
"Exactly," Tony says. "Or at least it would look less like a rave accessory. My money's on some bottom-feeder trying to steal attention. Hammer Industries loves a headline."
The warmth under my ribs rises, a quiet hum of approval I've started recognizing as the whispers liking someone. I hate that they have opinions.
I force a smile. "Guess we'll see."
Before I can fade, a new voice slides in smooth as poured syrup.
"Tony," Obadiah Stane says, clapping a paternal hand on Tony's shoulder, "investors need reassurance." He turns to me with the kind of smile that photographs well at charity events. "Jordan, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good to see the young minds busy." His eyes hold mine a moment too long. "Exciting times in the city. What do you think of our mystery man? Glowstick Man. Quite the spectacle."
The whispers shriek behind my ribs like a fork dragged across glass. It isn't about the words. It's the weight under them.
"Spectacle," I say. Polite. Neutral. Harmless. "Yeah."
"New York loves a show." He pats my shoulder, heavy enough to mark, and moves on with Tony reluctantly in tow.
The static in my chest doesn't drop until Obadiah turns the corner. The aftertaste he leaves is always copper and something rotten under a coat of sugar.
I make it to five on adrenaline and caffeine, then the building spits me out with the rest of the city. Warm air. Hot pavement. Street carts steaming. The noise wraps around me and the whispers wake up.
Not sharp. Not shouting. Just steady pressure. A hand at the back. This way.
I follow.
The route slides me past last night's wound. The crane still hangs over the street, sectioned and docile now, its spine broken into chewable parts. The mangled scaffolding has been dragged into a bony pile. Sawhorses and tape turn the block into a maze. Two sanitation trucks hose dust down the gutters, pushing grey water into storm drains until it looks like the street is bleeding out slowly.
Someone painted on the plywood surrounding the site. A figure with one hand up. A spray of gold that can't glow, but tries. Under it, in shaky letters, it says HE WAS REAL.
Two teenagers stand under it, arguing whether I was a guy with a flashlight or a trick of the sun. A woman in scrubs stares too long and cries without wiping her face. A man in a suit takes a picture and shakes his head like he's not sure if he believes in anything anymore.
I am halfway to leaving when someone says it out loud for the first time where I can hear it.
"Glowstick Man."
It isn't mockery in his mouth. It isn't reverence either. It's just the only name he knows.
I keep moving before he turns and sees my face.
The pull doesn't let me go. It tugs me toward a stretch of older buildings where the facades have beautiful faces and bad bones. A city bus squeals to a stop at the corner. A delivery truck tries to squeeze the light and takes the turn too hard. Tires scream. The truck clips a parked car and bounces. The impact shoves the car into a hydrant already loosened from last night's mess. The cap surrenders. Water punches the street and turns it slick in a breath.
The bus driver slams the brakes. The wet asphalt says no. The bus fishtails and slides in a slow, monstrous arc toward a fruit stand and a cluster of people frozen under an ornate stone cornice.
The whispers hit me like surf.
I run.
The bus fills the world. Horn blaring. Metal humming. The crowd finally moves, but not fast enough. A kid trips. His mother grabs him. The bus is still coming. I throw myself between the mess of metal and the fruit stand and throw my hands up because that is what I do now when there is no time to think.
Light jumps.
It doesn't blast or spear. It swells and hardens into a curved plane, a shield taller than me, wider than the stand, domed enough to slide. The bus hits it and the impact tears my shoulders to fire. The shield groans against the weight. The bus grinds sideways along the glowing curve, skids past the stand by a hand's breadth, and slams into a mailbox instead. Metal crumples. Someone screams a thanks that shatters on the end.
I drop to a knee and gag. The light flickers. It wants to go out. The whispers don't say a word. They just hold.
The fruit stand guy makes the sign of the cross and babbles praise in two languages. The mom pulls her son back, both shaking. The bus driver pounds the wheel with both fists like he can beat time backward.
I push up and point at the driver. "Kill the engine."
He nods like he's waking from a dream and twists the key. The bus goes quiet except for the hiss of hot metal.
A sound like a gunshot cracks above us. Everyone ducks. The cornice. Of course. Old stone doesn't like surprise. A fissure runs across the face of the building and a chunk the size of a suitcase lets go, tumbling toward the sidewalk and the cluster of people who chose the worst place in Manhattan to stand.
I throw both hands up again. The light leaps, speaks a language I don't know, and the falling stone hits a hard, invisible curve. It bounces sideways and explodes against vacant sidewalk instead of skulls. Pebbled bits of building rain down like gritty confetti.
The cheer that tries to start never finishes. Phones are out now. Someone yells it like they're trying the words on.
"Glowstick Man!"
Another voice. "He's real!"
A third, breathless and terrified and excited. "Glowstick Man!"
The name hits like a slap and a spotlight. I wave people back from the bus. The water from the broken hydrant keeps flooding the gutter. Somewhere down the block a siren turns the corner and leans in.
"Move back," I shout. "Everyone off the curb. Stay behind the line. You, help him. You, call nine one one and say there's a hydrant and a collision and possible structural risk. Do not stand under the building."
The tone of command surprises me. It works anyway. People move. The fruit stand guy starts herding strangers like a sheepdog. The mom clutches her kid and nods at me like I am something she can't name but trusts for now.
The whispers ease as bodies get clear. The glow in my hands fades like someone remembers where the dimmer is. That's when the fatigue floods me. I would love to sit down on this very wet curb and sleep for a week.
A firefighter appears in the blur, mask off, eyes wide. He takes in the bus, the cracked cornice, the water, the crowd, me. "You alright?"
"Better now," I say.
"Stay put," he says.
"Can't," I say, and the crowd shifts just enough that I find an alley mouth where the light can swallow me. Two steps, then three, then I'm around the corner and gone before anyone decides to be brave and ask a question I can't answer.
My apartment smells like old coffee and laundry soap. I peel my shirt off and find a new map of bruises across my ribs where the bus's weight pushed through the shield into me. I run water over my face until the city noise turns into a thunder I can shut off with a knob.
When the water stops, the whispers are still there. Not demanding. Not loud. Just present. Waiting.
I sit at the desk and open the notebook I keep swearing I won't open. The tree looks back at me. Roots thicker. Branches pressing the margins. It never looks finished. It never looks started. It always looks like it was waiting for me to look.
In the margins, the same words keep repeating in my hand even when I don't remember writing them.
Balance.
Choice.
Tree.
Remembered.
Cost.
Seen.
I add a new one. I press so hard the pen tears the paper.
Named.
I drop the pen. My hand shakes. The room swims and steadies. The whispers hum. They don't feel triumphant. They feel patient. Like this is only the shape of the first step.
I think about the street again. The bus sliding. The shield taking the weight like a shoulder meant for it. The cornice cracking. The stone bouncing away. The way the name ran through the crowd like current carrying gossip.
Glowstick Man.
I hate it. The way it turns something terrifying into a joke. The way it sticks to me without asking who I am. The way it makes me a punchline before I've figured out what the setup is.
I also can't pretend it doesn't make things real. Not the power. Not the danger. Me. People pointed and called me something. They'll keep calling me something. The city is beginning to remember me out loud.
Tomorrow, Stark Industries will hum and pretend. Pepper will juggle fires. Rhodey will wrangle. Tony will deflect with jokes and be sharper than he pretends. Obadiah will smile too warmly and leave a cold in the air when he goes. Somewhere in all of that, someone will ask out loud if Glowstick Man is Stark tech. Someone else will call me an angel. Someone will call me a menace. Someone will paint me on a wall again.
I lie back on the bed. The ceiling becomes a pale sky. Cracks turn into thin black branches. When I close my eyes, the tree is there the way it always is. Roots sunk into constellations. Branches brushing galaxies. The voice comes not like words but like tide.
Every universe remembers you differently. Which one will you become.
I don't have an answer. Not tonight. All I have is a bruised body, a city that won't stop asking, a joke I didn't choose, and a light that keeps saying hold.
Sleep takes me slow. The last thing I see before it wins is the notebook open on the desk, the word NAMED cut deep enough into the page that it imprints the sheet beneath.