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He’s barely finished speaking when I blurt, “Yes! Can we send our photographer?” I explain Monika’s qualifications and get Mr. Singkham’s verbal approval.
“She’ll have to sign liability forms ...”
“She’ll happily do so from the plane. She’ll be there in thirty minutes. Can you wait that long?”
“Not a moment longer.”
He hangs up, and I’m on the phone with Monika in the next second. My brothers have changed the channel to the news coverage of the accident. It looks like they’ve managed to get six more of the emergency workers out of the snow, but there are still eighteen more trapped. No news has broken yet about the Wyvern’s arrival. We know before anyone—a fact that Luca is freaking out and trying to text all his friends about.
“Can you take his phone away from him? Please? Thanks, David and Mani. Monika? Yes, sorry, Monika, hello. This is Vanessa Theriot from The Riot Creative. Yes. Yes, so excited to be working with you, too, on Monday, except I have a small question. How would you like to start working for us four days early?” I explain what I need from her and get her on the flight in thirty minutes’ time. I call Margerie, and my team goes absolutely bananas when they realize what the Wyvern is doing. Margerie is back at my house forty minutes after that.
“Whoa. There’s dude in here.”
“We can make space,” Charlie says, lifting my legs like they’re a blanket and giving Margerie a funny look.
Margerie returns the stare with one of her own but shakes her head. “Tempting, but this is a work call. Good thing we left all this set up.” She gestures to the dining room table.
“Did you let the rest of the team know?” I ask her.
She nods as she takes her seat at the dining table. “They know, but I am trying to convince them to sleep and not watch the TV so, after we work all night, they can take over in the morning. You want me to start with a few graphics or the press release?”
“I’ve already got a few words written. Let me finish what I’ve got in the next few minutes, and I can send it to you. We might be able to get this out in the next hour.”
“Boys, let me know as soon as the news breaks that he’s on-site, and I’ll start hitting socials hard,” Margerie says.
“Monika won’t be there for a few more hours.”
“You got Monika on-site?” Margerie asks, wide-eyed.
I nod, feeling excitement bubble. “She got on the flight with COE security.”
Margerie pumps her fist. “Score!”
It takes another hour before Luca jumps out of his chair. “It’s happening! Can I post now?”
“Shush!” Margerie, my brothers, and I all yell.
“Breaking news!” the 48 Today reporter all but shouts. It’s a new reporter this time. A man, and he’s clearly freaking out. “We have just learned that a new Champion is going to attempt to extract the remaining emergency personnel and civilians. As the world’s newest Champion, we can only ask ourselves if he will be up for the task or if this will be another dumpster fire, so to speak. I’ve got word that the Wyvern is here. He’s ...”
The reporter lifts his hand to his ear, his dark skin reflecting the light from the camera while the world behind him has turned to pitch. “It ... it seems like, even though the Wyvern has only just arrived, he’s already saved a life. I repeat, the Wyvern has already saved a human life!”
Margerie just about falls out of my dining room chair in her haste to scramble back into the living room. She shoves Charlie’s arm, which he happily lifts, along with my legs. She slides between us, dressed in the same outfit she left my house in earlier, only she’s shed the jacket. The Margerie equivalent of a corporate suit loosening their tie.
“Holy shit. We need Monika’s eyes. Where are the eyes?!” Her fingers are flying over her phone. My fingers are flying over my keyboard. I send off the press release and grab my phone and toss it to Luca.
“Luca, take our picture. Are all of you okay being online?”
“Hey, I want to be in the pic,” Luca complains as he snaps a few shots anyway.
“I’ll credit you as the photographer,” I say as he hands the phone back. It didn’t take much staging. All of us in the room look utterly enrapt, the light from the TV reflecting off our faces, off my cheeks. Luca did a good job. He got my ankle brace and all of my brothers and Margerie on-screen. He took another picture, too, this one from the back, so you can see the TV and the breaking news banner shifting across it. The Wyvern saves life in avalanche.
“There!” Margerie shouts, bouncing in her seat, shaking my legs with every move. She’s pointing at the screen, one hand on Charlie’s knee. His expression is ... cute. He looks shocked but maybe even a little smitten too.
Charlie knows Margerie; they’ve met before. He was surprised when I told him she was a trans woman, but it didn’t change the way he looked at her. Not one bit. Charlie’s a catch. All my brothers are. Charlie’s just ... picky. But if Margerie’s what he wants, well ... despite what I might have told the Wyvern last time I saw him, I love love. I just ... love it for other people.
“Oh my gosh, are you looking, Vanessa?” She bounces in her seat again and whips her head to look at Charlie. She stills, then looks down at her hand on his leg, an awkward and loud laugh bursting out of her. “Oh my gosh. Sorry, Charlie. I’m just excited.”
“No problem. You can put your hand wherever you want.”
“Eww! Charles Benedict Theriot, I am sitting right here!” I shout, my head thrown back in laughter while my brothers all throw couch pillows at him.
Margerie elbows him in the side and removes her hand from his leg to point back at the screen. “Seriously, y’all. Look!”
“... where the Wyvern,” the reporter says, placing emphasis on Roland’s Champion name in a way that sends electricity shooting through to the tips of my toes, “has managed to rescue eight of the eighteen trapped workers in minutes. Let’s take a look. Our cameraman has been granted permission to get closer, and you can see here ...” An image appears on the screen, blurry and a little distorted by the snow and the darkness, but the outline of his back is clear. He’s ... he’s not wearing a shirt.
“Isn’t it freezing?” Mani says.
David slaps him upside the head. “He’s made out of fire, moron,” he says in Spanish, loud and slow enough that I actually understand him. “Isn’t that right, Vanny?” He switches to English when he speaks to me.
I nod but can’t respond. My fingers are pressed to my lips, and I’m sweating. “I hope he’ll be okay ...”
“He’s clearly okay. He’s crushing it!” Margerie’s legs are bouncing. Charlie reaches over to her and holds one down.
“You’re gonna knock my beer outta my hand bouncing like that.”
“Sorry,” she says, and I might be too distracted by the sight of the Wyvern’s bare body surrounded by mountains of snow and red-clad emergency workers, but I swear I see her blush in the light of the TV.
The camera pans over the hole in the snow that a shirtless Wyvern is disappearing into. He’s gone for so long, I start to feel feverish. “The mountain is stable ... The snow seems to hold, unlike it did when Pele attempted to use her laser sight to burn her way through. Instead, the Wyvern appears to be melting the snow with his steps. Everywhere he touches, snow turns to liquid, but not so much to risk a cave collapse. Gradually, he’s able to work his way through and—look! Now he’s returned, and he’s carrying ...”
The Wyvern returns into focus, trudging up the mountain in a way that doesn’t look easy. On the contrary, he’s making it look hard, grunting with every step, but he doesn’t stop. He’s wearing boxers only, whereas before he’d been in sweatpants. That’s the first thing I notice, I’m ashamed to admit, but when I manage to unhook my gaze from his body, I see what he’s carrying. Bodies .
His hair hangs in his face, which is pointed at the ground as he stomps barefoot through the snow. You can’t see his expression as he lowers four people onto the ground, two from each shoulder, but you can hear his labored breath.
I have my hands clasped to either side of my face. “Priceless,” Luca says. “Can I post this?” He shows me the phone, but Margerie steals it away. “That’s too good for your account. Let me post it on the Wyvern’s official one.”
“No way,” Luca starts to argue.
“I’ll pay you for it,” Margerie says, already sending the photo to me. Then she proceeds to toss Luca his phone back and steal my phone right out of my lap.
“How much?” Luca asks.
“A thousand.”
“A thousand? Shit, that’s a good deal.”
“Never take the first offer, idiota,” David grunts. He’s a lawyer, so that makes a lot of sense.
“Fine, make it ten.”
“Ten? You’re crazy,” Margerie says, fingers flying over my phone like a madwoman. “I’ll do five, though.”
“Score!” Luca throws himself back into his seat, looking as smug as a house cat while I stare transfixed at the screen, having a hard time remembering that I’m supposed to be working.
“They’re alive, Vanny. Look,” Mani says from across the room, where he and David are sharing a love seat.
As the reporter catalogs the survivors’ injuries and cameras zoom in on the blue-tinted faces of four, then eight, then twelve groaning, moaning, writhing emergency workers, the medical staff on-site report that everyone is alive. And the Wyvern keeps going until all eighteen emergency personnel are pulled out alive.
I whisper, “He wasn’t supposed to go on his first tour for two more weeks. That was when the COE gave him approval ... Fema ’s recommendation was not to send anyone else in until after the storm. They thought it could lead to more casualties, especially with what happened to Pele. And he’s a Forty-Eight. The liability ...”
“Well, looks like your boy said fuck off to liability.” Luca laughs. He claps his hands and points at the screen. “You know, I hate to even fucking say this, Vanny, but I’m starting to like your boyfriend.”
Fake boyfriend, I open my mouth to correct, but I don’t ...
We must watch the Wyvern uncover people for most of the night. The live coverage flickers in and out as the storm gets worse. I can’t help worrying that he isn’t wearing a coat, and several times I fight the compulsion to call him. I have his cell phone number, but I’ve never used it. I don’t even know if he has my number.
He’s been working for hours, first rescuing the Fema staff before moving on to the ones they were originally trying to help. “And here we have it, the Wyvern has made it deep enough into the snowbank; he’s found the cars. It ... we’re hearing reports that there was another collapse ...”
I don’t breathe for the hour it takes the Fema workers to excavate the tunnel the Wyvern disappeared into as it collapsed once and then a second time.
Margerie is panicking. She’s gotten up from the couch and is pacing behind it. “Monika’s there,” I say as soon as the text hits my phone, making me realize we’ve been sitting here glued to the screen for six hours.
My brothers are still here; David had to go home to his girlfriend, but Emmanuel is still in the love seat looking like he’s gonna pass out, and Luca is still riveted to the screen, fielding message after message of his own because all his friends know that his sister is dating the Wyvern, and not one of them knows it’s not the real thing. He releases a boisterous laugh every once in a while that startles the rest of us.
Charlie comes back in from the kitchen with sandwiches and a pot of coffee, the saint. He glances at Margerie as he pours her a mug—black with sugar, how she takes it. He dumps half a cup of cream into mine, and I take it with a weak thanks.
The images that start to blast my phone are from Monika. I email them as quickly as I can to Margerie for her to assess the best, which ones we’ll keep for official COE press, which ones we’ll post, and which one’s we’ll sell to other outlets. I understand the price tag they put on Monika’s contract very quickly. Because the pictures she gets of the Wyvern are absolutely fucking incredible.
She captures the moment the Fema employees clear the snow and the Wyvern’s face first emerges. He’s clearing the tunnel he’s created from his side too. And behind him, he’s dragging the door of a car on a thick chain. There are eight people clinging to it. And Monika captures it.
Rollo looks like he’s in pain as he hands over the people. He doesn’t stop to check any of their vitals but returns to the darkness. And Monika, the cheeky and talented woman, manages to evade security, who are too busy scrambling with the survivors, and follows him.
Monika Neumann. An ex–war journalist who was born in Seoul and raised in Germany before moving to the States and pursuing a career that’s made her famous, particularly because of the fearlessness she displays right here. She follows Rollo past the point of no return. She sees the warning, Beware Ye Who Enter Here , spits into her fist, and smears her palm all over the signage.
She heads into the dark, snapping photos as she goes. She opts for pictures instead of video, and it’s clear why. The Wyvern is glowing , emitting just enough light to see by. She wouldn’t be able to use her night vision—he’s moving too fast to use night mode—so she follows and takes pictures, her flash every so often reflecting off his back, but more often than not, she takes photos in the dark just like that. And each of them is spectacular.
She captures the moment he finds the first car, the one he previously emptied, and follows him as he digs deeper into the snow, melting it and pushing it aside like a heavy curtain with his hands. He heads in one direction, like he knows exactly where he’s going, and soon enough, a second car appears. Monika hangs back here.
The photos that come through are sensational. Margerie’s already on the phone with news outlets, and soon, in a crazy twist, I start to see Monika’s photos appearing on the screen in front of me, moments after they first hit my phone.
“This is incredible material, coming from The Riot Creative’s war journalist, Monika Neumann. For those who don’t know, The Riot Creative’s founder and CEO is the Wyvern’s partner, Vanessa Theriot. I am told that she is watching our coverage live, as I speak ...”
“Oh shit, that’s us! I took that pic!” Luca points at the screen, startling Mani so badly, he knocks his water glass off the table. It hits the ground, blessedly empty, but Mani’s alert now and staring at his own face on the TV. “Shit, I needed more than five grand for that,” Luca says.
“Too late,” Margerie quips.
My face is hotter than the sun as the image Margerie just posted on the Wyvern’s official page hits the TV. My face looks huge and frightened and hopeful. My brothers look appropriately impressed. Margerie looks concentrated and concerned. And then the image switches to the one I posted, from the back, showing the screen with the reporter we’re still watching. And then, in a strange twist of time, all that falls away, and the reporter is speaking once more, showing images of the Wyvern coming up the dark, scary shaft as they’re sent by Monika.
“Monika Neumann is one of the best in the business, if I may say so myself, though I’m being told Fema staff aren’t particularly pleased, and there may be fines for The Riot Creative after all this is over, and ... oh. I’m just getting word that we’re getting footage from inside the car. This is incredible stuff, people ... I certainly hope that you all at home are holding on to your chairs—including Vanessa, who must undoubtedly be feeling strong emotion for her boyfriend. Hang in there, sweetheart. It looks like the Wyvern is about to make another rescue ...”
“Sweetheart?” Margerie makes a gagging sound. I don’t love it either, but I’m too stunned watching the scene unfold.
A very shaky phone camera is transmitting to a social media live stream—good grief. The news report has captured the footage and is broadcasting it far and wide. Heart messages and crying emojis clutter the screen as they crop up. I see darkness and then the flash of light and then hear the Wyvern’s voice before I see him.
“That girl alive?”
“We ... don’t know ... She got hit hard ... by the snow.” The female voice speaking is shaky. She’s shivering that badly. “We dragged her in ...”
The Wyvern looks at the one speaking, just above the camera. His chest starts to glow, flames licking up and down his chest and abdomen before disappearing. They come in easy waves like surf on the shore. He keeps it up as he looks around, his face hardening. “Are you alone?”
“Nobody’s been ... they ... I don’t know.” She starts to cry.
“You’re doing great, kid,” he says in a low voice. “Can you move at all?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t move then.” The camera goes dark as the fire on his chest goes out and he reaches for the girl holding the phone. There’s shuffling fabric and a muffled voice—Roland’s—asking, “How many in the car?”
“Seven.”
“Seven. Is that including you? What’s your name?”
“M-M-Mallory Zh-Zhu. And y-yeah.”
“Did somebody leave the car?”
“Br-Brian Hughes. He’s the b-best climber. T-t-tried to g-get help.”
The Wyvern makes a gruff sound and turns. The camera flashes back out and I catch a glimpse of a woman with dark hair crouching in the absolutely terrifying snow tunnel. She’s got a flashlight in her hand that blinds the camera for a moment before she points it at the wall.
There’s grunting, and the Wyvern keeps moving, passing Monika in the death corridor. A few moments later, a few more pictures hit my screen.
The Wyvern is carrying so many bodies, he’s almost unrecognizable as a human—or, I guess, as the being that he is. I can hear the sounds of his struggle with each step he takes, transmitted through the TV. Meanwhile, I pass on the images to Margerie, who hisses at what she sees. “Jesus Christ, this guy is a beast.”
“I wanna see.” Luca dives across the room to look over Margerie’s shoulder at the computer screen.
The news coverage finally pans back to the world beyond the hell that had swallowed the Wyvern up, and we see him emerging from the snow, carrying so many people, I can’t count them all. He collapses as he drops the last one to the ground, landing on one knee, and I make a sound that’s even higher than a squeak. My phone is buzzing, but I don’t reach for it. I can’t. My bones are all shaking. I think I’m trembling as badly as the girl he pulled out of the car.
“He’s gonna be okay,” Charles says at my side.
I nod, wanting to believe him so badly.
There’s so much shuffling and commotion happening, it takes some time before the Wyvern is standing again. There are medical personnel swarming him, but he waves them off and staggers back toward the opening in the ground.
“What are you doing?” a doctor shouts. A Black woman with tight ringlets. She grabs his arm. “You need to rest. Your heart rate ...”
“Gotta go back. Left one kid.”
He disappears, and this time Fema stops Monika from following as their workers enter the tunnels the Wyvern has excavated to put up supports and bolsters to prevent the cave from collapsing again. While I’m grateful for the additional security they’re providing him, it means we’re just left to watch coverage of the injured as they’re cared for and assessed and loaded into the emergency medical helicopters. Many of them are in critical condition. One ... a young man ... isn’t breathing.
It takes an hour for the medics on-site to pronounce the boy dead. Still the Wyvern hasn’t returned. The sky outside is starting to lighten. My brothers stand up to leave. “I’ll drive Mani,” Luca says, giving his older brother a heavy clap on the shoulder, startling him awake.
“And I’ll take this one back to her place.” Charlie scoops Margerie up off her dining room chair. I hadn’t realized she was completely passed out, draped over her laptop. I’d stopped fielding photos and checking our social accounts. Monika isn’t sending many photos through now anyway. She’s getting pictures of the young kids lying on long gurneys, but I’m not going to post any of those. I don’t want any of them to see the light of day. They’re so tragic. The kids are eighteen to twenty—college age—but they look like babies, their skin all blue, their teeth all chattering. And Roland saved them.
“Thanks, Charlie.”
Charlie stops behind the couch while Margerie grumbles sleepily in his grip. “Put me down,” she says.
He just chuckles and shushes her. “Go to sleep. I’ll get you home once you give me your address.”
She mumbles that too. “Sleep, Vanessa,” she slurs.
“Sleep, Vanny,” my brothers all repeat in turn. Emmanuel stumbles over to me, rubbing his eyes. He leans down and kisses the top of my head. “He’s gonna be all right, Vanny. Don’t worry. You’ll see him soon.”
I shouldn’t want to, but I do. I have the strangest pinching in my chest—it resembles guilt—that makes me think he might, just maybe, be doing this because of me. And if he gets hurt, I’m not going to ... I just ... can’t even think about that. So, ignoring the advice from my siblings and Margerie, I stay awake and stare at the screen like I’m stuck in A Clockwork Orange , until ...
“And wait—I’m hearing that we might have some movement from below.” The female reporter is back, looking somewhat well rested; that makes one of us. The camera pans to the mouth of the tunnel where rescue workers are moving in and out until, finally, the reporter cries out, “And here he is! The Wyvern has returned, and he’s not alone! He’s successfully saved the last student skier trapped between the vehicles. The young man had been trying to get help and had gotten lost along the way. His friends, those well enough to speak to us earlier, stated that he was the best equipped among them to survive this, and thanks to the Wyvern, the world’s newest Champion, it appears that he has.”
Roland staggers up into the mouth of the tunnel, bolstered on both sides by Fema rescuers, and there’s lightness enough in the sky now to see just how rough he looks. He’s got scrapes all over his skin; he’s got deep, dark purple bruises under his eyes. His eyes are blazing orange, and he’s carrying, with what looks like great difficulty, a young skier dressed in thick, thick clothing. He’s only a couple inches shorter than the Wyvern and, in so much clothing, looks nearly as broad. He’s falling all over the Wyvern’s arms, but his head is bobbing. He tries to look up and manages to look directly into the camera before Fema medical staff swarm him and the Wyvern too.
The camera pans back to the reporter. Her cheeks are flushed. “In all my years, this is one of the greatest acts of heroism I’ve ever seen. The COE was absolutely right in its choice to enlist the Wyvern to the Champions. Even now, his body appears to be close to giving out after a night of saving lives through the use of hard muscle, grit, and incredible power, but he’s insisting on going back in to help excavate some of the hotels and cabins. Fema staff is working tirelessly on that front, having already excavated and evacuated the largest hotel while the Wyvern was at work. I believe Fema as well as his team may be encouraging him to rest ...
“Yes, it appears the Wyvern will rest for a few hours, but he will stay on-site and help evacuation teams over the course of the next day to ensure all hotel and rental guests are able to safely evacuate. Wow. This is truly something. I certainly hope all of you at home understand the condition the Wyvern is in and the fact that he is not immortal. He is suffering, but he’s determined to stay to help. Now, let’s speak to Fema ’s medical director about the state of the boy who was just brought in ...”
I stay and watch for a few more hours before finally shutting the blinds and laying my head on my pillow. I send off a few additional instructions to the relief team, but they don’t need it. Margerie had already sent them a thorough brief before she passed out on my table. Charlie texts me to let me know she got home okay. I’m grateful. I stare at the text and then exit out of Charlie’s messages. I go to draft a new one.
Please take a break. I stare at it as I find Roland’s contact. He’s listed in my phone as a client. Roland Casteel, COE.
I can’t help but think about what he said. How the hell do you get close to anybody if you never open up?
And what I said. Maybe I don’t. I wince. I haven’t forgotten what he called me. Or what I called him. I hope he didn’t mean it. But I don’t know that I didn’t. He was an asshole. A control freak. A jerk.
But I’m not sure I was any better.
I was scared. Am scared. I don’t need a boyfriend, not even a fake one.
That’s true ... but ... do I want one? Fake or ... not?
I delete the message and type another. I hit send before I can chicken out ... and immediately regret it. It was too forward, too much, not at all in consideration of our past fight. It was weird and stalkery—exactly what I accused him of. It was just ... too much.
But I don’t unsend it. I don’t edit it either. Instead, I panic about it until my phone slips from my fingers and I slip into dreams of snow and heat.