WARNING: M RATED

  Moaning.

  That was the first sound I heard on my first morning of college.

  Not birds, not arms, not the awkward ctter of someone unpacking boxes. Just wet, unfiltered, real moaning. It cut through the sleep haze like a knife and slid under my skin before I even opened my eyes.

  I blinked once. Twice.

  The room was still dim, barely lit by the strip of orange-pink morning bleeding through the cracked blinds. My back was to the wall, tucked under a bnket that was too thin and smelled like whatever detergent my mom still insisted on using.

  The dorm wasn’t big. Two twin beds. One desk. One closet. One roommate.

  And that roommate?

  She was currently getting her brains fucked out two beds over.

  I turned my head — slow, cautious, breath caught in my throat. My heart thudded, sharp and fast.

  Kira.

  That was her name. She'd barely said ten words to me st night when we moved in, just nodded once, tossed her duffel on the bed, and disappeared for most of the evening. I’d figured she was shy. Or bitchy. Or maybe both.

  Turns out she was neither.

  She was… wild.

  The girl straddling her had a dancer’s body — blonde hair falling in loose waves, her hips grinding down like she owned the whole damn room. Kira's hands were clutching her thighs, head tipped back, mouth open in a soundless gasp that I felt in my chest.

  The girl leaned in, capturing the Kira's earlobe between her teeth, sucking and nibbling. Kira arched into her touch, a choked moan escaping her lips

  I was frozen. Completely still. Not blinking.

  They hadn’t noticed me. Or they had — and just didn’t care.

  I didn’t know which was worse.

  The blonde dipped lower, kissing Kira’s neck, sucking at the skin right beneath her ear. Kira’s nails raked across her back, and the sound she made — fuck — I clenched my thighs together without thinking.

  I should’ve looked away.

  Should’ve announced myself.

  But I didn’t.

  I watched.

  The blonde bombshell was totally going to town on Kira's pussy, eating her out like she was starving for it. The sounds were insane — all this like, lewd slurping and sucking, and Kira was like, totally losing it. Her back was arched off the bed, tits bouncing as she ground her cunt against the blonde's face.

  I could see everything, even though the blonde's hair was like, a shimmery curtain hiding most of the action.And something inside me shifted.

  It wasn’t just arousal. I mean, yeah, I was soaked. But it was more than that.

  I snuck a hand into my shorts and started rubbing my own clit — it was dripping wet and the squelching? — it was louder than my own moans i tried to stifle with my mouth bit hard on the pillow.

  I tried to imagine that day.

  When we were finally alone in her house. The way she licked my chest—the nipples hardened at the touch of her tongue.

  When my face was buried in her ass—and her's in my pussy. Her tongue pushing through my walls while shoving two fingers in my backdoor.

  "Lena—" I squirted way too hard as the release stained my shorts and my bed sheets.

  "FUCK" I closed my eyes and muttered to myself and hoped that they didn't notice me. But the moaning only grew louder and louder.

  Eventually, it stopped. Kira ughed — low, sultry — and the blonde whispered something that made her giggle like they hadn’t just shaken the whole damn bunk. I didn’t move until they slipped out together, naked but casual, like this was just a Tuesday morning.

  Once the door clicked shut, I exhaled and peeled myself out from under the sheets. My thighs stuck together. My cheeks burned. I could smell the musky scent of my release.

  I stumbled into the shared bathroom, locked the door, and flipped the light on.

  There she was.

  Me.

  Tanned skin. Short bck hair that stuck up in weird little angles from sleep. Slender frame, almost too ft to fill out the oversized college hoodie I slept in. Five-foot-seven and still somehow felt like I took up too much space, even when I was invisible.

  I stared at myself, searching for something.

  Some sign that I belonged here.

  My name is Cami Reyes. First in my family to go to college. Got in on a schorship — the “urban exceptional student” kind. Which is code for: we don’t usually let people like you in here, but congrats! I grew up in a cramped apartment with bars on the windows and cousins packed in like furniture.

  I never felt powerful. Or pretty. Or special.

  I was the quiet girl. The gay one. The one who got crushes on her friends and never said shit because she didn’t want to ruin it.

  But being here… it was supposed to change something.

  Her name was Lena.

  We met at orientation. She had this dirty-blonde ponytail, sharp cheekbones, and wore tank tops like she was trying to convert me on sight. She saw me. Not just “oh, you’re queer too?” but like she really looked at me and liked what she saw.

  Lena made me feel bold. Wanted. Seen.

  It started with flirting. Then coffee. Then nights where she’d sneak into my dorm and kiss me quiet, slow, her hands slipping under my shirt like she was discovering treasure.

  We didn’t make it public. Not yet. I think we liked having something just for us.

  That morning — the st one — we ditched our first css. Said fuck it. Campus was already buzzing. People shouting, phones out. Something was going down downtown. A fight. One of them. Heroes. Vilins. Who knew the difference anymore?

  Lena pulled me into the communal bathroom, locked the door behind us.

  “Let them fight,” she whispered. “We’ve got better things to do.”

  Her mouth was on mine before I could even answer.

  In a frenzy of lust, our clothes flew off, scattering across the dingy bathroom floor.

  Her nails raked into the flesh of my hips, pulling my body flush against her own naked, yearning form.

  I squeezed the firm globes of her ass, pulling her harder against me as our hips ground together. Lena's fingers tangled in my hair — tugging lightly.

  A wanton moan escaped my lips, swallowed by her greedily as she backed me up against the tiled wall.

  The cold surface pressed against my bare back, a stark contrast to the scorching heat radiating off our entwined bodies.

  A finger teased along my slit, gathering the slick arousal before plunging deep inside my clenching channel.

  I cried out, my head falling back against the wall as she began to pump her finger in and out, curling it just right to hit that perfect spot.

  But then the walls shook.

  A sound like thunder. Screams outside.

  Then — BOOM.

  The ceiling cracked.

  We didn’t even have time to get dressed.

  It was Riotfre and Oblivion Jack. Two supers. One “hero,” one “vilin.” That’s how they sold it, anyway. Looked more like two gods destroying the world over a grudge.

  One wrong move, and the building took the hit.

  Our building.

  Lena’s eyes widened. “Cami—!”

  A bst ripped through the east wing.

  Gss. Fire. Blood.

  I tried to grab her.

  The heat hit me like a wall. My ears rang. The st thing I saw was Lena’s mouth open in a scream I couldn’t hear.

  And then — something hit my chest.

  Not debris.

  Not a person.

  It was… glowing. Shaped like a heart. No bigger than a plum. It hovered, pulsed, and smmed into me with a jolt that lit my entire body up from the inside.

  Everything went white.

  I fainted.

  They found her body the next morning.

  Or what was left of it.

  I remember sitting in the ER, wrapped in a scratchy silver bnket, blinking blood and ash out of my eyes while the nurse asked me my name for the fifth time. I couldn’t speak. My mouth tasted like copper and smoke.

  They said it was “an unfortunate casualty of colteral damage.” That Riotfre and Oblivion Jack had been “redirected mid-combat.” Like that expined why my girlfriend’s ribcage was pried open like a broken birdcage. Why her jaw was halfway across the rubble, teeth scattered like pearls on bck concrete.

  I wasn’t supposed to see it.

  But I did.

  I slipped away from the triage tent while everyone was screaming, crying, searching. I walked through what used to be the east wing of Sandhurst University, barefoot and dazed, and found her among the bodies.

  Lena.

  Or pieces of her.

  Her hand still wore the bracelet I made her. The one with our initials carved into pstic.

  I dropped to my knees, shaking. The ground was hot, steaming, stinking of blood and melted flesh. My fingers touched her cheek — or what was left of it — and I screamed.

  Not a sob.

  A full, fucking scream.

  One of those ugly, throat-ripping, animal sounds that doesn't care who's listening. I didn’t even realize I’d colpsed until someone pulled me back. My nails left crescent-shaped blood stains on the pavement.

  They tried to sedate me.

  I fought.

  They said I was in shock. That trauma did things to the brain. That I wouldn’t want to remember the details ter.

  But I do remember.

  I remember everything.

  ONE YEAR LATER

  it still hasn’t gone away.

  Not the screaming. Not the smell. Not the way her fingers twitched even after the medics told me she was gone.

  They buried what was left of her in a box no bigger than a microwave.

  Closed casket.

  I didn’t speak at the funeral. Couldn’t.

  I spent the next three months in therapy — then stopped showing up. Tried pills. Stopped eating. Stopped trying. My mom begged me to come home. I didn’t. Couldn’t stand the idea of being somewhere Lena had never been.

  I got a transfer to a different school — smaller, out in the sticks. No capes flying overhead. No alien attacks. Just trees and dirt and silence.

  But grief isn’t something you move past.

  It’s a virus. It mutates.

  It makes a home in your bones and waits.

  Now I wake up every morning with that thing in my chest. That low hum.

  The doctors said I came into the ER with a strange object lodged near my heart. Some kind of foreign tech. They removed it during surgery… or tried to.

  I know they’re lying.

  Because sometimes when I’m alone, the mirror flickers.

  Lights short out when I cry.

  I dream of fire — and when I wake, my sheets smell like smoke.

  And worst of all?

  Sometimes, I swear I hear her voice. Lena. Whispering my name through the walls.

  This isn’t grief.

  This is something else.

  And I think it’s waking up.

  It was supposed to be a normal fucking day.

  I had my earbuds in, pylist lowkey fire, hoodie up, hoodie down, depends on the aisle. I was finally starting to eat again — real food, not just those protein bars that taste like drywall and shame.

  There was a weird kind of peace in grocery shopping, y’know? Just walking, existing. Nobody asking questions. Nobody looking at me like I was “that girl” from Sandhurst.

  I was halfway through frozen foods, staring at some overpriced dumplings, when the first boom hit.

  The ground shook.

  My stomach flipped.

  Another boom — louder, sharper. The gss freezer doors cracked, arms shrieked, the lights went out. Somewhere outside, something roared. Not human.

  “Fuck,” I whispered, frozen in pce.

  People ran. Screaming. One dy pushed a shopping cart through the exit doors like she was driving a battering ram. I ducked behind a checkout counter, heart going nuclear, chest tight.

  Then I saw it.

  Through the cracked storefront window — two figures cshing in mid-air, heatwaves rippling behind every movement.

  Dreadburn — the vilin who torched half of Clevend st year — all red-glow rage and spiked armor.

  And facing him?

  A glowing figure in white and silver, with wings like sor fres. Halo Sentinel.

  One of the “good guys.”

  The crowd around them was scattering. Cars flipped. Gss rained down like glitter from hell. Another punch, another shockwave — and suddenly I was back there again.

  Back in the ruins.Back holding Lena’s body.Back in the blood and rubble and screams.

  I covered my ears. Screamed into my sleeve.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  The sound crawled inside me — too much, too loud, too soon.

  Everything started to shake. But it wasn’t the building anymore.

  It was me.

  A faint hum beneath my skin, building. Vibrating. My body started to buzz like a subwoofer under my flesh. My vision blurred — sharp edges, warping light, voices slowing down like a broken tape.

  I stumbled out the front door, into the chaos, gasping.

  And then he nded in front of me.

  Halo Sentinel.

  The superhero. The golden boy. Floating just inches off the ground, cape fluttering in the windless air.

  “Get to safety,” he said, his voice too calm, too clean. “It’s not safe here.”

  His eyes flicked toward me. I don’t know what he saw.

  Maybe just a terrified girl.

  But I didn’t see a hero.

  I saw another god in the sky pying with people’s lives.

  I saw the wristband again — Lena’s.

  I saw blood.

  And something snapped.

  The sound that came out of me wasn’t human. It wasn’t even a scream.

  It was a pulse.

  A ripple of pure fury and grief that tore out of my chest and smmed into him like a freight train made of shattered violins and broken dreams.

  He flew backward. Crashed through a parked SUV like paper. Arms screamed as the vehicle flipped, metal bent inwards. Gss shattered around him in a perfect circle.

  People screamed.

  “Is that—?”

  “What the hell was that!?”

  “Was she one of them!?”

  I backed up, hands over my mouth. My fingers were glowing. The air around me vibrated like a heartbeat on steroids.

  Halo Sentinel wasn’t dead. But he sure as hell wasn’t getting up quickly.

  A few others dropped from the sky — more heroes. Cleanup crew. Capes and armor and fshing lights.

  “HEY!” one shouted, pointing at me.

  Another aimed something.

  Panic took over.

  I turned. I ran.Down the street. Over fences. Through alleyways. My boots barely touched the ground. The world behind me sounded like a warzone — sirens, screams, static.

  I didn’t stop until my legs gave out in a dark alley between two apartment buildings. I colpsed against a dumpster, chest heaving, ears ringing, heart glowing with that strange… thump thump thump energy.

  I’d hurt someone.

  Not a vilin.

  Not a mugger.

  A “hero.”

  I curled into myself.

  Crying.

  Sobbing.

  Laughing.

  Because deep down, I already knew what this meant.

  I wasn’t normal.

  I wasn’t safe.

  And they were going to come for me now.