Hero by Day

Chapter 20 - Rising Action

"I cannot preach hate and warfare when I am a disciple of peace and love!"

~ Diana Prince (Wonder Woman)

It had been a week since the incident that left poor little Aden Dashner in the hospital. I'd visited him once, when he was first admitted into the hospital. He had been unconscious at the time, so I just dropped off my flowers and candy on the bedside table. It would've been weird explaining the presence of a guy he'd only just met, especially since he didn't know that I'd been the one who saved him.

I had only been blocks away from the crash. Eric alerted me over my earpiece and I came as soon as I could. It didn't take a genius to figure out Delinquent had been the one who derailed the truck. Eric's security camera footage proved it.

She claimed that she hadn't seen the two boys until the last second, when she attempted to turn the truck around. By then it had been too late.

I believed her on that end, but she still almost cost them their lives. Thank goodness the rest of the road was clear of pedestrians, just some parked cars.

She also claimed that the truck wasn't bound for the chemical waste plant that Paramount Pharmaceuticals claimed it to be. If she was right, they'd been trying to store the special ingredient in the drugs that gave Delinquent and countless other teenagers their super human abilities. They'd been trying to save it and perhaps make more people like her.

Her intentions were noble, stopping the truck, but her methods were a bit questionable. She injured two civilians, which was not the most direct path to becoming something other than a villain.

I knew that she was eager to prove herself to me and to the rest of the city. She was recorded stopping a burglary and helping a cat down from a high tree, two petty acts of heroism that were a small step to reforming.

After she saved me from Andromeda (who'd been absent for over two weeks now), she seemed determined to be a hero, not a vigilante villain that the public believed her to be.

Maybe she had been partly responsible for Daniel's death in the prospect that she distracted me long enough for the Clown Guy to injure him, but she hadn't known. I couldn't keep blaming her for something she didn't mean to do, especially since she was trying as hard as she knew how to be good.

But Aden waking up from the hospital was another story. He had been buried under most of the truck, somehow not crushed by the hundreds of pounds weighing down on him. The part I was most concerned about was the green liquid the truck had been carrying in barrels, the stuff that had broken out in the crash and covered Aden and the sophomore kid who'd bullied him earlier, though Aden was completely covered.

The ADD and ADHD medication that the company had made only made about five percent of its takers develop superhuman abilities, even if those were just the ones who filed claims. I had a sinking suspicion that the drugs only caused such a small amount of people to gain powers because the containment in them that gave the kids powers was minimal. Having direct contact with the green liquid would certainly have its repercussions.

The sophomore boy who'd bullied him earlier (I'd learned since that his name was Dylan) did not suffer any broken bones, so he only stayed at the hospital for a day to make sure all was fine. He showed up to school on the next Monday totally fine, exaggerating his wounds to his friends for attention.

Aden's appearance at school did not go as unnoticed as he might've wanted. After saving Dylan from the brute of the attack and then being pulled from the rubble by White Lightning and Delinquent, Aden was becoming quite popular.