Into the Stratosphere

Dating is hard. Dating the world’s most powerful superhero? That’s impossible.

Chapter 1

Brie

It was one of those days. One of those weird days where you couldn’t tell if you were going to be zapped into another dimension or just bump into an alien on your way to the office.

I worked at Epoch Media Group— specifically for Epoch Magazine. My editor, Jennifer Manning, was both terrifying and brilliant. Some days, I genuinely wondered if she came from another planet. Like him. The caped guy. The one who crash-landed into our lives five years ago, saving us from otherworldly invaders and the batshit supervillains that crawled out of the woodwork soon after. Reality? Yeah, it took a hard left into the Twilight Zone.

I’d moved to Mercer City from sleepy little Langford with dreams of becoming a writer. I got into Mercer City University on scholarships, busted my ass for four years, graduated top of my class, then spent two years slaving away as an intern before finally earning a title: junior editor. Now? Senior editor. And God, I was tired.

My life was all edits, deadlines, and chasing the next byline. Romance? Nonexistent.

After maybe three hours of sleep, I was trudging to work — headphones in, clutching a coffee the size of my arm. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, just drifting, letting the morning sun and the city’s chaos blur around me. Music blasting.

Tara Swan — my favorite. Everyone’s favorite. I was a hardcore Swanie. She’d been Epoch’s Person of the Year twice.

So had he.

When he actually showed up for the photoshoots or interviews — which, of course, Jennifer Manning handled herself — the office lit up like Christmas morning. The buzz was instant. You could feel it in the walls.

He rarely did press. Every reporter in the country was dying for an exclusive.
He rarely gave them.

Even Epoch got crumbs. Jennifer tried to crack him open — the man behind the myth. She got one quote. One polished, PR-approved quote. Not the real story. Not even close. Sound bites. Deflections. Carefully measured answers. He was ready for every question she threw at him. Like he’d had media training for ten lifetimes.

They called him Stratos.

The white knight. He wore white armour with hits of black, gold and blue. He looked like an archangel dropped from orbit — all clean lines, flowing cape and an impossible presence. He wasn’t just powerful. He defied every scientific law and rule we knew about our own world.

Flight. Super strength. Speed. Invulnerability. And then some.

He was a walking anomaly, powered by the atmosphere itself. Our world seemed to feed him. That’s why they called him Stratos. He wasn’t from here, but for reasons no one could quite believe, he chose to protect us.

Too noble to trust. Too mysterious to ignore.

And right on cue, I saw the streak — that familiar shimmer of white vapor trailing behind him as he flew overhead like a comet in broad daylight.

Which was never a good sign.

Sure enough, screaming erupted behind me me — people pouring into the street like a panic parade.

I yanked my headphones out just as the chaos hit.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered, heart sinking. “Not today.”

I’d worn the worst possible shoes for running for my life: red ballet flats. Chantelle had talked me into them, said they looked cuter than my usual scuffed pair. Cute didn’t matter now. They weren’t broken in, they rubbed my heels raw, and bit into my skin like plastic claws.

The crowd surged forward, that chaotic momentum you either matched — or got flattened by.

So, I ran anyway.

I looked back, but I couldn’t see what was happening—just chaos and noise.

Then came the sound.

A screech—raw and guttural, like an eagle crossed with a T. rex—ripped through the air and rattled my bones. My ears rang from the force of it.

A second later, a beam of light—bright and sharp as a blade—sliced clean through the side of a building.

Yeah. Stratos shot light beams. From his hands. And eyes.

Debris rained down like confetti from hell — glass, metal, plaster, stone.

You’d think that as an editor at the top magazine in the country — the one with its finger practically stapled to the national pulse — I’d be sprinting toward the danger, phone out, chasing the headline.

But no.
Not anymore.

That was strictly against policy now.

Too many reporters, journalists, and interns had gotten hurt — or worse — trying to snap shots of Stratos clashing with whatever nightmare he was taking down that week.

Besides, he had begged people to stay back, to let him work without worrying about civilians ending up in the crossfire. The clips went viral.

He wore a mask — white and angular — covered all of his face, but the slits over his eyes glowed like dying stars. His hair hidden by a hood and cape, white, blue and gold, over layered armor etched with a sigil on his chest, that no one had been able to decode.

His voice was modulated — metallic and alien — deepened to something that could freeze the blood in your veins.

Some people thought he wore the mask because he wasn’t human. Others thought it was because he was — and didn’t want anyone to know.

No one really knew what he looked like. No one knew who he was.

The crowd surged again, faster now. People screamed all around me as more debris fell.

I glanced back — just for a second.

And there it was.

A massive alien creature lumbered through downtown Mercer like a kaiju on a caffeine bender. It looked like someone had mashed a dragon with a cartoon villain from a Disney movie — then super-sized the entire nightmare.

It was breathing some kind of blue-white flame, bright and searing, levelling the sides of buildings like it was casually clearing its throat.

Jesus.
It was huge — scaly, steaming, and ugly as sin.

The closest Earth-based comparison I could come up with was a Komodo dragon.
Or maybe an alligator with a snake head, on like... a good day — if that gator-snake hybrid had bulked up on steroids, discovered existential rage, and learned to stand on its hind legs.

Where the hell did something like that even come from?
Did I want to know?

...Yeah.
Yeah, I kinda did.
But only because of morbid curiosity.

High above, Stratos circled the beast. With his hands, he carved glowing rings of light into the air, forming an effervescent halo around it — some kind of atmospheric containment bubble. He looked like he was trying to pin it down, trap it mid-rampage.

Was he manipulating the atmosphere? Adjusting the air pressure?
God, I wanted to know how it worked.

How he bent the sky and clouds and light like it was nothing.

It was fascinating.
And totally, fucking terrifying.

The creature slammed its body into the ground with a thunderous THUD — and it felt like an earthquake cracked through the city. The pavement rippled beneath my feet.

I ducked beneath the heavy stone archway of the Imperial Building at Fourth and Central. Stone and glass — not exactly the safest structure in a monster attack, but it was better than standing in the open.

Ever since Stratos showed up, it had become painfully clear the government had been hiding a shit-ton of secrets — mostly about life beyond Earth.

And not all the scary unknown things came from deep space.
Some were manmade.

Government experiments.
Biological weapons.
Science projects gone horribly fucking wrong.

Variant humans with abilities that no one could explain.

Being in current affairs journalism these days?
It felt more like writing speculative sci-fi.

Area 51.
Black site labs.
Secret military installations no one had ever heard of.

Alien coverups.
Spy briefings.
Top-level denials.

It had all gotten very weird.

And none of it helped with the exhaustion.

When you live in a world where the impossible is now just Tuesday — anxiety becomes a full-time job.

The general population was stressed, maxed out, and quietly terrified all the time.

The world felt like a dumpster fire, and we were all just trying not to get caught in the blaze.

Then — out of nowhere — Stratos hit the pavement. He shot up and went straight for the creature again.

I spotted my office up ahead — a twenty-floor, steel-and-glass fortress that housed the empire of Epoch Media Group.
Everything was there: the national news channel, the celebrity gossip division, the high-fashion glossy, and of course, Epoch.

One big, slightly dysfunctional media family.

Should I just make a run for it?

Behind me, the creature let out another ear piercing screech. I covered my ears.

It snatched Stratos mid-air by the cape and whipped him around like a rag doll. The thing tried to crush him in its taloned grip, but Stratos did something — a burst of pressure or light — and the creature recoiled, releasing him with a frustrated shriek.

We all watched in a stunned mix of awe and terror, breath held, lives quite literally hanging in the balance.

I knew I should be making my way toward my building. I knew it.

But I couldn’t look away.

He was so strong. It was almost impossible to believe this was real — this was our reality — and yet I was watching it unfold in real time.

Stratos shot straight into the air, and then came down like a thunderbolt, slamming into the creature with enough force to shatter a mountain.

But no such luck. The monster only stumbled back.

A chunk of a nearby building cracked off and hurtled toward the street below.

A mother and her daughter were standing directly beneath it.

They ran.

They weren’t going to make it.

Stratos intervened, throwing up a forcefield of air and light that caught the debris just before it hit.

But the second he turned to protect them, the creature struck — a bone-shaking blow from its massive tail that knocked him clear across the sky. He caught it just in time, bracing — but the impact shook the ground.

Asphalt split in fractures for miles.

The beast lunged again, trying to crush him between its jaws. Stratos held it off — barely — then the thing whipped its head and threw him at the ground.

Hard.

He hit the pavement like a meteor, arms splayed, body twisting midair in a desperate attempt to slow the fall — but it wasn’t enough.

The White Knight collided with the street in a brutal crash that sent chunks of asphalt flying in every direction. His body gouged a trench through half a city block.

Everything went still.

Oh god. Was he okay?

He can’t be dead. He’d taken harder hits. He always came back.

But, he wasn’t moving.

The air felt thick and hard to breathe.

Everyone started panicking as the beast reared up with what felt like a victory cry and began trying to get through a building to get to the fallen hero.

I still couldn’t move. Even as the creature came at us. I couldn’t just leave Stratos there to get trampled or worse. That was—That felt all kinds of wrong.

Before I could stop myself, I sprinted into the street, skidding across broken asphalt, clambering over shattered pavement and mangled pipes spraying—hopefully just—water.

He was lying in a ditch carved by his own impact. Cracked tar, dust, dirt. His white armour looked grey and scuffed, the edges of his cape were burned and tattered.

I crawled down into the ravine.

Up close, he was huge. So much taller and broader than I ever realized. I’d only ever seen him from far away, usually flying at speeds too fast to clock.

Maybe that’s why I was now in a literal crater, trying to wake up a semi-conscious superhero like a lunatic.

How the fuck was I supposed to do that, anyway?

I smacked his cracked mask.

“Hey. Stratos.”
Nothing.

I smacked it a little harder.
“Wake up, mister.”

He stirred—barely—and groaned. His voice modulator must’ve been damaged because his reply came out weirdly human. Muffled. Slurred.

“...ghmm...nhh...”

“Hey, you’ve gotta get up. I mean, you don’t have to, but that’s kind of your whole thing, right? Fighting the scary monsters? I mean, you just got your ass handed to you, so you could very fairly pack it in, I guess…”

I was rambling. I knew it.
But he was waking up.

“Lady! What the hell are you doing down there?!” a voice shouted. A construction worker, clearly losing his mind at the sight of me kneeling next to a fallen god.

I gestured to the unconscious superhero in front of me.
“Helping him. Maybe help me!” I yelled.

“No,” Stratos rasped.

His arm moved. I ducked instinctively—don’t ask me why. Probably because of the light beams.

The construction guy looked at me like I was the one with a death wish, then turned and ran. Fair.

“You have to get out of here,” Stratos said, voice firm now. That otherworldly edge creeping back in. “All of you do.”

Behind me, I saw them: The Ascendants. Or at least that’s what they called themselves. Capes and variants alike. Heroes.

A blur of color and power slammed into the street.

Leading the charge was Iron Ward — a literal tank of a woman, all brutal grace and fury. Sword and shield in hand, she leapt like a Norse goddess, striking the beast with impossible force.

“Your friends are here,” I said.

“Perfect,” he groaned, starting to sit up. “Let’s add more chaos to the party.”

I snorted. “That’s funny.”

“Yeah,” he said, “comes with the cape. Superhero wit is included in the package.”

I laughed — couldn’t help it.

He looked at me — or I think he did. His mask was partially cracked along the jawline, exposing just enough to see the curve of a mouth, maybe part of a cheek.

Was he smiling under there?

It felt like he was.

“Your voice…” I said slowly. “It’s not at all what I expected.”

“Look, ma’am, you really need to—” He stopped. Tilted his head. “Wait. What did you think my voice would sound like?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Like, deep. Booming. God-like. Very ‘kneel before me.’”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“That seems to be your thing today.”

He gave me a look — somehow incredulous, amused, and exhausted all at once. I could feel his eyebrows raise at me under that damn helmet.

Then his eyes flicked up toward the fight. “Shit—”

Before I could react, think, or even breathe, the world blurred.

I was in the air—in arms that absolutely enveloped me and held me firm but not crushingly so.
Then suddenly I was on a rooftop—A mile away.

My knees hit concrete and I promptly threw up.

“That was fast,” I croaked. “Too fast.”

“Sorry,” he said, crouched beside me, hands on my shoulders. “That happens more often than you’d think. Human bodies aren’t built for that kind of acceleration.”

I nodded, because yeah — clearly.

“You gonna be okay?” he asked, scanning my face.

I wiped my mouth and nodded again, rising slowly, lungs gulping air like it was water.

“Of course. But are you? You just got slammed through a city block by a dragon-lizard-alien-thing. Aren’t you, like, concussed?”

“I’ll live,” he said with a shrug. “I heal. Almost instantly. Atmosphere keeps me powered up.”

“Right. The whole... Stratosphere thing.” I waved vaguely at the sky. “Still — those hits have to hurt.”

“You have no idea,” he muttered, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I should get back.”

I looked down the street. The Ascendants were fully engaged now. Even Whisper had shown up — a walking mystery in all black and blue, black Afro, beautiful, and extremely good at vanishing mid-battle. She was a rare sighting.

“Yeah. Makes sense. It’s kind of your thing.”

He chuckled.

“Thanks for the save,” I said.

“Likewise.”

He jumped onto the edge of the rooftop wall, balanced like it was nothing—

And launched off with a casual step, disappearing into the chaos.

I blinked after him.

Then looked around.

Wait... this rooftop looked really familiar.

Was I already at work?

No.

No way that was a coincidence.
...Right?