Logan meant walking when he said the long way. Pantheon U is almost on the other side of the city, which means the subway, a bus, and a few blocks of hiking to finally get back. Except it’s been five minutes of walking in the completely opposite direction. He hums as he strolls, hands in his jacket, smiling at everyone we walk past. Liberty City isn’t exactly world-renowned for its hospitality, much less so in Old-Port. People glare. People spit on the old concrete we move across. A homeless guy scowls and flips both of us off. Logan either doesn’t care or is just too sun-soaked with West Coast sunlight to notice the people sneering at him on curbs and inside of alleyways. The ones who look at me quickly find something else to look at, then they’re walking in the opposite direction, quietly muttering under their breath. I’ve got a reputation, and if you know what that is, then you’re not a good civilian.

  Which most people in Old-Port tend not to be. Which isn’t a bad thing. Heck, it’s great for me.

  Makes life a little more interesting with an entire borough full of people who reek of bad intentions. I’ve also got a reason to keep wearing a costume every single day. With evil soaking into the soil, the only thing that grows from the cracks in this concrete are rotted and black and reek of nothing but ugly intentions. The kids that throw bottles at cats, to the old men who flick cigarette butts at those same kids to get them out of alleyways. It’s all one giant mouth-watering mess that is desperate for a fix. The cops? Ha. Good one. Got anymore of those jokes? I want to file them under ‘delusional hopelessness.’ If the cops ever came down here, d’you think they’d need people like me fixing their problems? Probably. The police are cute and all, and I like it when they pat each other on the back after a long hard day of giving people parking tickets, but what I do for a living compared to them is different.

  So different that I’m almost offended that Hope said we’re both public servants.

  If I’m a servant of anything, it’s to my costume and what it represents.

  “You do know that it’s probably not that great of an idea to walk around like this, right?” I ask him. Around another street corner, stepping on broken needles and shattered bottles, over a messy chalk outline of a body that isn’t on the pavement anymore, and a lovely dose of sewer steam for my troubles. “I thought you said—”

  Logan stops and looks at me, hair illuminated by the blinking streetlight above him. “I’ve got a question for you,” he says, slowly turning. Pale neon store lights burn and hum, coloring the darkness different shades of pink and yellow and sickly green. Logan wanders closer, his jacket shuffling, his thick-soled boots thumping the concrete. He suddenly looks a lot larger standing here, partially hidden by the shadows, barely lit by the humming neon signs around us. “And this is a question that stays between us, and something I need you to think about first.”

  I sigh and fold my arms. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Hit me.”

  “What did you see in the sim-room on Sunday?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Nothing I haven’t already told you.”

  “No, what did you see in the sim-room?” His voice is quieter, eyes more intense. “Who did you see?”

  I look around and find nobody except a stray cat with half a tail burrowing through a pile of trash. The mangy little thing hisses at me and keeps digging, like I’m planning on stealing its rotting fish sticks. I shrug and say, “I saw Star-Sentinel and a bunch of old-school shit. Pre-Cape Wars kind of stuff, like black and white TVs and superhero costumes made out of cotton. Can you imagine that? I’m guessing Roman made the sim do that to me.”

  Logan slowly shakes his head. “Roman doesn’t have access to change a simulation. Only I do.”

  “So you put me in a skirt?” I blow a raspberry at him. “Lame. And weird. Does Katie know you’re weird?”

  “Samantha,” he says flatly, and suddenly it feels like the air has shifted around him, almost like it wants to grab hold of him, keep in place, to make sure everyone in a two block radius knows he’s here. I unfold my arms and watch him fix me with his eyes, a look so intense it feels like he’s trying to see through my memories for himself. “I need you to be honest with me right now. I’m all for a good time. Heck, ask Katie, I used to get drunk every single Friday the second I got out of class. But this?” It’s his turn to fold his arms, straining his jacket. “This is serious.”

  “I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of this,” I say. “It was a botched sim-run, so what?”

  “Are you human?”

  Logan stares at me. I stare at him.

  The silence he invites between us is deathly and loud and nearly ear-splittingly painful.

  It almost leaves my tongue painfully dry, scraping my throat raw as I swallow.

  The street cat scampers into an alleyway and a lone taxi soundlessly drives past us, throwing light across his face before dousing us both in shadows again. Logan narrows his eyes. I do the same, turning my head slightly and telling myself to relax my shoulders and slow my breathing, because he might be powerful, but he’s not smart enough to think that I am an alien. He can’t read my mind as far as I can tell, and it’s not like I look any different.

  “I’m a superhuman, just like everyone else,” I say with a shrug. “Born and bred American.”

  “Funny,” Logan says quietly, “because I’m not human, and I think I can tell when someone isn’t.”

  I blink, then a smile crawls onto my lips. I laugh a little. The silence kills it. “Riiight. I’m guessing this is one of those moments you were talking about. You probably pulled Katie because you’re funny. Makes sense.”

  “Utopian,” he whispers, nodding his head slowly. “I thought you guys were extinct.”

  “U-what?” I say. Laugh, Samantha. Laugh and pat his arm and hold your ribs and bend over laughing, then wipe the tears from your eyes and say, “Is that some kind of insult? God, call me Canadian instead. I’d even rather you call me a Soviet than…OK, no, not really, but you get what I mean.” I spread my arms. “Dude, I am fully human, just a little better, a little more juiced up. My mom hit the genetic lottery and I guess I also did the same.”

  Logan isn’t smiling.

  He’s almost not breathing.

  I shift on my feet, then jerk my thumb over my shoulder. “So…you still wanna catch the bus?”

  “Sam, listen to me,” Logan says, tapping his chest. “Are you human?”

  “Of course I—”

  He shakes his head, taps his ears, then presses a finger to his lips.

  Sirens. That’s first, just a few blocks away. Screaming down the street. A gunshot and a dozen more, and then the clatter of spent shells hitting the concrete. Old-Port has a stench, and so does everyone who lives here.

  This place is evil from the ground up, like it’s festering in the sewers and filling their lungs.

  It’s not my place to say what should happen to Old-Port…but I am saying it needs to be fixed.

  “Yeah, so what?” I ask him. “That’s Old-Port’s swan song, like roosters in the morning.”

  That’s something humans say, right? Even though I’ve never actually heard a rooster in the morning. I know, I know, I aced mom’s human 101 class with the highest grade in the entire room (my room, but still). She didn’t get it through my head to deny, deny, deny—to never let anything slip out of my mouth about what I am.

  Not to be ashamed of what I am, that’s not the point—just not to tell this species, for their own sake.

  “You’re telling me you don’t feel guilty? We both just heard a body hit the ground a second ago.”

  “Bodies do that sometimes. I’m sure they’re fine.” I wave my hand. “Besides, since your girlfriend talked about pizza, I’m starving, because the only things I’ve had today are lectures and questions and two granola bars.”

  “I need you to drop the act,” he says. “Let’s get past the part where we pretend you’re human, because your bones have carbon in them and you’ve got organs inside of you that regular people don’t have. I can almost hear every neural pathway firing inside your brain and it’s driving me nuts because it’s screaming at me.” He puts a hand to his chest. “From one alien to another, let’s make something clear: Earth isn’t anyone’s to be conquered or fixed.”

  It’s his skin that’s different, and his eyes, his hair—it’s so obvious that I’m almost angry at myself for not picking up on it sooner. Superhumans are a little physically different from regular humans. Aliens trying to pass as humans are even more different. It’s the hardness of our skin, the tightness in our hair—I squint my eyes and see his heart beating inside of his chest, bigger than a human’s and shaped differently too. His brain is layered, he’s got tiny ligaments between his joints, probably to make them flex and bend and survive sudden violent impacts. Logan’s a killer. In theory. His entire body is built for the kind of thing I do on a daily, except here he is, preaching peace and love, whilst he’s the walking-talking equivalent of a nuclear warhead…or worse. A lot worse. So, so, so much worse.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  I drop the smile and the jovialness in a heartbeat. “Cats in trees, people at gunpoint—a planet that’s too busy trying to fuck itself over to realize that it’s already doomed: they’ve all got one thing in common, and that’s inevitably, right? The cat gets down. The gun goes bang. And Earth eats itself. All I’m here to do is make sure the cat stays safe, the bullet doesn’t hit anyone, and Earth doesn’t collapse. Now, if a couple of humans die along the way, then…” I shrug. “It’s not like they won’t stop when I fix everything. They’re fragile that way. But the good ones are who I’m after, ‘cause they’re the ones who can make decisions that won’t kill this planet once and for all.”

  “Did your mom tell you that?”

  I clench my jaw and force it to relax. “Nope. That’s all me.”

  “Right,” he says. “It just sounded kinda familiar to the speeches your race used to tell the universe before you started micro-managing entire star-systems right into ruin.” What the fuck is he talking about? “Sam, lemme ask you something: if I did ask you to come and help me tonight with a supervillain, and it ended up just being a routine hostage situation, what would you do? Would you let me handle it as you save everyone, or would you go straight in there and kill the guy holding everyone hostage?” Hands on his hips now. “I need you to be honest.”

  “Why would I kill a supervillain?” I ask him. “It’s hostage first—”

  “Sam,” Logan says quietly, eyes hooded by the dying streetlight. “Don’t lie to me. Please?”

  “I wouldn’t kill him,” I say flatly. “At least not in front of the hostages.”

  “So you’d take him out back and kill him, because…why, exactly?”

  “Because he took people hostage? Why else?”

  “And what if nobody heard about it,” he says. “What if not a single person thanked you, and you couldn’t go to the news about it because that would just look like you’re begging for attention. Would you still save them?”

  I open my mouth, and…

  Hm.

  I think for a moment.

  “Nobody will ever know I saved them?”

  “Yep.”

  I snort and fold my arms. “Ungrateful much? I put my life on the line, and they can’t even say thank you? Or shoot me a message on my socials and say they owed me for that? Sounds about right for this species, y’know.”

  Logan nods some more, pushes hair out of his face and says, “How many people have you killed?”

  “Dunno,” I say. “A couple of villains, a few Kaiju and a handful of Mutants. Ninety, if I was guessing.”

  “Ninety people?” he asks, staring at me. “Sam, that’s—”

  “Justice,” I say. “Because crime doesn’t pay, or whatever.”

  “You can’t just— Oh my God,” he says, massaging his face. “No, no, that’s… Oh my God. Ninet.”

  “You’re an alien too, dude,” I say. “Don’t you find some of these guys miserable? I mean, if your life is so bad that it’s gotten to the point where you’re literally breaking into a convenience store for ten bucks, then you might as well just make some room for someone else who’s willing to not be an asshole. Just don’t be a bad person.”

  “It’s not that simple sometimes,” he sighs. “Most of the time, those guys are just homeless and hungry.”

  “Evil and crooked, you mean.”

  “You can hear this city right now. It’s in pain. Not every single one of them is evil.”

  “But enough of them make the entire place that way, so…”

  “Sam,” Logan says.

  “Yes, Mr. Number One Draft Pick?” I say. “Gonna lecture me some more? Gonna make me feel guilty for not wanting to deal with a domestic abuse in progress? Wanna make me feel bad about killing people who’ve killed other innocent people?” I pout. “Bad people deserve bad endings, and I don’t know what kind of gasses you’re huffing, pal, but I’m fine, thanks. I’m not an idiot. I don’t kill everyone. Besides, I can smell when someone is evil.”

  He pauses, then says, “That’s not something Utopians can do.”

  “Yeah, sure, like you know anything about my people.”

  “I do, because my people nearly got wiped off their own planet because of yours.” I wave my hand and snort. They must’ve been assholes then. Sorry about that, Mr. Bigshot. “That’s just something you tell yourselves.”

  I tap my nose. “Sure about that? Because I’ve hunted down really bad people from their smell alone.”

  “Yeah?” he asks. “And what did they smell like? What does ‘evil’ even smell like, Sam?”

  “Intoxicating,” I say. “Nasty. Pungent. Slightly chemical. It burns the back of my throat.”

  “That’s fear,” Logan says. “You’re smelling fear, not evil.”

  “Whatever, man,” I say. “Can we go back home now?”

  “You ever think that when they run away from you, it’s not ‘evil’ trailing after them in the wind? That every sweaty hand print they leave on a corner or ounce of blood you make them bleed stinks of the same stuff isn’t just some kind of magical coincidence? Have you ever stopped to consider that you’re scaring these people?”

  “Why would I bother about scaring bad people?” I ask him. “That’s literally the point. They’re bad.”

  Logan’s mouth moves. Nothing comes out of it. Not for several seconds.

  And in those seconds, this city keeps groaning, screaming, exploding and shuddering.

  And I don’t see him rushing off to fix any of it. Speeches, speeches, speeches.

  That’s all it ever is with these humans. You’d think they wouldn’t have dropped nukes on each other if they were this willing to always talk about their feelings and ethics and hypothetical cats in big burning trees.

  “What can you smell right now?” he asks. “Take a really deep breath, and tell me exactly what you smell.”

  I hate having to do this, but he’s being so annoying right now that my stomach is burning with the kind of righteous fury that makes me want to punch him. But I’m more mature than that, so I spread my arms and take the deepest breath of my life, and get hit with so much of a stench it feels like I’ve been punched in the face. I cough and nearly puke on the sidewalk, bend over and dry heave for a good five minutes as Logan pats my back. I brush his hand off me, spit near his boots, and slowly straighten. My nose burns. My eyes are the same, wet with tears.

  “Trash. A dead dog. Unwashed homeless people. Sewers. More trash. Blood. Gun powder. Corpses.”

  “And?” he asks.

  I narrow my eyes. “Evil.”

  “Right,” he says. “And what’s so evil about a sidewalk? About the piled-up trash? About the homeless?”

  “They’re obviously a few blocks away, or in these crummy apartments, not literally here.”

  “So you’re gonna tear through someone’s front door and kill them because you have a gut feeling?”

  “Listen,” I say. “I get what you’re trying to do, but lemme make something really clear: this shit works. I’m ranked where I am because I’ve bled to be here. I’m efficient. And I’m good at what I do. Kids don’t dress up like me during halloween for no reason. I don’t have millions of followers across all of my socials because I’m scary. People look at me and think ‘yeah, now there’s a hero I can trust,’ and they’re right, because that thug I decapitated? That gangster I gutted? That filthy little supervillain I pulled a spinal cord out of? They’re not out there hurting people like your girlfriend. I’m doing more for her than you are.” Logan’s eyes narrow. Good. “I am a unit of perfection. I’m the next generation of superhero, baby, and I don’t give a fuck what you’ve got to say about it. So what if you’re an alien? I don’t care. And I get that this might be your brand, or what your agent tells you to say, but drop the surfer guy act for a second and look at yourself: you’re an alien. A literal other species, and you’re busy telling me that I shouldn’t dictate right from wrong? You’re doing the same thing! Just with a smile, which I can wear perfectly fine too, Mr. Perfect.” I walk past him and stop beside his shoulder. I lower my voice. “We’re not the same, and no, I’m not gonna stick around PU long enough to be old and washed up like you’ll be in a couple of months. I’m done after my first year, because that’s all I need to prove. My seat at the table has been ready, because I deserve one.”

  Logan’s eyes slide toward me. “You deserve to be a superhero?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “The same way my people didn’t deserve to get killed off by the humans.”

  “Lemme guess,” he says quietly. “Your mom told you that, too?”

  “Yeah, she did this time,” I say. “And I’d take Guardian’s word over any else’s.”

  “Are you sure about that? Dead sure?”

  “On my life, and the seven billion others on this tiny wet rock.”

  “HELP!” someone shrieks, a split-second before the deathly silence between us could scream first. A woman in a torn dress is running toward us, limping because she’s got one shoe, makeup smeared across her face. She’s panting and filthy, and keeps clutching a shallow stab wound in her stomach that’s turning her dress scarlet. She nearly collapses into my arms, fingernails breaking as she grabs hold of me. She points frantically behind her. “Thank God, thank God! There’s—” She swallows, doubles over, coughs blood on my boots. I try not to make a face as she moans and holds her stomach tighter, getting blood all over my costume. “My mom. She’s— Someone broke into our house. I tried— Oh God. Oh God.” Breathing harder. Reeking of panic. She looks at me. “Help me. Please.”

  See what I told you about shit like this getting attracted to superheroes?

  Because what are the fucking chances.

  “Wanna deal with this?” I quietly ask him. “Or should I?”

  Logan’s jaw gets tense. “I’ve got this. Head back to campus.”

  I move her onto him and float off the ground. “Good luck. Hopefully the thug stays in prison. Or maybe he’ll get out on bond. Or escape, since you’ll take your sweet time making sure this chick doesn’t bleed out.” Which she already is, delirious and sobbing and too out of her mind to even hear what I’m saying. “Hey, maybe when you’re done, you can tell Katie to go and investigate the would-be thug. I’m sure the both of you can solve this dastardly crime!” I smile at him. Logan doesn’t glare at me—his face only softens, as if he feels bad for me.

  Whatever.

  I’ll let the world’s finest handle this one, since he’s all about being human.