The scaffolding creaked beneath him as he leaned back, half-finished sandwich in hand. It was just past noon, and the sun hovered high and hot above Washington Heights, baking the construction site in a dull haze. Heat shimmered off metal beams and half-poured concrete, and the place buzzed with drills, shouts, and the occasional blare of a car horn. The air reeked of dust, exhaust fumes, and sweat. But Evan barely noticed anymore. His hands were calloused, his boots worn at the soles, and his shirt stuck to his back in damp patches. A low breeze tried its best to cut through the humidity, but it only stirred up more heat from the steel beneath him.
He sat tucked between crossbeams, high enough above the street to see the buzz of New York without hearing all of it. Everything just felt like background static. His mind wasn't really here, hadn't been all week.
He hadn't drawn another fragment since that Sunday, the day after the mugging—and now it was Friday. The second draw wasn't some dramatic event like the first time. It had been quieter, subtler, and the card had slid into place somewhere in his mind. He could feel it still—another strange presence lurking just under the surface, waiting to be called upon.
He knew he could draw more, and not just as a guess. He feltit. Like an itch at the edge of his thoughts, or pressure that built whenever he let his guard down. He didn't know exactly how many more, but multiple for sure. It was like something inside him was quietly growing, expanding in potential with time.
But he hadn't done it.
He hadn't tried to draw again, not since that second one. A choice that felt both wise and cowardly all at once.
Because the truth was, the first time had happened in a moment of desperation, when he was hurt and scared and had no other options. The second had been an acceptance of what had happened that night, that it was all truly real. But now? Now, if he drew another… it would be for no such reasons, but to wield the power. A deliberate step toward something he still didn't understand. Something that might not let him withdraw.
And as the days passed, that hesitation only deepened.
It wasn't just about the power. It was about what came with it.
About what kind of life waited on the other side of that decision.
This is the quiet, Evan. Use it well. So that you will have control over what comes next.
Witty Phantom's words clung to the back of his skull like smoke. At first, he'd brushed them off—more cryptic dramatics from the smug illusionist who now haunted the edge of his life like a shadow. But over the past few days, the words had started to echo deeper than he expected.
Because maybe—just maybe—they were true.
First was the battle at the Stark Expo, just two nights after his first encounter with the witty phantom.
It had been all over WHiH by Tuesday morning. Stark, suited up as Iron Man, flying through the air like a human fighter jet, dodging missiles and firing repulsors at swarms of metal drones. And there was another guy with him—same kind of armor, different color scheme. People online were calling him War Machine now. Some thought it was a new stark prototype. Others said it was the military hijacking Stark's tech.
Didn't matter. What mattered was that two men in walking tanks had lit up the sky like the Fourth of July, and every phone in New York had caught some part of it. It wasn't whispered about in conspiracy circles or brushed off as hoaxes. It was real. It was loud. It was right there.
The kind of thing you'd expect to see on a movie screen, not the six o'clock news.
At least that was just Tony Stark.
Evan leaned into that thought more than he liked to admit. Stark being Iron Man? That had already been public for two years. Back in 2008, when Stark had stepped behind a podium and said "I am Iron Man," the world changed overnight—or at least, it seemed like it did. But nothing had followed immediately after. No monsters. No magic. Just a billionaire playing superhero in a shiny metal suit.
Evan remembered thinking, Well, okay. Guess that's real now.
It was wild, sure, but people had mostly learned to live with it. The guy was on the cover of Time one week and crashing a luxury sports car the next. He was called a billionaire with a god complex and a metal suit. And yeah, he flew around and blasted stuff now, but for the most part? He kept it flashy. Like a celebrity with a rocket launcher.
By now, it was just… Stark being Stark.
Unbelievable, sure. But it fit into some part of the public imagination that had been cracked open in 2008 when Stark first outed himself. It had been headline news, but it didn't shake the foundation of things. It was still a human under that armor. Still a man you could interview, roast online, or catch walking out of some overpriced Manhattan restaurant.
And if you were a New Yorker long enough, you got used to weird. Sirens, power outages, something blowing up down the street—you learned to walk faster, not look too hard, and complain about it over coffee the next day.
So yeah, Evan had started to think of Iron Man the same way. Like maybe that was just part of life now. Another thing to deal with during your commute. You saw a metal suit streak across the sky, you took a picture, maybe cracked a joke, and kept going.
It was the new normal. Familiar, in a way. Predictable chaos.
But then came Wednesday.
That was when things shifted. WHiH started running a story coverage about a place in New Mexico—Puente Antiguo. Not a city. Barely a town. Evan hadn't even heard of the place until that morning.
The footage wasn't clean. Grainy satellite loops. Dust storms rolling across empty roads. Military convoys with no insignia. Helicopters hovering like vultures. Blacked-out SUVs blocking the highways leading in or out. The whole place looked like it was being erased. Nobody official would say a word, and that just made people louder.
Conspiracy forums exploded overnight. Threads piled high with blurry screenshots, and wild speculation. Amateur scientists chimed in about "anomalous electromagnetic signatures," speaking with the confidence of people who had just enough knowledge to be heard by the like-minded. Theories spiraled—hidden bases, ancient artifacts, government cover-ups. One WHiH anchor, during a segment, even leaned into the camera and whispered what many on the internet was already saying: "a possible alien invasion."
But even something that dramatic, could be waved off if you wanted to. The world had seen its share of strange occurences. And not all of it stuck. Maybe this was just another blip on the radar, another fever dream for conspiracy theorists to foam over. There was no concrete evidence. Just dust storms, locked-down roads, and a handful of weird readings. Nothing undeniable.
He could have convinced himself of that. That maybe it wasn't the world going crazy. Maybe it was just him. Paying too much attention since… since that night. Maybe he was looking for patterns where there weren't any. Reading too much into the static.
Even with a major network floating alien theories, it hadn't caught fire among the masses. Not really. It was just anotherweird thing. The kind of thing you shook your head at and moved on from once your coffee break ended.
But what happened at Culver University that same day?
That was something else entirely.
That… was undeniable.
A rampaging green monster, caught on shaky footage taken by a college student. Craters. Smoke. Screams. Military vehicles with soldiers still inside being tossed around like toys. In the middle of it all, something massive—something that looked like it had been carved out of rage and muscle. They had even used some kind of sonic cannons against it, that worked for only a few moments until the destruction continued.
Then later on WHiH, the student who filmed the entire thing —Jack McGee—in an interview titled the creature "an incredible hulk".
And just like that, the story exploded.
By the next morning, it wasn't just on the news. It was the news. It was on every news network. Every radio station. You couldn't walk down a street or grab a coffee without hearing the word "Hulk." It had crept into every conversation, wedged itself between subway stops and cigarette breaks and job sites. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had a theory.
But no one doubted it.
Not anymore.
It wasn't just a flash of light in the sky or a mystery crater in the desert being covered up by the government. This was rage and fists and destruction on camera. This came with undeniable proof.
Even more than that, it was proof that Iron Man wasn't some one-off. The world really was changing—and maybe it had been changing for a while now, and no one noticed until it was too loud to ignore.
'Witty'- as he had chosen to call his uninvited companion- had warned him. "You'll have to draw again soon." And Evan could feel the truth of that statement crawling down his spine, just as real as the sun on his face.
The hum was constant now. Like an engine idling in the back of his thoughts. He could ignore it for now. All he wanted was more time, and maybe to know just a bit more about what he might be stepping into. But something told him he might not get either, the way the world was changing.
——
The rest of the workday passed in a haze of noise and sweat, his body running on autopilot. Evan didn't remember the conversations he had, the loads he lifted, or the cuts on his hand until he rinsed them under cold water. His mind was elsewhere—on cards not yet drawn, powers he didn't understand, and a world unraveling faster than he could process.
As the crew packed up, the foreman—Gus, an older guy with a thick Bronx accent and a permanent coffee stain on his neon vest—waved him over.
"West! You coming out tonight?"
Evan blinked. "Out?"
"Drinks. Corner of 181st. Couple of us are heading over." Gus grinned, wiping his hands on a rag. "You've been quiet all week. You look like you need it."
He thought about saying no. But he didn't want to go back to his apartment—he'd just be stuck in his own thoughts all night again. And the idea of feeling like a normal twenty-year-old again, even for just an evening, was more tempting than he expected. Wasn't like he'd be driving anyway, taking his car to work everyday was just signing up to be late in new York.
"Sure," Evan said, forcing a smile. "Yeah, I'll come."
They walked to the bar in a loose pack—steel-toed boots thudding against cracked sidewalks, laughter rising above the sounds of traffic. The place wasn't anything special—low lights, vinyl booths, the smell of grease and old beer soaked into the floorboards—but it had character. A neighborhood joint that didn't card too hard and knew how to pour cheap whiskey.
Evan found himself slipping into a booth with a couple of the guys. Someone slapped a menu down. Jokes were tossed back and forth. Someone elbowed him about the waitress. He chuckled where he was supposed to, nodded when it made sense. But his eyes soon drifted to the TV above.
It was muted, but the footage playing wasn't subtle.
Widespread panic. Something huge moving between buildings. A car being flipped through the air like a toy. Total chaos.
The bartender reached up and turned the volume up.
"Breaking news out of Harlem, New York, where a large unidentified creature is currently rampaging through the streets—"
The room fell silent. Forks hovered above plates. Drinks paused midway to mouths.
Onscreen, WHiH's logo flickered. Helicopter footage cut in. A massive figure—skin colored between green and gray, grotesque, inhuman—stalked through the city like a beast let out of a cage. It looked like a far uglier version of the 'Hulk'. It swatted cars aside, roared at the sky. Soldiers opened fire in vain. Civilians screamed, and scattered.
Evan's fingers dug into the edge of the table. His throat dry.
He told himself what anyone would.
It's not your fight.
The military's already there.
If they can't handle it, then Stark would show up.
His eyes stayed locked to the screen as the camera panned over a family trapped behind a flaming bus. A woman holding two kids, one limping. Crying. Scared. Smoke curling in.
And just like that—he wasn't in the bar anymore.
He was sixteen, in a principal's office, staring at a phone with trembling fingers as someone explained the crash. His parents' car. The rain. The truck that didn't stop.
He blinked, and the tv screen came back into focus.
One of the kids looked just like his sister had.
The bar noise faded. The voices, the chatter, the world dimmed like someone was slowly turning the volume down on everything else.
He stood up.
"Yo, West? You good?" one of the guys asked.
Evan didn't answer. He grabbed his jacket, nearly knocking over his stool.
"I have to go," he said, voice distant.
"Go where?"
But he was already out the door.
Out into the street. Into the noise. Into whatever came next.