I couldn't get out of that meeting fast enough. My mind was a storm of rage, confusion, and frustration, the weight of everything crashing down on me all at once. The heroes—broken and bruised, all of them were still clinging to some semblance of hope that we could stop the Nomu, that we could somehow fix this. But all I felt was the truth: we were too far gone.
The moment I walked out of that conference room, I felt suffocated. The faces of the people I called allies—heroes—staring at me with pity in their eyes, as if they could somehow understand the weight I carried. As if they could understand what it felt like to lose everything, only to be reborn into a world where nothing was what it seemed.
I wasn't the hero they wanted me to be. I wasn't even sure who I was anymore.
I walked faster, pushing through the glass doors and into the bitter night air. My mind buzzed with the echoes of their words, their questions, their demands. They didn't know anything. They didn't know what it was like to live a life haunted by things you could never erase.
My breathing was ragged, my chest tight with emotion I couldn't shake, and that's when I heard it—footsteps, soft but steady. Someone was following me. I didn't need to turn around to know who it was.
"Anos."
Zane's voice cut through the darkness like a blade. It was cold, distant, but I could hear the faint trace of concern beneath it.
I didn't stop. I couldn't. If I did, I might break. And I wasn't going to do that—not in front of anyone, especially not him.
But Zane wasn't going to let me go that easily. His footsteps quickened, and soon, he was beside me, matching my pace, his presence familiar and unsettling all at once.
"You're not going to talk about it, are you?" Zane's voice was low, but I could hear the edge in it, like he knew exactly what was going through my head.
I kept my eyes on the road ahead, my gaze sharp as I walked faster, but my fists clenched at my sides.
"I don't need to talk about it," I muttered, my voice rougher than I intended. "It's just a waste of time."
Zane scoffed, his footsteps never faltering. "That's your solution? Running away from everything, pretending it doesn't matter?"
I could feel the anger bubbling beneath my skin, a flame ready to ignite. "I'm not pretending it doesn't matter. I'm just tired of dealing with it. Tired of watching people—heroes, villains, whatever—they keep pretending like they can fix things when they don't even understand the first thing about what's really going on."
Zane didn't respond at first. We walked in silence for a few more moments, the city lights flickering in the distance, the wind carrying the faint sound of distant traffic. But I could feel his eyes on me, his judgment weighing heavily in the air.
Finally, he spoke again, his voice quieter, more introspective. "You think running from it will make it go away, don't you?"
I stopped walking then, spinning around to face him, my eyes flashing with a mixture of anger and pain. "You don't get it, Zane. You don't get what it's like to carry this burden. To be... reborn like this. I didn't choose this life. I didn't choose to come back and be the one everyone depends on."
Zane stood his ground, his expression unreadable, but I saw the flicker of something behind his eyes. It was like he understood what I was saying, but he wasn't going to let me off the hook.
"Then what do you want, Anos?" he asked, his tone almost cruel. "What do you want from all of this? You're not the person you were before, and I'm sure as hell not the person you think I am. But you're still running, still pushing everyone away like you did before. Why?"
I stared at him, every word hitting me like a punch to the gut. He was right. I wasn't the person I used to be. And maybe that was the problem.
"I'm not running," I whispered, my voice barely audible in the cool night air. "I'm surviving."
Zane's gaze softened for a brief moment, but the distance between us remained. He was right to be angry, but I wasn't sure I could give him the answers he wanted. The truth was, I didn't even know what I wanted anymore.
"You were always good at that," Zane said, his voice dripping with bitterness. "Surviving. Hell, I don't know if I even know who you are anymore, Anos. The boy I knew is gone, replaced by a ghost. A shadow of what could've been."
The words cut deeper than anything I'd felt in a long time, and I felt my chest tighten, a lump forming in my throat. He wasn't wrong. He wasn't wrong about any of it.
I clenched my jaw, trying to hold back the anger and the pain that threatened to overwhelm me. "And what do you want from me, Zane? To feel sorry for myself? To feel guilty for something I had no control over?"
Zane stepped closer, his eyes dark with frustration. "I want you to feel something, Anos. Anything. Because right now, you're nothing but a fucking shell of yourself. You can't keep pretending that everything is fine when it's clearly falling apart."
His words hit me like a slap to the face, and for a second, I wanted to scream. To tell him everything. To lash out. But I didn't. I couldn't. Not here. Not with him.
Instead, I turned away, walking into the shadows once more. "I don't have time for this. There's no place for feelings in a war like this. Not when people's lives are at stake."
I could hear Zane's footsteps behind me, but I didn't slow down. "You're wrong," he called after me, his voice tinged with the same bitterness that had colored every word. "And deep down, you know it."
I didn't answer him. Not because I didn't want to, but because I knew he was right.