1

Adira descends down from the bus along with the others. The bus stop for Sector 11 is thrumming, alive with energy—a thin, panicked, nervous sort of energy—the hum of a thousand people looking for their loved ones and the hopes of not being the ones who know those dead. 

The streets run heavy with scars, and Adira thinks they might have run heavy with blood just a few hours earlier.

Adira passes by little kids with bruises still bleeding through bandages, crusted stains of tears on their cheeks and wonders if that is the first time they experienced the pain. Their mothers hold them close, clinging to them. She looks past chittering low ranked supers in their bright costumes, discussing the attack over coffee. 

"Fucking Lightspark," She hears one groan, bringing a cup to her lips, "Had he come sooner we wouldn't have fucking thirteen civvies dead."

She ignores the people with firm lines of loss in their face. 

The families of the "thirteen civvies." The friends of those unnamed. 

In the beginning—she remembers reading for a history project back in highschool—they used to catalogue and report super-related-deaths in the newspapers. All of them, names, occupations, backstory. Now they just stated the numbers. No names, unless it was someone famous. Nothing. 

She glances at her phone. 

A text from Silas.

i'm by evac cent 3

please come soon

She takes a deep breath, and heads over.

It isn't hard to spot Silas Sparrow in a crowd. He is tall, almost ridiculously so, and with a shock of hair that bounces up and down so much it is bound to catch your attention.

Adira spots him easily. 

He's right next to a evac van. His hand is clamped down, again, on the spot between his neck and his shoulder ('Trapezium muscle', Ragini murmurs, flipping and highlighting another portion of her book). A nervous, accommodating expression on his face as he talks to an evac officer in their customary shocking neon.

He nods seriously at something she says, thanks her and bids her goodbye. 

Then he holds his head in his palm, eyebrows scrunching up. 

Like he always does, Adira thinks. 

Once upon a time, when they were closer, Adira would have leaned over and brought his head to rest on her shoulder and wrap her arms around him. Now...

Times have changed.

Adira takes a breath, counts to ten, and reminds herself that she must not sound like she's pitying him. She must help.

Adira contemplates a brisk walk up to him, tapping him on his shoulder, saying something confidently, helping him, getting her friend back—but of course. This is Adira.

Her feet refuse to move. 

She just grips her strap of her bag, her toes curling up, and her lip once again, beneath her teeth. It would be so much easier if he saw her.

But she waits there for a solid five minutes, and he doesn't turn. He just looks at his phone, fingers flying away at the keypad.

The world shuffles around them, slow and blurry. 

Her phone buzzes against her hand.

please come soon adira 

He called her Adira.

"Thank you, Adira." She recalls his voice, almost like a sigh, over the phone.

He never used to call her Adira. It was always Addy, Adderall or Ira.

But the text brings back her to earth. He needs her. Adira reminds herself. Her petty thoughts shouldn't come in the way. She releases her lip from her teeth. It throbs, blood rushing back.

"Silas!" She calls out, and then winces. Her voice sounds far too weak and thin and for a brief second, she feels like a little girl again, running after friends who were too good for her. 

He turns. He sees her and his face flashes some unknown emotion. 

Desperation? Hatred? Regret?

Adira's heart sinks. Coming here was a mistake. Reaching out to him was a mistake. She regrets everything.

"Addy," He says, relieved.

And suddenly, she can't help but feel relieved. 

2

Silas's hand holds hers so tightly. It is cool, dry, and the bandage covering it feels rough against her palm. But Adira does not let go.

"You will be fine," She murmurs as they sit in the van, its gates open. "She will be fine. We'll find her, don't worry."

He nods shakily. 

She squeezed his hand further, and her other hand holds the screen of her ID like a talisman. 

A Scavenger. It's been so, so, so, long since she last tried it—hell, she was sure that she wouldn't pick up the uniform ever again. She'd seen enough dead bodies, mauled in enough different ways, punched by enough devastated civilians for not reaching there first (the supers never really got that treatment, did they? It was always the Scavengers.) to be completely turned off of the job, despite the high pay grade. But the job always seemed to find her, didn't it? Not with her knack for finding both people and trouble. 

Being a journalist and being a Scavenger was kind of similar that way.

"You won't lose her," Adira hears herself say, but honestly, it sounds more like she's assuring herself than Silas.

You won't lose Silas again because of your dumb mistakes, will you, Adira?

Somehow, Adira isn't herself sure of that statement. You never really learn to accept loss in Salvert—no matter how many people you lose, you always end up hoping that it's not them, it's not them.

The chitter chatter of the evac center has died down to a considerable extent. Most people have left, going to shelter homes for the night. And after prelim scans... most people have found their loved ones. Or what remained of them anyway.

Salvert never gave you time to mourn the dead.

"Hi, you must be Dr. Sparrow," A woman comes up with a tired looking smile. Her jumpsuit is an almost painful shade of neon orange—but of course she has to. "The prelim scans have shown no signs of life. Have you managed to find a civilian Scavenger?"

"Uh, yeah, um," Silas coughs, getting up. He gestures to Adira who hurriedly holds out her hand for the officer to shake. 

The officer ignores it, but Adira doesn't mind—evac officers usually avoid contacts with civilians to prevent any forms of contamination. "Can I see your Scavenger ID?" The officer asks—Zahara, Adira notices the stitched name tag on the jumpsuit—holding out a white gloved hand.

Adira hands the ID to the officer, who flicks it on. The transparent screen lights up with blue and announces proudly all her details. Adira sees her hologram, an ugly, tired thing, rotate and mentally groans.

 The officer looks at the ID, then back at her with a look of mild approval, "Class of 2118? I was class of 2115—Wow. I see you were the top of your grade in Scavenging... But you're a civilian? Why didn't you join the Association?"

Adira laughs awkwardly, "The usual reason. Fear. Fear of crushing people's hopes. I couldn't bear to look at someone and tell them someone they loved was dead."

The officer gives an understanding nod, "Makes sense. But personally, I find that the joy of telling someone that we found someone they love alive outweighs that fear." She scans the ID once, then hands it back.

"We're giving you three hours to do what you need to do," She says, "You can get your gear from Station 7A, the west wing, show your ID and they'll give it. Steer clear of any recon supers, if you see something suspicious, send a report signal without delay. Respect all protocol, report back to station 7A by latest 2300 hours, if you don't, you'll get penalized—I think you know the drill."

Adira nods as she walks off.

And then she turns to Silas, "We'll find her, don't worry. We will." Adira hopes that the face she is making looks at least vaguely determined and brave, things that she definitively is not.

Once again, Adira selfishly prays for it.

3.

As the history books go, right after the first Great Outbreak of 2020, in the accompanying years, the first super showed up.

In the beginning they called them some super (haha) complicated science-y name—Adira forgets, its been over seven years since she last attended a history class, give her a break—but then they just reverted to the colloquial, simple, "super".

A shortened form of superhuman.

Life was a comic book, conceded the scientists. Deal with it.

Which was ironical, because the introduction of real life superhumans, the already barely surviving comic book industry hacked, coughed, sputtered and died.

Because now, 'gods' walked amongst us.

Anyway, it was all pretty much downhill after that. Supers multiplied like rabbits since then, and so did the witch-hunts, experiments, exploitation. Every evil thing that humans could do to something that interested them, they did.

You know how some kids are borderline sociopathic because their sense of empathy isn't fully developed yet? Like, they'll pull on Mr. Snuffles ears to see the poor cat's reaction.

Curiosity overwhelms their ability to feel something than their own pain.

Yeah, sometimes they don't grow out of that phase. They grow up and become scientists.

Then, like always, it cooled down with the revolutions, the protests, everything in the 2050s. Supers became more accepted. That was the golden age of co-operation. The 2070s.

Or at least, they called it that.

It was an era of research, of discovery. Interesting, thought provoking, game-changing questions such as: "Is the excretion system of the super different from that of the normal human? How much strength can a super have before self-combusting?" flooded the research markets. You had your classic superheroes theory, of course.

Reactionary force against evil, yada-yada. Adira found it bland. Overused.

What was interesting, however, was the impact on the non-powered humans. The less than super people. And one of the things that was most prevalent then, was religion. That was something Adira was interested in.

How the belief in God increased so much after the Great Outbreak.

She wasn't particularly religious then either. It just seemed interesting. Something she should take a look into. As an outsider, of course.

So, she did a little cursory reading into it when she was in high school.

As it turns out the more that humans learned about these gods amongst us, they decided to find refuge in the God that they knew earlier. This, incomprehensible God, with a capital G, was somehow more understandable than the little ones that convinced themselves of holiness.

There were indeed, supers that were sure they were God. There was a huge increase in cults in the years after. Supers with mind control abilities discovered sparkling prospect in a career as a cult leader. Those who weren't cult leaders, sure as hell seemed like cult leaders.

But no matter how much they thought they were god-like or were told they were god-like, they were just that: like god. Not god. Like god. A poor, unsavory imitation.

A knock-off.

No matter how super they were, they were still human.

They still bled, even if the color of the blood could be something other than red.

And they still could die.

Adira has seen that firsthand. Usually it's just stupid, dumb kids with delusions of grandeur. One day, they're shining. Powerful. Glorious.

The next day they're dead.

Reduced to a footnote in the history of Salvert City.

It always hurt to see how quickly this city moved on. It was a coping mechanism for the entire city—move on, move fast, rip the pain off like a bandaid, no time to mourn the loss of one when you have to mourn the losses of hundreds in the future. 

And Adira... Well, no matter how long she'd lived in this ugly city, Adira had never gotten used to anything in it—from the way the evac protocols worked or the way that people just seemed to... Forget. 

From atop her post at the pillar, Adira looks around her. In the dusk fall, Salvert grins down upon her, a monster of concrete with metal pipes for veins and asphalt for lungs, beautiful and dangerous. The scanner between her eyes burns her corneas, but she can see none of the signature red of life. It's all cool greys and blues. Then she switches to the biological matter mode, and it's all clear again, except for a couple of plants. 

A sigh of relief.

She presses the tracker against her ear. It hums to life and Adira mutters, "Extensive damage between 1st and 4th quarter sections. All clear, no signs of casualties found."

A beep. A second beep. HQ has acknowledged the message.

Adira looks at the skies, screaming with dull sirens as choppers and aviation fly around. She sees the occasional recon super flying past—to repair some building or the other. It was always a good time to be a metal based super in Salvert—the constant destruction and upheaval meant you were never out of a job. Lucky bastards.

A chime rings in her ear as she jogs to the next section. A robotic, feminine voice calls. Adira recognizes it as SAMANTHA, an AI that became really popular for scavenging in Dubai. Silas had a hand in it, as far as she remembered it. The voice grates against her ears.

Message for all Scavengers: steer clear of sections 3rd and 7th. Reconstruction is soon to begin.

Good enough, Adira thinks as the double beeps come again, signifying the end of the message. She's already covered those sections, and there's absolutely no sign of any life. 

She did find a dead body earlier though.

She recalls the sight and almost retches. 

It never does get easier in Salvert, does it?

The corpse was trapped between a ledge and a slab, crushed underneath the weight. Blood was dried up, crusting the cream color of the slab, and a mangled hand was the only thing that her eyes could see. It was an old man, she'd realized with relief, when she called it in and other Scavengers came to help her move the slab. 

When they reported it back to HQ, there was no one to claim it.

But as the sections cleared down and only section 2 was left, a nauseating feeling arose in Adira. Where was Silas's grandmother? If she didn't find her in section 2, where could she possibly be?

Could she be...?

Adira taps a message back to HQ. 

I haven't been able to find her.

Then she deletes it, walks ahead, jumping down from the pillar. 

She doesn't even manage to take two steps before she trips on a dead body.

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