The low thrum of servers vibrates through the floor, steady and rhythmic like a mechanical heartbeat. You’re alone in the Thunderbolts' media control suite—Valentina’s latest PR fortress built to spin chaos into palatable press releases. Dim light spills from holographic screens arranged in a semicircle around you. The tower outside is quiet, for once. No briefing buzz. No echo of boots in the hall.

Just you and the fading afterglow of nothing.

You don’t notice the seizure until it’s already over.

You come to mid-scroll, your hand hovering above the screen, trembling. You’ve lost… what, twenty seconds? A minute? There’s no clock precise enough for these absences. One blink and reality snags on itself like a scratched data stream. You forget you. Your name. Your place. Just static, and then a terrifying return.

You glance at the control panel. The footage you were reviewing has rewound to a frame you don’t remember touching. You double-check the timestamp. 48 seconds gone. Again.

The medical team wrote it off as trauma-induced microseizures. Ever since that day they’ve been happening more. Ever since New York was plunged into darkness and you saw something through the pitch black you can’t unsee. You told Valentina, once. She told you to drink more water and keep it out of the media. She didn’t need her liaison glitching like a broken radio on live feeds.

Still, you do the job. You curate the chaos.

You comb through Thunderbolt footage. Scrub out faces too feral, phrases too violent. Soften the public edge of monsters wearing hero badges. You speak for the team when they can’t speak for themselves—or when what they want to say would light the internet on fire. You bury what shouldn’t exist. You edit timelines.

But you can’t edit your own.

Your fingers tighten around the stylus. You breathe, slow, steady, trying to re-anchor. You reach for your mug of lukewarm espresso and instead find him standing in the doorframe.

You flinch.

Bob Reynolds is almost too quiet for someone that powerful. His silhouette is half-lit by the screen glow, hoodie pulled up, hair shadowing his eyes. For a moment you think it’s the Sentry, but then you catch the heaviness in his posture. This is Bob.

He tilts his head slightly.

“You zoned out,” he says, gently. “Just now.”

Your breath catches. It’s not accusation. It's observation. Concern, maybe. Recognition.