“Shepard!” Sergeant Graham yelled after Sam. “Get back behind the line, you idiot!”

Sam paused, tempted to listen to the gravelly voice urging him to come back. No, he shouldn’t be going to play hero now, when he’d run away when things had gotten too hard the first time.

But then Sam heard the woman’s voice a third time. It was much weaker. She was running out of time.

Despite the nervous sweat dripping down his brow, Sam kept on running.

“Shepard! Get back here!” Sergeant Graham screamed.

Sam’s heart pounding in his ears drowned out the sergeant’s protests. Each beat grew louder and louder as he got closer to the center of the extermination zone.

Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just routine delta-level extermination. You’re here for experience! It’ll be just like a light jog. The “wise words” of his editor fell short when faced with the task set before him. Yeah, right. What in Hades is routine about all of this?

This wasn’t what usually happened—heroes lying on the ground bleeding from wounds they may never recover from, and a horror set loose on the city that no one seemed able to stop.

A heavy whoosh drew him out of his thoughts. On instinct, Sam dived forward and narrowly avoided decapitation via the wheel of a truck that had been sent flying his way. He scraped his palms on the broken asphalt and he cursed at the pain.

Raising his hands to check them, Sam cringed at the dark blood dripping down his sun-kissed forearms. There was too much of it to be his.

“Styx,” he gulped.

He looked down at the ground, aghast to see the pool of blood inching toward him. His eyes drifted to the source: a group of lifeless bodies surrounded by the thick red liquid. There was so much of it that the iron scent caused his nose to wrinkle.

Sam glimpsed movement in the corner of his eye. His gaze snapped toward it, body tensing as he prepared to leap to his feet. But it was just a body stirring on the ground.

“Nothing to worry about, don’t get spooked,” he reminded himself. “Wait, what?”

It was a woman. Her short blonde hair framed a bloody, heart-shaped face. Her eyes were a dazzling sky blue, and they were staring right at Sam’s own teal-colored irises.

“Help me,” she whispered, her weak voice barely carrying over the distance.

“Oh, man,” Sam breathed, shuffling over. “I found you…”

When he reached her side, Sam scanned her body, the state of it easily observable through her ruined costume. Her fair skin turned paler by the second, likely an effect of the blood hemorrhaging out of the huge gash on her side. There was a deep cut on her brow, too. It leaked blood down the side of her cheek.

“You-you’re Thunder...” Sam realized.

Thunder—an alpha-level hero, ranked seventh in the national charts.

But there’s no way. Thunder wouldn’t go down like this, Sam thought.

Thunder was an unstoppable force of nature whose recent and sudden meteoric rise had already made her legendary among this year’s crop of new heroes.

How could the woman, the gorgeous and brave hero whose face was on the poster once plastered on Sam’s bedroom wall, be reduced to such a state?

“Help,” Thunder mumbled. Tears rolled down her cheeks, streaking through the drying blood that covered her.

The sight of his vulnerable idol forced Sam to get a grip.

“It’s okay,” he said as reassuringly as he could. “I’ve got you. It’s gonna be okay.” I hope.

Now that he was here, Sam couldn’t help but reminisce on the last time he’d been in a situation like this.

It had been more than six months ago, when he had been commissioned to serve as a healer for a hastily assembled team of heroes tasked with clearing an extermination zone that had popped up in lower Manhattan. During that incident, Sam had failed in his duty not because he wasn’t willing, but because things had gotten so chaotic, he’d used too much of his own life force, healing wounds that were too big for his power alone to handle. It was a failure that not only put his own life at risk, but caused the deaths of people who were under his care.

Sam had powers; he was gifted, what normal people called individuals who were blessed by the gods with extraordinary gifts, the kind mere mortals could only dream about. But even those with powers had a hierarchy, and in this day and age of constant calamities, everything was about power levels. Sam was a zeta, the lowest tier among the six known power levels. That meant his ability wasn’t particularly strong, despite how useful it might seem.

“I can do this,” he whispered. “I can do this.”

Sam placed his hands over the deep cut above Thunder’s bushy eyebrows. Then he called forth his own life force, what little of it he could coax into his fingers, and activated his power.

“Healing Hand,” he commanded.

It never failed to give Sam goosebumps, seeing a nasty wound slowly stitch itself together as if by magic. What was once a deep cut became nothing more than pink scar tissue.

“I think I...I got it,” Sam wheezed. He leaned back as black spots appeared in his vision. The small amount of life force he’d given away to heal the cut was already threatening to make him lose consciousness.

Sam wondered just how much more of his life he’d need to give to heal the gaping hole in Thunder’s stomach. But he knew deep down that even if he gave up his life, it wouldn’t be enough to heal an injury that was most likely fatal.

“Godsdammit,” he said, and grimaced.

A pale hand latched onto his forearm, forcing Sam’s gaze toward Thunder’s face. Her eyes were less glassy now, and despite the sounds of battle raging ahead of them, her gaze was focused only on Sam.

“You’re a healer…” she said in a voice that was stronger than before. “You’re a hero, too?”

Sam pulled her hand gently away from his arm so he could rip a piece of his shirt off. He was planning to use it as a temporary bandage over her stomach.

“Ex-hero,” Sam shrugged.

“Ex-hero?” The awe in Thunder’s face morphed into one of confusion. “But…no one quits. It’s why we call it the duty that—”

“—cannot be forsworn,” Sam finished for her. “I know, I know. I read all the pamphlets, too.”

He placed the makeshift bandage over the wound and pressed down on it to staunch her bleeding, even though he knew it wouldn’t help much.

“I wasn’t very good at it,” he admitted. “I was a terrible support hero.”

The bandage in his hands was quickly becoming soaked with her blood.

“But you’re here… now…saving me,” Thunder said in an almost challenging tone.

“Don’t get your hopes up.” Sam thought he could see her insides peeking out of the hole in her stomach. “I’m not powerful enough to heal this. I’m just a zeta…”

Sam heard the explosion before he felt the heat graze the skin of his face. Instead of running away—which was what his brain was screaming for him to do—he used his own body to cover Thunder’s wound from the shockwave that raced toward them.