Chapter 2: The Burden of Power
The word "healing" hung in the damp alley air like an accusation. Cole flinched. Healing. That word felt like a rusty blade twisting in the gut. Lisa’s glowing, vacant face flashed behind his eyes – healed of asthma, broken in everything else. "No," he choked out, his voice raw. "It’s not like that. It’s… broken. It breaks things."
Aura’s helmet tilted again, the faint hum from her armor deepening, almost a growl. The holographic display above her palm flickered, waveforms spiking erratically. "Broken? Explain. This energy signature… it has potential. But the instability—"
A distant, muffled crunch echoed through the city canyon, deeper and heavier than traffic noise. It vibrated through the soles of Cole’s sneakers. Then another. And another. Like giant teeth grinding concrete.
Aura’s helmet snapped towards the sound, the smooth motion inhumanly fast. The hologram above her hand vanished. "Priority shift," her modulated voice declared, all analytical detachment gone, replaced by cold urgency. "Mass casualty event. Subway level." Before Cole could react, not even breathe, cobalt light flared at her boots. She shot upwards, a silent blue comet, clearing the alley buildings in a heartbeat, arcing towards the plume of dust rising several blocks away, near a subway entrance.
Left alone in the sudden silence broken only by the rising wail of distant sirens, Cole stared after her. The buzzing under his skin, that constant low-grade terror, flared into a full-blown alarm. Mass casualty event. Images cascaded – twisted metal, blood, screams. People trapped. Broken. Like Lisa.
And his power… the thing that broke healing… was right here. Useless. Dangerous. He should run. Get as far away as possible. Disappear into the indifferent city crowd.
But his feet moved before his brain caught up. Not away. Towards. Towards the dust plume. Towards the sirens converging like angry hornets. Towards the terrifying unknown where the only person who’d instantly recognized the monstrous energy inside him had just vanished. He pushed through startled pedestrians, ignoring shouts, driven by a frantic, illogical pull – part guilt, part horrifying curiosity, part a desperate need to see if this power, this curse, could be anything other than destruction.
The scene outside the subway entrance was chaos distilled. Police tape strained against the surge of panicked evacuees stumbling up the stairs, coated in grime, faces streaked with tears and dust. Cops shouted, trying to control the flow. Ambulances idled, lights strobing red and white against the grimy facades. The air tasted of pulverized concrete and something sharper, metallic. Fear.
Cole ducked under flapping tape, ignoring a cop’s bellowed "Hey! Kid! Stop!", and plunged down the emergency stairwell. The air thickened instantly, turning cool and damp, saturated with the smell of wet stone, ozone, and the coppery tang of blood. The overhead lights were out. Only weak, battery-powered emergency strips cast long, sickly yellow puddles on the curved tunnel walls. The darkness between them felt absolute, hungry.
The sound hit him next. Not just sirens anymore, but a cacophony from deep within the tunnel: a chorus of moans, sharp cries of pain, the eerie scrape of metal on metal, the frantic, overlapping voices of first responders shouting commands. And beneath it all, a low, ominous groan from stressed infrastructure.
He ran, sneakers slapping on the slick concrete walkway beside the tracks. His breath rasped in his throat. The buzzing under his skin intensified, a frantic vibration mirroring his own panic. As he rounded a bend, the tunnel opened into a scene from a nightmare.
A subway car lay jackknifed across the tracks, its sleek side torn open like a tin can. Sparks fizzled from severed cables dangling from the ceiling, casting brief, stuttering flashes of light on the carnage. Emergency crews scrambled over the wreckage, headlamps cutting frantic beams through the swirling dust. People were trapped inside – silhouettes against broken windows, hands scrabbling at twisted metal.
And there, bathed in the stark beams of her own suit lights, was Aura. She stood near the sheared-open flank of the car, one gauntleted hand pressed against a buckled steel beam pinning someone inside. Cobalt energy flared around her hand, flowing into the metal, not violently this time, but with intense, focused purpose. The beam groaned, shifting minutely. "Brace!" her amplified voice commanded the firefighters clustered nearby. "Prying point A3! Hydraulic jack ready on my mark!"
Cole stumbled to a halt, transfixed by the raw efficiency, the sheer power under control. Aura was a force of nature, bending metal, saving lives. He was… he was static cling and accidental comas. He shrank back into the deeper shadows near the tunnel wall, pressing himself against the cold, damp concrete, feeling utterly insignificant and terrifyingly out of place. The memory of Lisa’s unnaturally radiant, comatose face shimmered behind his eyelids, a cruel counterpoint to the frantic rescue unfolding before him. He wanted to melt into the stone, vanish.
A sharp cry cut through the operational shouts, raw and terrified. "My arm! It's trapped! I can't feel my hand!" It came from deep within the wreckage, near a buckled section Aura wasn't currently focused on. Paramedics angled their lights, revealing a middle-aged woman pinned by her forearm beneath a collapsed interior partition.
"Got a live one here! Crush injury, possible compartment syndrome!" a firefighter barked into his radio, his voice tight. They scrambled, but the mangled metal was wedged tight against structural supports, resisting the pry bars. "Need more hands, or a miracle!"
wreckage. Stop it. You break things. You break people. But her terrified whimper drowned out the internal warning.
The woman’s whimper sliced through Cole’s panic, sharp and desperate. It wasn’t just pain; it was the raw terror of being slowly crushed, bone grinding under metal. "Please," she sobbed, her voice thick with dust and tears. "Someone… help me."
You break things. You break people. The thought was a hammer blow. But seeing her face, pale and slick with sweat in the paramedic’s headlamp beam, shattered his paralysis. Lisa was lost because he didn’t understand. Maybe… maybe I can understand this? The buzzing under his skin surged, not the usual low hum, but a frantic, demanding thrum.
He didn't think, just moved. Shoving past a firefighter wrestling with a pry bar, Cole dropped to his knees beside the buckled metal partition pinning the woman's forearm. The metal groaned under its own twisted weight. "Hey! Kid, get back!" the firefighter yelled, grabbing his shoulder. "It's unstable!"
"Let me try!" Cole barked, shaking him off. He pressed his hands against the cold, grimy steel near her trapped arm. He didn’t know how, only the desperate need. He focused on the trapped limb, the pulsing terror, the hope in the woman's wide, pain-glazed eyes. Don't break her. Help her. Please… The energy flared out – not the gentle warmth he'd naively imagined, but a violent, white-hot crackle that spider-webbed across the metal surface under his palms. It felt like grabbing a live wire.
The metal screamed. Not a groan, but a high-pitched shriek of stressed molecules. It bulged unnaturally under his hands, softening like clay for a terrifying instant. "It's working!" the woman gasped, a flicker of hope cutting through her agony. The paramedic stared, jaw slack.
Then, everything happened at once. The section of tunnel ceiling directly above the subway car gave a deep, soul-shuddering CRUNCH. A rain of dust and small debris pattered down. Aura’s head snapped up, her suit lights stabbing towards the shifting concrete slabs high above. "Evacuate! Now! Structural failure imminent!" Her amplified voice cut through the din, sharp with command, stripped of all detachment.
The firefighter near Cole reacted instantly, yanking the stunned woman backwards just as her arm came free. Cole stumbled, his hands still crackling, the released metal steaming where he’d touched it. He looked up, the world narrowing to the widening crack snaking across the tunnel roof. Chunks of concrete began to plummet, smashing onto the wrecked subway car like artillery shells.
"MOVE!" Aura’s cry was pure, raw urgency. Cobalt light erupted from her boots as she shot towards him, a blue streak against the falling debris. She wasn't heading for the exit; she was coming for him. The realization hit Cole like ice water. He scrambled backwards, tripping over a discarded helmet.
He saw her trajectory change mid-air, angling to intercept a massive slab detaching directly above him. Time seemed to slow. The slab, easily the size of a small car, plummeted down. Aura slammed into it, shoulder-first, cobalt energy flaring from her gauntlets not to blast, but to brace. She grunted with effort, the modulated sound strained, forced. She was holding it. Barely.
"Run!" she roared at him, her armored form trembling visibly under the colossal weight, her boots digging grooves into the concrete walkway. Dust cascaded around her like a grimy waterfall. The crackle of her energy field mingled with the groaning, shrieking protest of the compromised ceiling around them. More chunks rained down, smaller but still deadly.
Cole scrambled to his feet, turning towards the dim emergency lights marking the way out. He took one step. Two. Then a secondary crack, louder than anything before, tore through the air. Not above him. Above her. Another colossal section, disturbed by the shifting weight she bore, sheared free. It wasn't falling on him. It was falling directly onto Aura.
"No!" The word ripped from Cole’s throat, raw and useless. He saw her helmet snap up, saw the blue light around her fist flicker desperately as she tried to shift her stance, to bring her other hand up. Too late. The second slab hit the first with the sound of mountains colliding.
The impact slammed her down like a hammer hitting a nail. Cole was thrown off his feet by the shockwave, tumbling through choking dust. He hit the rough tunnel wall hard, the air exploding from his lungs. The roar was deafening, a world-ending cacophony of crushing concrete and twisting metal. The emergency lights flickered, died, plunged them into absolute, suffocating blackness filled only with the screams of rending rock and the wet, sickening crunch of collapsing support beams.
Silence descended with terrifying suddenness, thick and gritty. The only light came from a single, miraculously intact emergency strip twenty feet away, casting a weak, jaundiced smear onto a swirling dust storm. Cole coughed, spitting out grit. Pain flared in his side. He pushed himself up on trembling arms, blinking furiously. The tunnel was unrecognizable. Where the subway car and walkway had been was now a jagged mountain of shattered concrete, twisted rebar, and mangled steel, sealed off completely.
He was trapped.
His eyes adjusted, scanning the dim pocket. Debris surrounded him on three sides. And directly beneath the single light source… Aura. She lay partially buried, one leg pinned under a massive chunk of concrete, the other twisted at an unnatural angle. Her helmet was gone, revealing short, dark hair matted with blood and dust across a pale, slack face. Her chest plate was cracked and buckled. One arm was free, outstretched, the gauntlet dark. But her other arm… Cole gagged. Her other arm ended just below the shoulder, the armored sleeve crushed flat against the concrete slab that had landed directly on top of it. Dark liquid seeped steadily from beneath the wreckage, pooling thickly on the dusty ground.
He scrambled over the smaller debris towards her, heart hammering against his ribs. "Aura? Aura, can you hear me?" His voice sounded thin and reedy in the stifling tomb. He reached her side, his hands hovering uselessly over the catastrophic ruin of her arm and leg. The smell of blood and ozone filled the small space. Her skin felt terrifyingly cold. Her breathing was shallow, rapid, wet gasps. Each inhale sounded like a struggle, a faint gurgle underlying it.
Her eyelids fluttered. She managed to open them a slit, unfocused and glassy. She tried to speak, only managing a pained whimper, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Her one good eye locked onto his face, recognition flickering dimly in the depths.
"You…" she rasped, the word barely audible, thick with fluid. "The… energy… pocket…" Her gaze shifted slightly, past him, towards the jagged ceiling of their prison. Cole followed her look. Above them, a single, massive slab of concrete hung suspended at a crazy angle. It should have crushed them. But beneath it, arcing from Aura's outstretched, free hand, pulsed the faintest, sputtering remnant of her cobalt energy field. A shield, weakened, flickering like a dying bulb, holding back the literal weight of the world. Holding it just long enough. Her skin was grey, clammy. The effort was killing her by the second.
"Stay with me," Cole choked out, his own voice cracking. Panic seized him, colder and deeper than the tunnel's chill. She was dying right in front of him. Crushed. Bleeding out. Broken. Just like he made things.
But the blood pooling around Aura was spreading. Her breathing hitched, a horrible, wet rattle. Her eye started to drift shut. The cobalt shield flickered wildly, threatening to gutter out completely. The slab groaned above them. He had seconds.
"Please," he whispered, to her, to himself, to the monstrous force inside him. He didn't know what he was asking. He just knew he couldn't watch her die. Not like this. Not when he was right here. Gingerly, terrified, he reached out and placed a trembling hand on Aura's blood-slicked chest, beside the cracked armor. It was cold, so unnervingly cold, the dark stain spreading under his palm. The frantic buzzing under his skin, the terrifying hum that always meant something was coming, surged like a swarm of angry hornets trapped within him.
"Please," he choked, the word tasting like dust and blood. "Work right. Just this once." He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to grasp the terrifying power, to will it into healing, not breaking, to remember Aura's precise control. But all he saw was Lisa's unnaturally radiant, vacant face. All he felt was the terrible, unstoppable surge building. It wasn't warmth he summoned; it was a terrifying pressure cooker reaching its limit deep in his gut, a chaotic storm desperate to break free.
Aura’s remaining eye rolled back, the cobalt shield flickering wildly. The massive slab groaned, shifting minutely, raining grit. The wet rattle in her chest hitched, skipping a beat. Panic detonated in Cole's chest.
"No! Don't you die!" he screamed, raw and desperate, the sound echoing in the tomb-like space. He pressed his hand harder against her cold skin, his entire body tensing against the unbearable internal pressure. He strained, trying to force the energy out, to channel it, thinking of knitting bone, sealing arteries, anything. But control was a fantasy. The power wasn't a tap; it was a geyser. It tore through him, violent and unstoppable, a white-hot detonation seeking release.
His back arched violently off the rubble, a strangled cry ripped from his throat as the pent-up energy found its inevitable, biological release point. It wasn't directed. It was pure, messy expulsion. He came hard, a shuddering, involuntary convulsion, and sticky warmth pulsed onto Aura’s chest plate and neck, mingling with the dark blood. It felt primal, grotesque, utterly divorced from anything resembling healing.
The buzzing under his skin vanished instantly, replaced by a terrifying, hollow silence inside him. The world seemed to hold its breath. Aura lay utterly still beneath him.
Then, her back arched violently off the debris, muscles locking in a rigid spasm worse than any seizure. The sputtering cobalt shield died completely. The slab above them groaned, shifting downward a terrible inch. A choked, guttural sound escaped her blood-flecked lips – not pain, but something raw and animal.
Her skin, grey and clammy a second ago, began to glow. Not the soft, warm radiance Lisa had shown. This was fierce, blinding white light, erupting from her core, bursting through the cracks in her armor and the ruin of her shoulder like escaping plasma. It illuminated the dust-filled tomb with searing intensity, throwing stark, jagged shadows. Cole threw up a hand, shielding his eyes, stumbling back as the sheer force of the light pushed against him. The smell of something burning, like electrical wires melting, overwhelmed the metallic tang of blood.
The light pulsed once, twice, impossibly bright, centered on the mess on her chest. Then, with a sound like tearing canvas, it condensed. Converged. Funneled violently inward through the cracked armor, right where his hand had been, right where his release had landed.
Silence crashed back. Utter, deafening silence. The white light vanished as suddenly as it appeared, plunging them back into the sickly yellow gloom of the emergency strip. Cole blinked away afterimages, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He stared.
Aura lay perfectly still. No rise and fall of her chest. No flicker of her eyelid. The dark pool of blood around her ruined arm seemed larger. Cold dread, colder than the tunnel, colder than death, seeped into Cole’s bones.
He’d done it again. He’d broken her. Permanently. The slab above them groaned again, a final warning. He was trapped in a tomb with the hero he’d just killed.
The silence pressed down harder than the rubble. Cole couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Dust motes danced in the lone emergency light’s jaundiced beam, settling on Aura’s unnervingly still face. The dark pool beneath her crushed arm seemed to creep wider, soaking into the grit. Dead. Like Lisa. Because of me. The thought was a physical blow, doubling him over onto the cold concrete. He retched, bringing up nothing but bile and dust.
He scrambled back, boots scraping on debris, putting distance between himself and the horror he’d created. His hands trembled violently, sticky with her blood and his own shameful release. The buzzing was utterly gone, leaving a terrifying void inside him. Just hollow dread. The slab above groaned again, shifting slightly, raining a fresh shower of grit onto his head. Time was collapsing inward.
Get out. Just get out. He clawed at the jagged wall of debris blocking the tunnel exit, tearing his fingernails. Useless. Solid. Trapped. He spun, frantic gaze sweeping their tiny prison – the flickering light, the crushing weight suspended above, Aura’s broken form. No tools. No hope. Just him and the corpse he’d made.
Her corpse. Her dead corpse. Because his power didn’t heal. It broke. It killed. Lisa’s radiant, vacant face swam before his eyes again. Then Aura’s grey, slack features superimposed over it. The same terrifying stillness. The same horrifying result of his touch. He sank to his knees, the rough concrete biting through his jeans. What did I do? What the hell did I DO?
A wet, gurgling rasp shattered the silence.
Cole froze. His head snapped towards Aura. Her chest… it hitched. Once. Twice. A thin trickle of pink-tinged foam bubbled from her lips. Her eyelids fluttered weakly. Not dead. Dying. Slowly, agonizingly. Crushed. Bleeding internally. Suffocating. Because he’d poured his chaotic energy into her shattered body instead of pulling her free.
The groan above deepened. The shield was gone. That slab was coming down. Minutes. Maybe seconds. He stared at her struggling to breathe, each wet gasp a condemnation. He’d accelerated her death. Made it worse. Always worse. He wanted to curl up and disappear.
But the sound… that awful, wet struggle for air… it hooked into him. Deeper than guilt. Primal. He couldn’t just sit here and listen to her drown in her own blood. He couldn’t die listening to it. He lurched forward, crawling back to her side. Her one visible eye was half-open, unfocused, terror swimming in its depths. She saw him. Recognition flickered, then pure animal panic.
"Don’t…" she choked, the word thick, bubbling. "Touch… me…" Her good hand twitched feebly, trying to push him away. Weak as a kitten.
"I’m sorry," Cole whispered, voice cracking. "I’m so sorry." He looked at his hands. Useless. Dangerous. Weapons. But the only thing he had. The buzzing was gone, but the potential… the terrifying, destructive potential… was still in him. Could he…? Should he…?
The slab shifted again with a grinding shriek. A fist-sized chunk of concrete slammed onto the debris pile beside them. Time evaporated. He had one insane, horrifying idea. The only idea. Based on the two catastrophic data points of his life. Sex. Release. Power. Lisa. Aura. Healing? Or just different kinds of breaking?
He couldn’t heal her crushed arm or leg. But maybe… maybe… he could shock her system. Jump-start something. Like a dying car battery. A desperate, stupid gamble with a dying woman’s life. Again. He looked into her terrified eye. "I have to try something," he rasped, the words tasting like ash. "I’m sorry."
Her eye widened in pure, uncomprehending horror. "No…" she gurgled, trying to twist away. "Stop…"
He couldn’t explain. There was no time. No words that made sense. He fumbled with the buckle of his jeans, fingers numb and clumsy. Shame burned through him, hotter than the tunnel’s chill. This was monstrous. Profane. But the wet rattle in her chest was fading. Her eye started to drift shut again. The slab groaned directly overhead.
He got the buckle open. Yanked the zipper down. The cold air hit his skin. He was shaking violently. This wasn’t arousal. This was desperation cranked to breaking point. Terror. The looming crush of rock. The dying hero beneath him. The sticky memory of his last release smeared on her armor. He closed his eyes, trying to force sensation, to conjure anything that would trigger the surge. Images flashed – Lisa’s smile before it all went wrong, Aura’s cobalt light slicing through the alley, the terrifying efficiency before the collapse. Nothing worked. Just cold dread and the smell of blood and dust.
He grabbed himself, rough and frantic. Come on. Come ON. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, picturing… anything. Everything. The hum of the fridge in his dorm. The taste of cold pizza. The feel of Lisa’s skin before the glow. The crackle of Aura’s gauntlets. The deafening roar of collapsing concrete. The wet gurgle inches from his face. It was grotesque. Impossible. His body refused. Frozen by fear and revulsion.
Aura’s breathing hitched, stopped for three terrifying seconds, then resumed weaker, shallower. A death rattle. The slab above shifted another inch, dust cascading like a shroud. He was out of time. Out of options. Out of dignity. He focused solely on the terrifying mechanics, the raw, ugly necessity. Do it. Just DO IT. He stroked harder, faster, a frantic, graceless motion fueled by pure, animal panic. Not pleasure. Survival. His breath came in ragged gasps, echoing hers. Tears of frustration and shame burned tracks through the grime on his cheeks.
He felt it then. Not arousal. Not even close. But deep within the pit of his terror, a familiar pressure began to build. Not the buzzing. Something deeper, darker, coiling tight like a spring wound past its limit. The chaotic energy, following its path, responding to the violent, forced stimulation. It gathered, a storm surge held back by crumbling levees. He gritted his teeth, pushing himself to the edge, chasing the release not for pleasure, but for the terrifying power it might unleash. One last, desperate heave against the inevitable. He braced himself over Aura, his shadow falling across her fading face. The pressure peaked, unbearable, volcanic.
He came. Not with pleasure, but with a harsh, shuddering convulsion, a strangled cry tearing from his throat. It wasn't warmth that pulsed onto her cracked chest plate this time; it felt like spitting venom. A final, violent expulsion of the chaotic force within him. He collapsed forward, spent and trembling, his forehead resting against the cold, blood-smeared armor. Silence. Again. Utter, crushing silence. Had he just… finished her? Committed the ultimate violation on a dying woman for nothing?
Then Aura’s back arched off the rubble with terrifying force, muscles locking like steel cables. A raw, guttural scream ripped from her throat – not pain, but pure, unfiltered agony and shock. Her skin erupted in that same fierce, blinding white light, fiercer than before, searing Cole’s closed eyelids. It pulsed once, violently, then vanished as quickly as it came. Her body slammed back down onto the debris, utterly limp. Motionless. Silent.