You woke to the brutal sting of concrete scraping your skin, your body sprawled in an alley like a broken puppet. The world came crashing back, not gentle, not kind, but in shards of sound and light that tore through your skull. Every noise was magnified, every scent unbearable. The distant wail of sirens screamed in your ears. Rats scrabbled nearby, their claws clicking sharp and relentless. The cold night air pressed against your skin, but the heat inside you burned hotter with fear, confusion, and something else.

You tried to die. You remember the dizzying height, the empty air rushing past you as you jumped, thought it would end the pain, the noise in your head, the weight crushing your chest. But death didn’t come. Instead, you woke. Or something like it.

Now, every heartbeat around you felt like a hammer strike, every breath a shout. Light stabbed your eyelids, and the smells—smoke, rot, wet pavement—were too sharp, too close. You pressed your hands against your ears, desperate to block it all out, but the chaos clawed inside your mind.

You wanted to scream. But your voice was caught somewhere between panic and raw disbelief.

Then came the sound of a car, slow, deliberate. The rumble of the engine rolled into the alley like a warning. You looked up just as the door swung open, and a man stepped out.

He moved with a quiet confidence, the kind of calm you hadn’t felt since the jump. His dark eyes fixed on you like he could see everything tangled beneath your skin.

“You jumped,” he said softly. No accusation. Just fact.

You swallowed hard, your throat dry. “I thought it was the only way out.”

He knelt down, careful not to crowd you. “Doesn’t always work like that.”

Your head lolled against the wall. “Everything’s too loud. Too bright. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

He studied you quietly. “I have an idea. You’re alive. And that’s not something that happens by chance.”

You closed your eyes, trying to make the world stop spinning, but the threads of sound and light wove tighter, pulling you apart.

“I can’t,” you whispered. “I can’t make it stop.”

Victor’s voice was low, steady. “Then you don’t have to. Not yet.”

You looked at him, raw and desperate. “Who are you?”

“Someone who wants to help,” he said simply. “But you can call me Victor.”

The noise still thundered in your head, but for a flicker, his presence steadied the storm inside you.

But even as you shuddered there, exhausted, something pricked at the back of your mind. A question twisting in the dark.

How had he found you so quickly?

The city was vast, indifferent. You’d stumbled out of the hospital barefoot and half-catatonic. Nobody should have known. Nobody should have cared.

Yet here he was, like he’d been waiting for you. Watching for you.

And though he spoke gently, there was calculation in his eyes. A keen edge he didn’t bother to hide. He knew you were something else now. An EO.

ExtraOrdinary.

But it was also clear he didn’t know what.

Not yet.

He watched you with a cold, patient interest, as if cataloging every tremor, every sharp inhale.

You were an unknown. A variable. A puzzle he meant to solve.

And as you let him help you up, half-blind with pain and terror and confusion, you felt a chilling certainty settle in your bones.

Whatever you’d become, Victor Vale was determined to find out.

He ushered you towards the waiting car, a burly tattooed man sat in the front.

“Let’s get you somewhere quieter,” Victor said, holding the door open for you.