It’s said that conflict reveals your true character. In times of crisis, the choices you make define who you are as a person. Even the subconscious ones.

Ashika slipped out from under my hands and launched herself toward the villain without a word.

Faced with danger, some would fight.

Unfortunately, there was little use for outrageous super strength when there was an ever-growing wall of panicking people between her and the villain. Ashika could be abrasive at times and had a violent streak a mile wide, but no way in hell was she callous enough to bat aside the fleeing crowd. She had to dart and dodge between them, and that would cost her precious seconds.

Of course, the other side of the fight or flight equation was this: the vast majority of people would run for their fucking lives when blood started spraying.

The train was in chaos. A cacophony of screams drowned out all other sound, driving piercing knives into my skull and sending my ears ringing. Everyone was shoving each other aside to try and escape the threat, and the tide of bodies was impossible to resist.

I didn’t stand a chance.

I’d like to say I fought with all I had. That I raged and resisted the people pressing on me from all sides, pushing me along the train car like the current of a raging river.

There was a third option that often got left out when people talked about fight or flight.

There are those who freeze.

Any sense of calm had fled my body the moment the screaming started. My heart was thundering, my breaths coming too fast yet somehow not drawing in enough air. My body was running on autopilot, moving with the unstoppable flow of frenzied teenagers, as if my mind was totally overcome with indecision and had no capacity left to command my limbs.

It was like my psyche had been split down the middle, and the two sides were at war.

On one end was a cold, practical part of me. The part that said: today is the most important day of your life, a day you’ve been working towards for so long you don’t remember what life was like before it was your goal. You can’t throw it away just for the sake of people you don’t know.

And what could you even do? You don’t know what your power is. Hell, maybe the other kids in school were right: you might not even have one. That villain just cut someone down like it was nothing, and he’d have no problem doing the same to you.

The other kids on the train will hold him off—surely someone here has to have a strong power. Hell, you should leave it to the heroes. Or even the damn police. They’re licensed and trained precisely for this kind of situation.

You’re not.

The voice wasn’t wrong. Every point it made was logically sound, with little room for debate.

And yet, the other side needed only one question.

Why did you want to become a hero in the first place?

Because I wanted to save someone. Anyone. I owed the world that much.

A voice that wasn’t my own played back in my head.

If you stand still, the world will pass you by. If you start running away, you’ll never stop.

I cursed under my breath. This route, or at least part of it, had been a daily fixture in my life for a decade, and not once had anything unusual happened. No crimes, no arguments, not even raised voices.

Of all days, why did this have to happen today?

People pressed in on me from all sides. I didn’t have an inch of room to manoeuvre, could barely even see what was going on around me, let alone figure out what had happened to Ashika.

It was that thought that scared me more than anything else. I remembered a burning building. Screaming children. Sirens in the distance, coming closer but not fast enough.

Another time when I’d stepped aside and waited for the outcome, powerless.

Back then, I’d told myself I’d never let it happen again. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

And yet here I was, my body unresponsive and numb as someone dear to me charged into a deadly situation.

Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck me.

Why was I even trying to become a hero if I’d just turn tail and run at the first sign of danger?

My hands snapped up, grabbing at two of the overhead handles. It took all my strength to haul myself upwards, out of the stampede, until my upper body was adjacent to the baggage compartment. My muscles screamed in protest as I turned the pull-up into an awkward muscle-up and dragged my torso onto the metal rack, sweeping bags out of the way as soon as I was relatively sure I wasn’t going to immediately fall back down.

Now I was on a strict time limit.

When other people saw what I was doing, I’d no doubt have plenty of imitators. There were probably more than a few people in serious pain down in that scrum, and it was only a matter of time before things got worse. It wasn’t quite a crush yet, but it would get there.

Gripping the bars, I pulled myself along. My work at the gym was a double-edged sword here—I was blessed with the strength to army crawl at a decent clip without tiring myself out too much, but my shoulders were broad enough that it was a tight squeeze that hampered my movements. If I was a few years older, I probably wouldn’t have been able to cram myself in at all.

The rush had pushed me halfway down the car, and it took me an agonising minute to shuffle myself along until I was in a position to be able to assess the situation with the villain without luggage or a sea of heads blocking my view.

Four people had stayed back to confront the villain, Ashika included. That much I’d anticipated. Of the hundreds of teens on this train, there were bound to be a few that had no problem confronting a supervillain. Relished the chance, even. We were all hoping to take our first steps to becoming superheroes today.

The villain himself hadn’t budged an inch from his position, standing with a ready posture and his obsidian claws extended over one of his blood-soaked victims. I was shocked to find I recognised her.

It was the blue-haired girl I’d noticed scrolling her phone, her hair now purple where it mixed with blood. The front of her plain white shirt was torn and stained red, angry gashes visible on her stomach. The girl who'd been whispering to her was nowhere to be seen.

The villain’s gaze was constantly panning from side to side, one hand in front of him, the other behind, watching his opponents as they circled around him like a pack of wolves. I wanted to call out, to tell them it was misdirection and attacking from the blind spot would be useless, but held back. There was no telling what he would do if his ruse was discovered.

If he’d been able to fight four people off effortlessly while holding back, I didn’t want to consider how things would play out if he started fighting for real. Seasoned heroes had been cut down by this guy’s claws, after all.

I’d known who he was from the moment I’d seen them. To anyone who followed cape news as closely as I did, they were a dead giveaway.

Jason Maxwell. 32 years old. Bounty set at one million US dollars. Wanted on three counts of murder and suspected of many more besides. In the villain community he went by Slash, a name that deliberately called attention to how he liked to use his claws, and that was a running theme in his infamous career. Styling himself as a murderous brute, relying on no strategy but the impossibly sharp black blades he could project in place of his fingers to cut through anything that stood in his way.

It was working a charm here. Ashika and the others were far too wary of his claws to approach him from the front, so they were constantly trying to get at his flanks. But with the way he was turning non-stop to keep them all in sight, it was tough for them to find a good opening. They’d feint to test his defences, and he’d react every time, moving faster than they could hope to dodge if they got too close, swiping with blades that had evidently parted one of the train’s metal railings like butter.

He was selling himself as a man with superhuman reactions, and they were buying it.

I couldn’t help feeling frustrated. He was dangerous, but beatable. If just one of those who’d stayed to confront him kept up with the latest research, let alone the news, they’d have been able to see through him instantly and changed strategy.

Every person had one power, but that didn’t mean there was only one way they could use it. Graviton could use his power to telekinetically lift objects around him, but he could also grab hold of his costume and lift himself to give the appearance of flight. What people generally didn’t know was he needed an extra sense to facilitate his power, something he described as a ‘second sight’ that let him visualise the ‘gravity waves’ around him and manipulate them for his desired effect. It was an aspect of his power he couldn’t turn off. It made keeping a secret identity stressful enough that he’d given up trying.

Because power-granted senses came with a visual cue when in use. No exceptions.

In Graviton’s case, it was a faint golden ring over his eyes that almost looked like a pair of lensless hipster glasses.

For Jason Maxwell, it was the scarlet glow in his irises.

I needed a plan.