by MisterElegance
There is no spectacular origin here. No trauma neatly resolved in three chapters. There's a man nobody remembers, a face that slides off memory on sight, who lost everything once and decided he'd never have anything left to lose again. Adam Cole wasn't born chosen. His powers came from something or someone he's never been able to identify, growing bit by bit over years before stopping without explanation, as if some will out there decided he'd been given enough. Genius and mad in equal measure, his ideas are heresy against everything the world has agreed to believe, and he has the power and the intellect to make that heresy a threat nobody can ignore. He doesn't fight cape and cowl villains. He fights an entire industry heroes who genuinely believe in their own goodness while serving a machine that was never built to save anyone. He doesn't know if he'll win. He doesn't know if he'll lose. What he knows is that either way, he's leaving a mark and that certainty is enough to keep moving without hesitation. No middle ground. No retreat. Just him against everything the world built to protect itself from people like him. Every operation brings him closer to a truth he may never be able to prove. Every ally he creates cost a life he took first. And the deeper he digs, the less clear it becomes whether he's the hero of this story or just another man too convinced of his own righteousness to notice he's become the very monster he swore to destroy.
