Bolt

3| It's Sad When A Hero Turns Into A Villain.

"Bodies of twenty civilians lay scattered outside Serenade Cinema, viciously mutilated," a female news reporter said. Chyner had turned on the news app on her phone. "Shiver, the tenth-ranked hero and former member of The Mighty, was seen killing them in cold blood. What made him abandon his morals and turn against the same people he swore to protect?"

Shiver fought in many wars and received medals of honors for his feat. As the oldest superhero in the top ten, his peers adored and looked up to him.

The media compared me to Shiver in my early superhero days. We were both the first black heroes from our neighboring districts. He came from Potya; me from Mamba.

They tried putting us together; master and apprentice. It never worked out for many reasons. One being I never liked his boy scout attitude.

But after today, the media would have a field day with him. It wasn't hard to paint a false narrative, seeing as he came from a predominantly black neighborhood with a high crime rate.

I left Chyner and the old man at the snack bar, entering a coffee shop and hiding under a table. There were four other people inside. Two were white female baristas wearing dark green tee-shirts and black pants, sitting on the floor, hugging each other with tears running down their faces. The others were an elderly black woman in a wheelchair and a nurse crouched behind her. I assumed the latter was a nurse because of the light blue uniform she wore. Liberal Hospital nurses wore similar clothing.

I reached inside my pants' pocket and took out a small yellow plastic bottle labeled Enhancer. Unlike the pills I took last night, these helped brighten my mood. The screams and cries left me scared, and I craved excitement.

Swallowing the last two pills, the world turned dark, thrusting me into an abyss, and making my heart thump faster. My vision cleared after a few seconds, revealing a world full of life and color. Full and half rainbows stood around me with goblins in green suits at each end, protecting their pots of gold.

"What are you looking at, bitch!" the goblins said in unison, shaking their fists.

I was tripping hard, but this was the best shit I ever had. Creatures from every fantasy story I'd ever read walked around the coffee shop, snarling at me as if I was their enemy. But they didn't attack, which was in my best interest.

Theater B stood opposite me. Shiver went inside twenty minutes ago, and the cries from within had stopped. It had been a while since I found myself in a deadly situation, missing every big boss fight because of the evacuation protocol. This was my chance to witness one up close.

Shiver walked out of Theater B, icicles covering his beefy arms. Blood stained his dark skin and black super suit, looking like a serial killer from a horror movie. Even the bright orange lines on his suit weren't visible.

He glanced sideways, looking for something—someone? I couldn't tell, but the snarl on his face showed he wanted to spill more blood. He turned left and entered Theater C, walking out within seconds, screaming in anger before punching a wall and leaving a crack.

When he calmed down, he turned in my direction and grinned.

Shit! Without my powers, I wasn't fast enough to escape his ice projectiles. If this was yesterday, I would've let him kill me. I had lied to Officer Diana about not wanting to die. I had planned on swallowing every pill in my possession after the pain of remembering my mother became too much. Her coming to see me had saved my life. Now I didn't want to die.

Shiver headed towards me, taking his time. There was a sense of pride in his stroll, like he knew no one or nothing could stop him from killing me. He wasn't wrong.