Petunia darted sideways away from the gap she'd made to see through the shelves. The pile of loaves were still in her arms. Her heart thundered more with every crackle of the wrapping. She clutched them to her chest, praying for them to be quiet in her shaking hands.

Her back was pressed to the shelves. She considered crouching in case any of her bright blue dress suit could be seen through gaps between the baked goods, but she wasn't sure she could get up again if she did. There was a fire exit to the back. If she stayed on her feet—stayed ready—she could run to that if they came back here. He'd looked twenties, maybe thirties. She'd only outrun him if he let her, but running was still better than sitting or begging. She had survived too much to die curled up in a ball on a sticky floor.

Petunia barely breathed. Each wheeze sounded so loud in her own head, although, practically, she doubted he could hear her. There were all sorts of crashing and banging behind her, including something smashing on the floor. It sounded like glass. She thought she heard him clamber over the counter at one point, the padding of feet then slapping the floor as he landed on the other side. Moments passed, and he returned, this time landing with a thud and cursing intelligible words. He walked from one side to the other, Petunia heard the squeak of a fridge opening.

She slipped her heels off and inched along the shelves towards the officer, one step at a time. She'd never been more glad to be wearing shoes without a buckle before. Her fingers ran across the woven baskets, scraping her fingers against loose, pointy weaves. If he was looking for other things in the shop, she wasn't many aisles away. If she went towards the cop, she could turn, and she'd only be a short dash from the door. The back door was closer, but it probably led to a dead-end alley, knowing this neighbourhood. She'd be safer on the street if she could get there and she could call the police from outside, where he couldn't hear her.

The closer she got, the more of him she could see in the small metal mirror in the corner. It was angled just right, catching the faint hum of the beer and cider fridges in the background, but her eyes kept drifting to him. Barefoot. The cuts on his feet were dark, smeared with blood and dragging a trail of blood along the floor. Behind every step was a partial, smudged footstep against the linoleum. His joggers hung awkwardly, torn at the seams with threads unraveling like frayed ropes, and beneath his arms, large pit stains bloomed across the fabric of his hoodie. A strange splatter of what she assumed was vomit stained his leg, sticking to the fabric in patches. His teeth chattered—not just from the cold winter air—but from some substance he was on that Petunia couldn't identify.

He turned and Petunia pressed herself into the shelves further. He clutched a basket like his life depended on it—filled with cigarettes, spirits, snacks, and beer.

The man moved closer, each step dragging, his feet leaving behind more smears of blood. Petunia's heart pounded in her chest, her body pressed tighter still against the shelves, barely able to breathe. He was getting closer to the officer now, his ragged movements slow and deliberate. She covered her mouth with both hands to mask her panting.

She could only see the man's hands as he clumsily untied one of the police officer's boots, then the other. She froze. He was right there. The man stumbled into a shelf whilst putting them on and a cascade of tins hit the floor one after another. Her eyes flicked to the police officer. She couldn't see his face but he hadn't moved since the electricity. He was probably dead. Her eyes flicked back and landed on the man. He was fully round the corner now. They met eyes.

For a long, torturous moment, they stared at each other across the narrow aisle. Petunia could see the emptiness in his eyes, the vacant confusion swirling behind them

The smell of alcohol and bodily fluids floated towards her. She backed away from him. This was the time to run—to not just lie down and die to whatever killed the police officer beside him.

He blinked, slowly, like he was struggling to comprehend what was going on. In a voice so quiet it almost wasn't there at all, he asked, "Are you my mum?"

The question hung in the air, fragile and strange, as though it didn't quite belong. Petunia's heart skipped a beat, her chest tightening, a mix of relief and dread flooding her veins. His voice wasn't threatening, but at that moment, it was the most terrifying thing she'd ever heard.

"No," she whispered, the word barely escaping her lips, her voice trembling despite herself.

The man didn't respond. He just stood there for a moment, his eyes blinking slowly, as if processing what she'd said. Then, with a quiet grunt, he turned and shuffled away, the basket still clutched tightly in his hands.

Petunia remained frozen in place, her body trembling, unable to tear her eyes from the mirror, even though she couldn't see him in it anymore. The door's bell jingled faintly as the man left, and with it, the tension in the room seemed to dissipate.

She stayed there until she was certain he wasn't coming back. Time passed, stretching out in a way she couldn't track. Then, it was like her body finally remembered how to move. A sharp gasp escaped her lips as the tension released from her lungs, and she stumbled forward, wincing at the ache in her back from having been hunched over for so long. The groceries she'd come here for felt suddenly irrelevant. She realised, with a jolt, that she was still cradling loaves of bread against her chest. She returned them to the shelf absently, then reached down, placing her fingers along the man's throat. His skin was cold. He was already gone.

She dug through her purse to find her phone.

When it flickered to life, the small tune it played felt startlingly loud in the stillness of the store. She tapped in 999, and brought it to her ear, feeling the pulse of her heartbeat beneath her fingertips. The tremor in her voice was gone.

"Police and Ambulance," she said, her words steady.

"68 Heneage Street," she continued, her throat dry and scratchy.

"There was a murder," she said, the finality of it hanging in the air.

The operator's questions barely registered in her mind, but somehow, the words came out in the right order.

She stood there with the phone held to her ear long after they'd hung up.

A noise broke the silence, sharp and sudden. Petunia flinched, the sound coming from the officer's radio, now lying abandoned on the counter beside the body. She looked over, her breath catching in her throat as she listened.

"I have another situation at Royal London Hospital. Similar powers to before. Requesting all available units. " She sounded frazzled.

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"We're five minutes out."

"You'll have to drive round the back to avoid the press. Do not talk to the press. I repeat, do not talk to the press. Chief has said he'll handle it. We need to contain this until we know what is going on."

Petunia's mind froze, her fingers tightening around the phone as she strained to hear. Powers? What powers? The officer's radio buzzed again with static before the voice continued, low and urgent.

"What are we supposed to do with family—tell them we know nothing? That won't go down well."

"All we can do is follow orders. Come round the back. No press."

Her heart pounded in her chest as the gravity of the words sunk in. She hadn't imagined it. This wasn't just some random act of violence. Something was happening—something far worse than she could understand.

The radio crackled one more time. It caught the end of their sigh "Turning onto the A11 now. Be there in two."

The voice faded, and Petunia stood there, a cold sweat breaking out across her skin. She had no idea what the man meant by 'powers', or what was truly happening, but she knew one thing for sure: the situation was bigger than her. Bigger than anything she could have ever imagined.

She didn't wait another second. Her fingers darted out, snatching the officer's radio from his pocket. It was cold in her hands despite being near his body, heavy with the weight of something she didn't yet understand. She didn't know if it would help her, but it was a piece of the puzzle.

Without another thought, she stuffed it into her purse, the fabric of the bag crunching around the device. Her hand shook as she zipped it up, eyes scanning the store one last time.

Petunia was out the door in seconds, the cool night air hitting her face like a slap. Her heart was still racing, her mind spinning with the chaos of what she had just witnessed, but she couldn't stay. Not with everything she'd overheard. She didn't know what was happening, but she had a feeling this wasn't the last time she'd hear about the "powers."

As she walked down the street, her eyes flicking nervously around her, she couldn't help but wonder how many other people were involved in this—and if she was now a part of something far darker than she could ever imagine. The radio in her bag felt like a ticking time bomb. Whatever it was, whatever had happened at 68 Heneage Street, it was just the beginning.

And Petunia was already too deep in it.

She spent that night sitting on her armchair with the radio in her hands, overhearing call after call. There was a bar fight a few miles away where someone had killed a guy with a single punch. Half an hour later, there was a huge warehouse fire with a man sighted in the centre, on fire but walking around. In the middle of her lasagna, there was a lady who thought she was having a psychotic break because she could see her dead brother. They were asked to come to give the ambulance backup. The requests for backup kept trickling in, even after the voices all changed for the night shift.

The first news broadcast aired the next night. That's when she first heard about the portals and monsters. The entire speech was very vague—more about the military and all of their plans than about the portals themselves. It was all damage control. Instead of the frustration and fear she'd heard pouring from the handheld radio all night, the man on screen was all smiles and promises.

The speeches on powers didn't cover anything she didn't know. They seemed random, involving all sorts of feats beyond human abilities. The victims of the occurrences were often volatile. She found the term victims interesting, seeing as they were usually the perpetrators in the calls she was getting. Petunia wondered if that was the powers themselves corrupting people or if the people who were getting them got them because of it. It ended with the number of a tipline for information, asking anyone who knew anything to come forward.

Petunia pulled out her notebook soon after that, carrying it around with her for her whole night routine. When she cleaned up, it was on the counter. When she brushed her teeth, it was by the sink. She was tempted to stay up to note down more, but she doubted there'd be much difference between sleeping now or later, so she forced herself to leave it on her dining table with the radio that night, and sleep at her usual time—10 o'clock.

The next morning began with a frustrating amount of simple "Backup at a specific address" with no details. Then, there was a new broadcast. It turns out the powers didn't corrupt or target disturbed individuals. Those were just the cases that required the most intervention. Since it had been on the news, the line had been flooded with stories overnight, and it opened with an interview with a man who claimed to have unlocked something called a Butcher Class for killing and cutting up this huge monster. Then it flipped to another interview with a woman who claimed to have had her Class for two days—it was the longest they'd seen so far. Hers was called "Crash Test Dummy." She'd gotten it after surviving a motorcycle wreck. They didn't describe what anyone's classes did, just how they got them. That was only the start of the rules about what could and couldn't be said online about this new invasion.

The radio crackled again, the next few calls blurring together—some sort of crackling energy, another mysterious fire. But Petunia wasn't listening as intently anymore. She was thinking about the woman with the "Crash Test Dummy" Class—about how the world had started to shift under her feet and how little she truly understood it. The broadcasts, the calls, they all felt like pieces of a puzzle she couldn't quite grasp. She had thought there would be answers, some moment of clarity, but all she had were more questions—new things to track, new oddities to note down, but no real understanding.

Her notebook sat on the counter beside her, open to a fresh page. She had to keep writing. Not because she had a plan or a purpose but because it felt like the only thing she could do. It was a kind of inertia—she wasn't looking for some grand conclusion but just some sense of direction. Petunia took another note, marking a timestamp on a call that had come through about a strange woman who claimed to have healed her own wounds after a violent attack. The details were vague, the call barely coherent, but there was something about it that stuck with her.

After a while, she found herself looking at the clock—6 o'clock. She hadn't realized how late it had gotten. She forced herself through the steps of food, rushing just enough that she could eat at 6:30 when she always did. By the time her bowls were empty and clean on the drying rack, the night shift had settled in, and the voices had changed. They were familiar now—voices she recognized from the first night, voices that had become almost comforting in their predictability. The first officer they knew of had gotten their class: "Police Paladin." None of them knew the officer personally, but it didn't stop them theorising between cases their whole shift.

She found herself wondering about them. The ones who called in, the ones who were living through whatever this was. Did they know what they had? What it all meant? Or were they just as lost as she was, stumbling through the cracks in reality, hoping for someone to explain it to them?

That night's broadcast cut back to another interview. This one was with a man who had survived being struck by lightning and somehow gained the ability to control the weather. The woman who'd gotten her Class after a car crash was still a topic of discussion, though now there was speculation about what might be the "real" trigger for unlocking these powers. Was it the trauma? Aliens? Evolution? A scientist studying the effects of the powers asked that question to their latest interviewee. From the host's face, it was obvious this question wasn't allowed. The interviwee said she had a Unique Class called "Bandwidth Beacon." She looked confused by the question and said, "I was deemed worthy by The System?" Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. There was disgruntled speech off-camera that the presenter was trying to mask. They cut away from the interview without wrapping it up. She wrote The System in her notebook with a question mark.

Petunia leaned back, the dull ache of exhaustion pressing against her temples. The information was coming faster than she could process it, and she was barely holding on. The worst part was not knowing how much they weren't saying. Even slip-ups like this didn't fit into a bigger picture, they just made more questions. She scribbled a few more notes, her thoughts starting to blur with the details of the calls and broadcasts, like they were all feeding into each other, feeding off each other.

The next morning was the same—more backup calls, more odd reports. But even as she moved through the motions of her day, a part of her stayed focused on the notebook in her bag, the notebook full of the strange, fragmented pieces of a puzzle she wasn't sure she would ever solve. She wasn't looking for the big moment anymore, the huge revelation. She was just waiting for something—anything—that might make sense of it all.

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