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Origin 1 : The Call
🕑 Added 2025-06-16 19:17:05 +0000 UTCThe Call
*[FLASHBACK - 15 Years Ago]*
The rain hammered against the kitchen window of the Thorne house, each drop echoing through the cramped space. Ten-year-old Alex sat at the wooden table, struggling with his math homework. Numbers had never made sense to him—not like they did for the smart kids at school. He chewed his pencil eraser, frustrated tears threatening as he stared at the multiplication problems that might as well have been written in another language.
"These numbers don't lie, Sarah," his father whispered from across the kitchen, hunched over manila folders with his mother. David Thorne worked nights at the chemical plant, came home exhausted and covered in chemical residue that made Alex's eyes water. "The cancer rates in Sector 7 are three times normal. Three times."
Alex looked up from his homework, not really understanding but sensing the fear in his father's voice. His mother, Sarah, was a nurse at Gotham General—she saw sick people every day, but lately she'd been coming home quieter, sadder.
"The timeline matches perfectly," his mother said, pointing at papers Alex couldn't read from where he sat. "Ever since Crane Industries expanded..."
"Daddy?" Alex's voice was small, uncertain. He wasn't like the other kids—wasn't quick with answers or clever with words. Teachers spoke slowly to him, other children rolled their eyes when he took too long to understand jokes. "Are people getting sick?"
His parents looked at him with that expression he knew too well—the one that said he wouldn't understand anyway, so why bother explaining? But Alex had seen enough. Tommy down the street, who couldn't run without falling down. Little Mary, who wheezed and turned blue. The Kowalski twins, born too small and wrong.
"Don't worry about grown-up things, sweetie," his mother said gently, the way people talked to him when they thought he was too slow to grasp what was happening.
David spread out a map covered in red marks. Alex couldn't read well, but he could see their street was surrounded by X's. "We have to do something, Sarah. These families... they don't know what's being done to them."
"The EPA inspector comes next week," his mother said, but her voice shook. "If we can prove what Crane Industries is dumping..."
"They'll destroy us." David's hands trembled as he held a photograph. "Senator Crane owns half this city. Judge Thompson is his nephew. We're nobody—a night-shift worker and a floor nurse. Who's going to listen?"
Alex bent back over his homework, pretending not to listen, but the words carved themselves into his memory anyway. He might be slow at school, might struggle with reading and numbers, but he understood fear. He understood that his parents—the two people who loved him despite his limitations—were scared of something much bigger than they were.
"There has to be someone," his mother whispered. "Someone who'll help."
Outside, lightning illuminated the chemical plant's towers. Alex had walked past those gates every day on his way to school, never understanding why the air tasted wrong, why his throat burned, why so many kids in his neighborhood got sick.
He wasn't smart enough to understand the papers spread across the table, wasn't clever enough to solve problems or make plans. But in that moment, watching his parents huddle over evidence of something terrible, ten-year-old Alex Thorne made a simple, heartfelt wish: someday, he wanted to be strong enough to help people like his mom and dad. Smart enough to understand. Powerful enough to make the bad people stop hurting everyone.
He had no idea that wishes made in the shadow of evil sometimes came true in the most terrible ways possible.
The rain continued to fall, washing poison from the sky into soil where children played, where families lived, where good people like his parents fought battles they couldn't win.
But in the quiet desperation of that kitchen, something was beginning—a slow burn of love and loss that would one day transform a struggling child into something far more dangerous than anyone could imagine.
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I am still editing the next couple of chapters in the arc. I am publishing the origin story now to get some time to complete it . So sorry to break your flow. 😣
