When daylight finally dawned on Parton City, it shone only on ghosts and memories of a civilization. The appearance of what the world was calling the first Class-S+ threat had left little more than rubble and ruin. It had taken the most powerful of Earth’s heroes working together just to slow the monster, and their efforts had done little help.

  Only a handful of the shelters remained even partially intact. Most were piles of rubble and detritus. The majority of survivors had been those who’d gotten underground and clear of the storm. The Class-S+ had been devastating, but it wasn’t the actual monster that did the real damage. It had been the storm that was summoned. According to the reports, the rain from the hurricane at its peak carried the kinetic force of a .45 caliber rifle with each drop. It had decimated nearly everything it touched

  It was estimated that over five million people had been killed, nearly two-thirds of the city’s population. Killed. Not lost, and not died. Killed. Humanity was under attack by forces they didn’t understand. The heroes understood it, and so did most governments, but the news media framed these attacks as “disasters” and "tragedies."

  She understood why. People would rather not accept the truth. It was easier to think this was some random unavoidable anomaly. But that wasn’t what was going on. There was a pattern. Class-S threats didn’t show up just anywhere. Even normal monsters didn’t. They appeared in cities and towns, with Class-S monsters only ever appearing in metropolises. That showed intent. Which meant the truth was these weren’t disasters. They were attacks, and humanity was at war against a threat they didn’t understand. And everyone had a role in war, whether they wanted to or not.

  Eliana, or as she was called in costume, Caladrius, was one of thousands of emergency responders and volunteers who were searching for any life left in the city. She was with the Global Hero Organization, the GHO. Technically she wasn’t a superhero. A metahuman, yes, but she wasn’t useful in a fight.

  She was an aux, a sideliner, a filler cape with no marketing and no fanfare. Just a civic worker in a costume. Specifically, she was a healer. She wasn’t a powerful one, though. That’s why she ended up in the aux. Her healing was limited and costly. If she healed too much, she’d be out for a full day of recovery. So she focused on stabilizing wounds and then helping the injured receive more traditional medical attention. Maybe some would consider her a superhero, but she never did. She was an everyday hero. Not much different than an EMT or firefighter.

  Besides healing, she could make objects float a small distance into the air. It was less taxing than her healing, and as long as she paced herself, she could go all day using it. That was it, though. Aside from the typical inhuman reaction speed and balance being an Epsilon-class metahuman granted, all she had was a weak healing power and the power to make things float a few feet in the air. It was hardly superhero material, though it’d be ideal for a circus act, she imagined.

  Being weak was a curse, but she’d come to see it as a blessing just as much. She knew she was limited in what she could do to help. She’d had to come to grips with that early on in her career. The most powerful heroes hadn’t learned that lesson. They were used to always being on the winning side, and they were used to being able to make a difference.

  This was the first time for many of them where their best wasn’t enough. They bore the responsibilities they always had, but now they suddenly found themselves being crushed under the weight.

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  She’d seen some of those powerful superheroes earlier when she’d been transported here. Even through the masks, she could see the looks in their eyes that said everything. The heroes had lost this fight. They’d been more prepared than ever, and the faceless enemy had thrown something at them that made it all pointless.

  Every city and country in the world was looking at the ruins of Parton and wondering the same thing: What would we do if we’re next? Will the heroes fail us too?

  No one had the answers, and Caladrius wouldn’t fool herself into thinking she would ever be the one to have a solution. All she could do was help pick up the pieces and hope the real heroes would find a way.

  She laid a hand on a large chunk of concrete rubble. With an intuitive bit of effort—she still couldn’t find the right words to explain it—she altered gravity’s hold on the stone.

  This job bothered her. It wasn’t the first time she’d been placed on search-and-rescue duty. Her power made her well suited for the job, but she never felt comfortable doing it. It reminded her too much of the night she had gotten her powers, when she’d woken up to the building falling around her. She could still vividly recall the terror as she crawled out from the rubble and found her mother trapped by the debris. She’d spent an hour hopelessly trying to get her mother out, clawing and tearing at the concrete beam that pinned her mother down until her muscles were torn and the skin of her hands had been scraped raw and bloody.

  Then Eliana snapped. It had been the most painful thing in her life. Nothing had ever come close. She’d thought she’d died and gone to hell. But when it was over, she knew what she was and what she could do. She was able to lift the debris and heal her mother’s wounds. It was the first time she had to accept that she couldn’t bring back the dead. No matter how much she healed the body, she couldn’t return a soul that was lost.

  How many children would be left without their mothers or fathers after this attack? How many parents had lost that title? How many people would she find, only to realize it was too late for her to help?

  Someone had to do it, but she loathed this duty. It chipped away at her humanity, one body at a time. In the end, it was worth it if she could find at least one life she could save. If she could just do that, she’d trade away those scraps of humanity gladly.

  As the rubble lifted, her eyes caught a glint of pale green. She pushed the concrete slab that floated in the air. Despite being weightless, the stone still took quite a lot of effort to get moving. She only canceled the pull of gravity, not the mass itself.

  Once the rubble was clear, she knelt down and picked up the object that had caught her eye. It was a beautiful polished green stone. She wasn’t familiar with precious stones, but she was pretty sure it was Jade. This one was a polished, shimmering rock, but emeralds were more like green diamonds. She had no clue if the thing was valuable, but it was mesmerizing.

  It was surreal. To find something so pristine and breathtaking among a city of ruin and misery.

  Protocol would be to record where the item was discovered before turning it in. But chances were pretty good that whoever owned this stone was dead. This building was only a few blocks from the hospital turned shelter that had been destroyed. Nearly everyone inside had been killed. A woman—an unregistered super—had managed to save some of the people in the building. That was only a few hundred out of tens of thousands, though.

  She stared at the stone, transfixed by its beauty. Something about the stone made her want to hold onto it. It was a feeling as impossible to describe as using her power was. She slipped the stone into her costume’s utility pocket. Hopefully it wouldn’t get her into any trouble.