The alley smelled like piss and burnt wiring.
Liam Carter pressed his back against the damp brick wall, his breath shallow, his knuckles white around the trash lid he'd ripped off a dumpster like it was cardboard. Across from him, the hero—no, the corporate-sponsored superhuman asset—landed with a crack of concrete. His silver-blue armor gleamed under the flickering streetlight, the logo of Neo-Gen Industries emblazoned across his chest. Frostbite.Mid-tier. Ice manipulation. And currently, very pissed off.
"You're just a street-level brawler," Frostbite sneered, flexing his fingers. A mist coiled around his gloves. "Why the hell are you making this difficult?"
Liam didn't answer. His ribs ached where the ice shard had clipped him earlier. Blood trickled down his temple. He was outmatched, outgunned, and—if he was being honest—stupid for stepping in at all.
But then again, he'd seen the kid.
Small. Maybe twelve. Cowering behind a fire escape when Frostbite's "collateral damage" shattered the storefront window. The official report would call it unavoidable. A necessary sacrifice in the war against anarchy.
Bullshit.
Frostbite lunged. Ice spikes shot from his palms, jagged and lethal. Liam ducked, rolled, felt the cold graze his shoulder. His muscles burned—his baseline strength was enough to flip a car, maybe, but not enough to outpace a trained Neo-Gen operative.
Then his fingers brushed Frostbite's wrist.
A jolt. Like grabbing a live wire.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then—
Cold.
Not the kind that bites. The kind that obeys.
Frostbite froze. (Pun unintended.) His eyes flickered to where Liam's skin touched his.
He knew.
Liam knew he knew.
Liam glanced at his watch - 9:37 PM as he pushed forward. The ice that erupted from his palm wasn't as refined as Frostbite's. It was wild. Desperate. A frozen maelstrom that slammed into the hero's chest and sent him crashing through a stack of pallets.
When the silence fell, Liam stared at the frost steaming off his fingertips. The power would last him a day—if he survived that long.
The neon sign of a 24-hour noodle shop flickered crimson across Liam's face as he shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets. The strange hum beneath his skin reminded him of liquid nitrogen circulating through his veins.
He flexed his fingers experimentally. A thin layer of frost spiderwebbed across a nearby fire hydrant.
"Shit."
A crash echoed from the alley he'd just left. Liam didn't need to turn around to know Frostbite was back on his feet. Corporate heroes had better recovery tech than most hospitals. Time to move.
He melted into the late-night Chinatown crowd, shoulders hunched, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low. The dumpling-scented steam from food stalls mixed with the acrid tang of hoverbike exhaust. Normal people doing normal things, completely unaware that one of Neo-Gen's attack dogs had just lost a fang.
————
The coffee in Liam's hand had gone cold two hours ago. He stared at the cracked screen of his burner phone, watching the fractured lines of the display flicker. The news alert blinked insistently:
<< Chinatown Chaos: Unregistered Superhuman Suspect Attacks Superhero! >>
The report began with an interview of Frostbite, his expression grim as he spoke.
"An unprovoked attack. The suspect is an unregistered Superhuman," he said, his tone tight. "Suspected of possessing the unprecedented ability to steal others' powers..."
Then the surveillance footage cut in—mercifully blurry, showing a hooded figure weaving through the steam rising from food stalls, their face obscured by the neon glow of the city.
The footage cut back to the news anchor, who called on the public to provide any information.
Liam thumbed the power button. The screen died with a pathetic flicker. Outside his shitty studio apartment, the city hummed along like nothing had changed.
"Who says I'm unregistered?" Liam muttered.
He'd awakened just last month—nothing flashy, just the most common kind: enhanced strength. First thing he did was file the paperwork, get tagged and logged like a good citizen. Maybe it was too ordinary to warrant Neo-Gen's interest. They hadn't called. Not once.
So he kept living like before. Barista by day, delivery runner by night. Twenty years old, legally a Superhuman, but barely more than background noise.
Until last night.
Until he touched Frostbite's wrist and felt something crack inside him—a jolt. Like grabbing a live wire.
He'd copied it.
A second power—real, cold, and unmistakably stolen.
In that moment, something deep in his body—some biological alarm or ticking countdown—made itself known. The power wasn't permanent. He had exactly twenty-four hours.
It had been two and a half now. The stolen frost still coiled in his bloodstream.
He flexed his fingers. The coffee in his cup hissed, cracked, and froze solid.
He'd already mastered it.