(THE “S” STANDS FOR HOPE) CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT: EIDOLON

The city looked smaller from up here.

It hadn’t, once. Brockton Bay used to feel… dense. Like everything was packed too tight, ready to break if something pushed in the wrong place. He remembered what it had been like down there, the tension, the sense that things were always one step from getting worse. That had been part of why they chose it in the first place.

Now it just looked like a place people lived.

Lights in apartment windows. Cars moving through streets that had been patched and repaved. Cranes standing idle for the night. Empty spaces where buildings used to be, and newer ones that didn’t quite belong yet.

It was… fine.

That was the word that kept coming to mind, and it bothered him more than it should have.

David hovered there for a while longer than he meant to, arms loose at his sides, the wind tugging slightly at his hair and clothes. No one looked up. He was just another dark shape in the sky.

Once, that would have meant something. He could still remember the way people used to look when they realized he was there. Relief first, then expectation, like the problem was already solved just because he’d shown up.

He tried to picture it happening now and came up blank.

The thought sat badly in his chest.

He drifted lower without really deciding to, dropping through layers of cold air until the details became clearer: brick and glass and patched concrete, and a rooftop with an old HVAC unit rattling to itself. Someone had left a folding chair out there, sun-faded and cracked along its sides.

He touched down without a sound.

For a second he just stood there, hands in his pockets, staring out over the street below. Someone laughed somewhere, distant, carried up by the wind. A door slammed. Music, EDM and tinny.

Life went on.

Of course it did.

It always had.

He exhaled and rubbed a hand over his face.

“Right,” he muttered to no one.

He shifted his weight, already half-deciding to leave. This had been… what, exactly? Nostalgia? Guilt? Some instinct pulling him back to where things had gone wrong, as if standing here again would make any of it clearer?

It didn’t.

If anything it made things worse.

He’d thought—no, he hadn’t thought anything. That was the problem. He’d come here without a reason and now he was standing on a random rooftop in a city that had already moved on.

Superman would have known what to do with this. With the world. With himself.

David huffed out something that might have been a laugh, though it came out humorless.

“Yeah,” he said under his breath. “Of course he would.”

He pushed off the rooftop… and stopped.

There was a prickle at the edge of his awareness, something brushing against the senses he kept half-active without thinking. It wasn't a direct threat, nothing sharp or immediate, but enough to catch his attention.

He stilled, hovering a few inches above the concrete again, and let the feeling settle.

Insects.

A lot of them.

This wasn't random, either. There was a pattern to it, a loose net cast wide and then tightening, their formation drawing inward toward him. Curious. 

He didn’t bother looking for the master. He could feel them well enough.

He let out a breath and straightened, rolling his shoulders once as he reached, almost absentmindedly, for a different thinker power. The shift came easily, thoughts aligning, expanding outward, and details snapping into focus with a clarity that bordered on uncomfortable.

He turned his head slightly, gaze tracking toward the edge of the rooftop and beyond, into the night.

There.

A figure crossing the gap between buildings, landing light, already moving again. Small, quick, yet controlled in a way that spoke of practice rather than raw power.

He watched her approach without moving.

If she was hostile, he would deal with it.

The certainty came automatically, the way it always had, despite the doubt still plaguing him.

The insects tightened their circle, and he almost smiled.

“Go on,” he murmured, too quiet for anyone without powers to hear. “You’ve come this far.”

The figure slowed as she got closer, seemingly watching him the same way he was watching her.

Smart.

He could see her properly now. Her costume was dark, form-fitting, and intentionally intimidating, with the insects almost blanketing her form only adding to it. There was no hesitation in the way she moved, even with him standing out in the open like this.

Recognition slid into place with the ease of the borrowed power still active in his thoughts.

Skitter.