Acceleration

Chapter 34: No Way Around It

The heat blazed down onto the crowd, the June sun baking the football field until the air itself seemed to shimmer. The black robes of the graduating class trapped the warmth like an oven, sweat slicking the faces of every student in their seats. Erin shifted uncomfortably, the cloth clinging to his back. The last time he'd felt this kind of suffocating heat had been a month ago, at the funeral.

He caught a glimpse of Tommy across the rows of chairs, craning his neck and waving wildly. His cap wobbled precariously, threatening to tumble off with each gesture. Erin looked away. He didn't want to see him, not now, not like this. The wound his mother left behind hadn't healed. It hadn't even scabbed. Every minute of every day, the ache was there, hollowing him out from the inside.

"I'm sorry."
He'd heard it more times than he could count since April. Jessica had said it first, pulling his trembling body off the riverbank. Then Lisa whispered it when he woke in the lab. Marlin. Tommy. Even Liz.

But no apology could touch the truth. They hadn't drifted from him, he had drifted from them. He didn't want to, not really. All he wanted was to collapse into Liz's arms and let himself break. But instead, he'd built walls. He still spoke to her, yes, but the laughter, the kisses, the hugs, gone. No more spinning her off her feet with his impossible strength. No more warmth. He kept her, like everyone else, at arm's length.

Jessica was the only one who matched his grief. He found her often at the warehouse, passed out with a bottle clutched to her chest. She wasn't even related to Tanya by blood, yet they had called each other sisters. Her loss was raw too, and she drowned hers differently.

When his name echoed from the principal's lips, Erin rose on autopilot. His legs carried him to the stage. He accepted his diploma, lifted it to the cameras with a practiced grin. But as the flash faded, so did the mask, and the emptiness surged back in.

Then came the toss. A cry rose from the crowd as caps filled the sky like a flock of blackbirds set free. Erin flung his own into the air, and for one second, he sped up time around himself, stretching out the moment. His final second as a high schooler lingered, his skin buzzing with electricity. But the charge faded, the caps fell, and the crushing weight of reality came roaring back down with them.

***

Erin slammed open the warehouse door later that night, skipping the grad party everyone else was buzzing about. He wasn't in the mood for soda cans and laughter. He wanted war.

In the corner, under a tarp, stood his obsession. He yanked the cloth away to reveal the whiteboard, his shrine to vengeance. Maps peppered with red circles, newspaper clippings with headlines screaming REVNID STRIKES AGAIN. String and pins crisscrossed like veins. It was a conspiracy theorist's fever dream—except every detail was real.

He booted up the computer on the desk, monitors lighting his tired face. Fingers clicked through windows of sound-wave data, stolen through the satellite access he'd pressured a drunk Jessica into handing over. If he and Revnid moved faster than sound, then their very footsteps would ripple across the sensors. He would find him.

Hours blurred. The police scanner on the desk chirped about robberies, break-ins, carjackings. He ignored it. Crime had soared in the weeks since the bridge fight, Hypersonic's absence noticed in every corner of the city. He no longer cared. The boy who once sprinted across rooftops to protect people had abandoned them.

A sudden stab pierced his chest, buckling his knees. Erin staggered back, gasping, his hand pressed to the ache. It wasn't a wound, it was rage. His accelerated blood hammered through his veins like a fire hose, tearing at the insides he once thought unbreakable. Jess had warned him: his own power was killing him. Internal bleeding. Capillaries burst under the strain of his fury.