Three months later.
Ash no longer looked at his hands expecting to see blood.
The routine had hardened him in a different way. He slept during the day, worked at night, and trained in the hours between. His room on Calle de los Tejedores was still just as small, just as cold, but it no longer felt empty. It felt like his.
Control over his Fracture came little by little.
The first weeks were frustrating. The gray electricity appeared when he least expected it — a plate slipping from his hands, a glass exploding in the bar's kitchen, a moment of contained rage leaking through his fingers like water through a crack. Erick, the bar's owner, would look at him with those eyes that had already seen everything and say nothing. He would just clean up the mess and go back to his stove.
"You're going to break all my dishes before the month is over," he said one night, after Ash shattered three plates in a row.
"Sorry, boss," Ash replied, and he meant it. But he also felt that he was getting closer each time.
By the second month, he could summon it at will.
It wasn't easy. He had to close his eyes, find that dark place inside himself where he kept the image of Eliot on the floor, and then the electricity would come. Gray. Trembling. But docile.
He learned to wrap his hand in it. At first it lasted only a second, then two, then five. The sensation was strange — it didn't burn, didn't sting. It was like putting on a glove made of static and storm.
By the third month, he could fire it.
A small shock, nothing compared to the explosion that had killed five men. But it was his. He could launch it from the palm of his hand, direct it toward a target, feel the air smell of ozone for several seconds afterward.
He wasn't a hero yet. But he was closer than he'd been three months earlier.
The work at The Last Call Bar was hard and poorly paid, but Ash didn't complain.
He earned just enough to pay for the room and to eat. The rest — two hundred, sometimes three hundred dollars a month if he saved every cent — he kept in a metal box under the bed. He didn't know exactly what for. For emergencies, he told himself. For when the time came.
Erick, the owner, was a man of few words and a Fracture he never fully showed. Bald, with large arms from years of lifting pots and a scar on his left eyebrow that Ash didn't dare ask about. He cooked as if every dish were the last he would ever serve, and he treated Ash the way he treated his knives: with respect, but without obvious affection.
"Don't come to me with thanks," he snapped the first time Ash tried to thank him for giving him the job. "You do your part, I do mine. End of story."
Ash learned not to take his manner as an insult. Over time, he discovered that Erick left extra food in his backpack on days he knew Ash hadn't eaten dinner. That he never scolded him for being late if the reason was training. That one night, after Ash accidentally destroyed a stack of plates, Erick simply said:
"If you're going to use your Fracture, do it outside of work, idiot."
And Ash knew that was the closest thing to "I care about you" he was ever going to get from him.
He called him boss. Not because Erick asked him to, but because it felt right to say it.
It was in this context — the routine of training, working, saving, surviving — where Ash came to a conclusion.
It wasn't a dramatic moment. There was no background music or divine revelation. Simply, one night after closing the bar, walking alone through the empty streets of the south district, he understood something.
Eliot had died because the world was unfair. Because an old man with anger issues had a Fracture he couldn't control. Because Gray Phantom sent kids to do their dirty work. Because no one looked after the people of the south.
Someone should.
Ash stopped in the middle of the street. The streetlight above him flickered, just like every broken streetlight in United City.
Can I be a hero?
It wasn't an original idea. In United City, everyone wanted to be a hero. There were rankings, tournaments, academies, shows on television. Heroes were celebrities with contracts and sponsors. But those heroes lived everywhere except here in the south. They appeared on the news when they defeated a major villain, but they never came down to the south.
Are they afraid of Gray Phantom?
Ash didn't want to be that kind of hero.
He wanted to be the hero of the south. The one who walked through broken streets, who knew the smell of dampness and the sound of street fights. The one who arrived before it was too late.
He didn't know how to start. He didn't know if he was strong enough. But it wasn't bad to have a goal. As an orphan from the south, it was an almost impossible goal — but he had nothing to lose.
While Ash walked toward his room that night, a woman in a black trench coat arrived at Norden Orphanage.
The building looked just as miserable under the yellowish light of the south district's streetlamps. Peeling paint, broken windows that no one repaired, kids peeking out with faces that already knew too much about life.
The woman walked in without knocking.
Mrs. Holt was in her office, as always. The typewriter silent for once. Her tired eyes looked up at the visitor.
"How can I help you?" she asked, in that voice that years at the orphanage had made flat.
The woman placed an ID on the desk. Eliot's.
"This boy," she said. "He died three months ago. He was from here, wasn't he?"
Mrs. Holt looked at the photo. She didn't blink. Her voice didn't crack.
"Yes," she replied, as if confirming that it had rained that morning. "Eliot. A good kid. Pity."
"Pity?" The woman raised an eyebrow. "That's all?"
Mrs. Holt shrugged. Her eyes returned to the typewriter.
"In this orphanage, children come in and children go out. Some die. Others disappear. Most end up on the streets. I can't afford to cry over every single one."
The woman looked at her for a long time. In the north, such a response would have provoked outrage. In the south, it was simply the truth.
"I need information," the woman said, showing nothing of what she thought. "Did Eliot have any acquaintances or family?"
Mrs. Holt didn't hesitate.
"Ash. Ash Venturi. He was his shadow. Where Eliot went, Ash went." She paused. "But he's not here anymore. He ran away the same night Eliot... disappeared."
"Do you have any record of him? Photo, documents, anything?"
Mrs. Holt opened a drawer. She took out a thin folder, the kind used for children no one claims. She slid it across the desk.
"Take it. But don't expect much. He's an Alien. No Fracture, as far as we knew. He's probably dead in some ditch by now."
The woman took the folder. Opened it.
She saw Ash's photo. Pale blue eyes. Ash-blond hair combed back. A serious expression, as if even in the photo he was waiting for something.
"No Fracture, huh?" the woman murmured to herself.
She remembered the bodies in the apartment. The electrical burn marks on their faces.
She closed the folder.
"Thank you for your time," she said, and left without waiting for a reply.
Outside, under the flickering streetlights, the woman lit a cigarette and looked at Ash's photo.
An Alien. Sure.
And I'm the queen of United City.
She tucked the folder into her trench coat and disappeared into the south district night.
Ash arrived at his room past one in the morning.
He sat on the floor, as he did every night, and extended his hand. The gray electricity appeared instantly. He didn't have to think about Eliot this time. He didn't have to search for the rage. It just existed, like a muscle he'd finally learned to use.
He wrapped his fist in it. The gray light illuminated the empty walls of the room.
He fired a small shock at the opposite wall. The sound was soft — crack — and it left a small black mark on the plaster. Number thirty-seven, if he was keeping count.
He wasn't a hero yet.
But he was learning.