The Spark Before the Fire

The rooftop was quiet, but tense.

Maxwell stared at the man across from him—the vigilante whispered about across America. He had always known this day would come. There was something in the raw brutality of Black Zero's methods that felt familiar… wrongfully familiar.

"You don't remember me," the man said, voice muffled behind the black mask. "But I remember you."

"I remember enough," Maxwell replied. "You were the one they called Zero. The boy who disappeared."

"They didn't call me a boy," he said. "They called me an asset. A liability. An equation that went wrong."

Maxwell's expression darkened. "You were a child. We both were."

Black Zero took a step forward. "You think I became this because of what they did? No, Marvelo-Man. I became this because of what you didn't."

"What I didn't do?"

"You escaped and got praised. I escaped and got hunted."

"I didn't ask for the spotlight."

"No," he said, "you didn't ask. You just stood there, draped in a flag, pretending their sins didn't bleed through the seams of your costume."

Maxwell remained calm. "I never pretended. I carried the weight."

"But never the guilt."

Silence fell between them.

Maxwell looked into the white-lensed eyes of the mask. "You think we're the same?"

"We are. Two sides of the same experiment. One approved for public release. The other locked in a basement and forgotten."

"You don't have to do this. You can still choose another path."

"I did. The moment I saw what justice really meant in their world. And I promised myself—I'd never be their tool again. I'd become the hand that struck back."

Maxwell's jaw tightened. "Even if it means becoming worse than them?"

"I'm not worse. I'm the consequence. I'm the one who knocks when they sleep too soundly."

"I fight to protect," Maxwell said. "You fight to punish."

"Because punishment works."

"No, Elijah. It's because you're still afraid."

The masked man's voice dropped into something colder. "Don't call me that. That name was theirs. I buried it in the dirt they poured on me."

"You can bury a name," Maxwell said quietly, "but not your soul."

For a long beat, neither man moved.

Then Black Zero lifted his hands to the sides of his mask. In a single pull, he stripped it away.

His face was hard, worn, jaw sharp, eyes rimmed in old darkness. A face Maxwell had only seen once—through a one-way mirror, years ago.

"I am what you left behind."

And then, with a flicker of muscle, he sent a punch crashing across Maxwell's face.

Blood snapped from Maxwell's lip as he reeled back. The impact didn't drop him, but it rattled his spine.

Black Zero's coat flared open.

Revealing his uniform fully—black strongman suit sculpted to muscle, purple trunks, purple boots. No gloves. A single crimson cape hung from one shoulder like a lopsided crown.

"I'm not asking you to understand," he said. "I'm asking you to remember. You made me."

Maxwell touched the blood running down his chin.

"I never forgot."