Dylan was fuming when he left the station. It seemed like every goddamn person had it out for him. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? He was trying to be a better person. Could people tell? Were they subconsciously picking up on that, thinking it was weakness? It was certainly starting to seem that way.

  He pushed through the crowds, trying to hurry back home. It didn’t help much, but Dylan wasn’t in the mood to be considerate at the moment. If people didn’t want to get bumped, they could move.

  Was this some sort of punishment from the universe? Did karma actually exist? Or was there some super, somebody with the power to manipulate events targeting him? Dylan immediately dismissed that thought as unlikely. It wasn’t impossible, but somebody who could do that could kill him outright pretty easily, not to mention capture him.

  It seemed like he was just unlucky. He swore, as he bumped into the person in front of him. Why had they stopped moving? He went to step around, and ran into somebody else. He turned. All around him, people were stopped.

  Dylan tried to push his way between two people, but they wouldn’t budge. He scowled, and looked around, trying to find a way out of the crowd. What had happened? Was there a car accident?

  He tried to listen for sounds of a commotion, but he couldn’t hear … anything. In fact, there were almost no sounds. Normally, the thrum and buzz of the city was constant, an ever present background that permeated throughout its entirety.

  It was, for the first time since Dylan arrived, absent. He felt a chill run down his spine when he realized. What was happening?

  Spotting an opening, he managed to squeeze his way between two motionless people. He couldn’t move them at all. It was like they were frozen. He emerged out onto the street, and briefly, his panic spiked into alarm, before he saw that the cars on the road were also motionless.

  Dylan took a closer look, and realized that, in addition to the stillness, everything looked off. It was as if it was all covered in a faint gray haze. He didn’t notice it, at first, but now that he’d seen it, it was apparent that the weird coloring was everywhere.

  Suddenly, a sound broke the silence. Dylan spun, and saw somebody else, moving about in the frozen crowd. They were waving their arms.

  “Hey, hey, somebody, what's going on?”

  It was a middle aged woman, an office lady, judging by her attire. Dylan wandered over. It seemed like she was just as confused as he was. She spotted him, and immediately turned her attention to Dylan.

  “Kid, what’s happening? Are you doing this?”

  Dylan shook his head.

  “I have no idea what’s happening. I was walking along, and then, boom, I bumped into somebody. At first, I thought they were just walking slowly, but then I looked around, and everyone was frozen. I barely managed to squeeze between a few of them.”

  The woman didn’t really seem to hear him.

  “I tried to call the police, but my phone isn’t working. I couldn’t get a connection!”

  Dylan was taken aback by that. The thought of calling for help hadn’t even crossed his mind. He supposed that it should have, since he was supposed to be a non-powered civilian, but his time as a super, however brief, was hard to shake.

  He took a look around.

  “You’re going to have to look for a gap, if you want to get out. I don’t think we can move them.”

  She still looked shaken up, but it seemed that having somebody else in a similar situation provided at least some level of comfort.

  “Uh, ok, ok.” said the woman.

  She started scanning the people around her, but, as if she remembered something urgent, she turned back to Dylan.

  “Don’t go anywhere, ok?” she said.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” replied Dylan.

  The woman spent the next minute or so looking for a way out. She ended up finding a spot that looked promising, but couldn’t manage to squeeze through it. She struggled with it for a few seconds, and then looked at Dylan imploringly. He walked over.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

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  “Just try and move them, please?

  Dylan put his hands on a man in a business suit, and started gently pushing. Nothing. He pushed harder, and the man still didn’t budge. He took a deep breath, and planted his feet on the ground, before pushing as hard as he could on the man.

  It was like he was trying to push over a skyscraper with his bare hands. Eventually, he had to give up. Dylan turned and looked at the woman.

  “Sorry, Lady, but I can’t move him. You’ll have to try and climb over, or wait for whatever's happening here to stop.”

  Seeing her expression slowly creep back towards raw panic, Dylan amended his statement.

  “Or maybe not. Maybe heroes or the police will be here soon, to sort everything out.”

  At that, he flashed a smile, though it felt weak and unconvincing. It seemed like it was enough for the office lady, however, because she started to calm down.

  Dylan spun at the sound of someone clearing their throat. He caught sight of a man, or, as he looked closer, what appeared to be a teenager, likely a few years older than Dylan. The young man was looking around cautiously.

  “My name’s Alan” the man said.

  “Dylan”.

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Nope. Everyone just froze, all of a sudden.”

  Alan looked around, and sighed.

  “Figures. Well, we better-”

  They were interrupted by the sound of footsteps. They whirled, and saw a man walking calmly down the street. He wore a gray pinstripe suit, and a short tophat perched on his head. The man turned, a surprised expression on his masked face, as if he wasn’t expecting them to be there.

  “Hello!” Said the masked man.

  “I’m terribly sorry for the disturbance, but there was something that I had to do, and so”

  He swept his hands at the scene around them.

  Dylan just watched, tense as a coiled spring.

  The masked man continued to speak.

  “Ahh, but not to worry! It will all be back to normal again rather soon!”

  Suddenly, the masked man ducked. A terrible sound filled the air, as a thin line of red rocketed over the man's head at incredible speed. It impacted one of the frozen buildings, unleashing an explosion of pressure that threw Dylan from his feet, slamming him into a car.

  It took a few moments for Dylan to come back to himself. His head was spinning, and his vision was somewhat blurry. His eyes slowly roamed, searching for the masked man. He found the suited man looking in the direction that the red thing had shot out from, a small frown on his face.

  “It seems that the long arm of the law has finally caught up to me. I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have to excuse myself.”

  Dylan saw another streak of red flying through the air at a near impossible speed. He started to move his hands to cover his head, but he was too slow. Panicked, Dylan realized that he wasn’t going to make it in time. Just as he prepared for the worst, he felt a wave of disorientation.

  Sound filled his ears, but it wasn’t the terrible booming that he had expected. Instead, it was the buzzing of traffic, the hum of people talking, and the idling engine of cars.

  He jumped, as a voice yelled, just above his head.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing! Get the fuck off the road, motherfucker! You’re going to get run over!”

  Dylan scrambled to his feet, startled. He quickly identified the person who had yelled at him. It was a middle aged man, leaned out the window of his car. At first, Dylan didn’t understand why the man was shouting. Quickly replaying the last few moments in his mind, he realized that he’d been thrown against a car by the first blast. Had everything unfrozen?

  Dylan looked around. There were no signs that anything extraordinary had taken place there at all. Nothing. Everybody was moving, traffic was crawling along. No buildings were damaged, and there wasn’t any blood or debris on the ground. Had he just imagined the whole thing?

  The incensed man shouted something at him, causing Dylan to lose his train of thought. He was out in traffic, wasn’t he? Dylan started to stammer out an apology, when he felt somebody grab his arm.

  “Sorry about my friend, sir. He took a hit in the head earlier, and he’s still pretty disoriented” Alan said, as he dragged Dylan out of the street.

  The man just glared at them, as he rolled up his window.

  “Are you ok?” Alan asked.

  Dylan nodded, and then spoke.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “I think that the guy in the hat was probably a villain. Whatever he did to freeze everybody, it didn’t work on us, for some reason, and I don’t entirely know why. Regardless, I think that somebody was chasing him, a hero, probably, and they didn’t get frozen either. I suspect that he rectified whatever caused us to remain unfrozen, after the first blast, and then we all woke back up at the same time as everybody else, only they don’t remember being frozen at all.”

  Dylan took a moment to think about that. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. He looked around for the office lady, the one that also hadn’t been frozen, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Had she been swept away with the crowds? He shook his head, trying to throw off a growing sense of fatigue.

  “Well, Alan, that sucked. I’m glad to be done with it now. I’m going to go home, I think.”

  “Alright, then, Dylan. It was nice to meet you, although I wish we’d done so in more pleasant circumstances. I’ll see you around.”

  Dylan barely heard the teen, though. He was too focused on putting one foot in front of the other, and too distracted by the long absent, but familiar aching of his body. It had been a hell of a day. Surely, it couldn’t get any worse than this, right?