The last dregs of daylight bled out over the skyline of Aethelburg, painting the towering spires in shades of orange and bruised purple. From her perch on the plush, grey couch, Abigail—known to the world as Aegis—watched the city’s transition from day to night with all the enthusiasm of a patient watching an IV drip.

Five years. It had been five years since the Great Incarceration. The coordinated effort by the global hero community had been a stunning, flawless success. Every major-league threat, every world-shaking villain, had been rounded up and locked away in the inescapable Vault Beyond Time. The world had breathed a collective sigh of relief. Parades were thrown. Medals were awarded. Aegis had been given the key to the city so many times she’d started using them as bottle openers.

And then, the silence.

At first, it was a blessing. No more waking up to a sky full of alien warships. No more scrambling to defuse city-leveling bombs. She’d tried to enjoy it. The problem was the power. It thrummed under her skin, a constant, restless energy with nowhere to go.

Boredom, she discovered, was not a passive state. It was an acid. It had eaten away at the edges of her sanity, leaving her raw and twitchy.

Tonight was the nadir. She was lying on the couch watching a reality TV show where people argued over a petty inheritance. She was still wearing her superhero costume after another useless boring patrol.

The softest of sounds, a whisper of a click from her front door, cut through the inane television dialogue.

It wasn't the sound itself, but its wrongness. Her apartment had a state-of-the-art biometric lock. No one should be able to open it. No one.

Someone was inside.

She sat up slowly. "You have me at a disadvantage," she said, her voice rough from disuse. "Most of the people who used to break into my home did a lot of monologuing before coming in. And wore spandex."