"I can't wait to try these on," Harper squealed. You'd think someone carrying a bag of secret superhero clothing would be a bit less conspicuous, but given that the only few people on the street were all bleary eyed and determined to make it home with zero incident, Felix gave it a pass.
"Me too," he agreed. They walked on in silence, Felix savoring the quiet that came with Harper's distraction. Oh, he'd hear all about all the different fashion pieces that comprised the outfit, he was sure. It just wasn't now, and for that, he was grateful.
All of a sudden, Felix heard faint cries in the distance, growing louder with every single step he took. "Do you hear that?" he asked, his heartrate elevating.
"Yeah…" Harper whispered, looking at him with worry.
Without another moment wasted, they sprinted down the sidewalk, nearly colliding with a passerby who had his ears plugged with some earbuds. An orange glow illuminated the street, far from the harsh white lights that typically aided night-owls. This wasn't a streetlight; this was a fire.
Felix looked up at the apartment building in front of them, people streaming out from it like ants from a destroyed anthill. Fortunately, the fire was spreading from the seventh floor upwards, and the building itself was pretty small – maybe nine or ten floors total. For most of the building's residents, this meant that they had ample time to escape the heat and the smoke. The same was not true of those on the higher floors.
For all the adrenaline that surged through his veins like an uncontrollable tide, Felix was frozen. The sight of people fleeing in terror, their faces stuck in a pained rictus of grief and shock, chilled him to his core. Did he look like that, back on that spacewalk?
When he had lost all hope, had his face looked like theirs, so angry and afraid? He supposed it did, and suddenly looking at the building was like looking at a towering communications array. Something that normally wouldn't have scared him, but now terrified him on a primal level.
"We have to go in and help them," Harper decided, stepping into an alley a couple buildings away and putting on her costume.
"There's nothing we can do," Felix whispered to himself. Then, he amended it. "Nothing I can do."
Apparently, Harper had heard him, and when she tapped him on the shoulder, it was with a costumed glove. She oozed confidence, her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail behind her mask. "I'm sure we can do something."
"Can you feel pain when you're using your powers?"
"Not really."
"Well, I can. Every time I'm shot, I feel it. Every time I nearly die, I feel it. Just because I turn back time doesn't mean I won't remember what it's like. And if I go in there, I go in there as a regular dude," he slumped down beside a building. More people had begun to filter out from the buildings adjacent to the one that resembled an inferno, and sirens blared in the distance.
"Can't you just rewind if things get too bad?" Harper asked, her face obscured by her solid silver mask.
Felix was about to answer, but something caught his attention. A man in a blue suit and cape was hovering right next to the seventh floor of the burning building. He yelled something indistinguishable, noisy as everything was from screams and the sounds of the apartment complex collapsing.
Then he flew in. And out. And in. And out. Each time, he carried someone with him. First, it was just the children. Then came the elderly and the adults. For minutes, Felix sat there, transfixed. A small crowd of people he rescued formed, and it just kept growing. Until it didn't.
An unearthly moan overcame all the sounds around him, and with the apartment complex's final strength gave out. A child stood in front of the building's sign, and it collapsed right on top of him. Felix didn't need to look any closer to know what that meant for the poor kid.
Felix popped back. "Harper, the building's about to collapse. Go protect the crowd," Felix shouted, suddenly rising from his spot. Harper nodded, running off with the momentum of a freight train. When that sign was going to fall again, she'd make sure to catch it.
For his part, Felix needed to get everyone back and away from the fire. "The building's about to go!" Felix yelled at the top of his lungs, literally shoving people away until they got the message. The caped hero still flew in and out, but his treks took longer and longer with each go. On his last attempt, Felix caught the man's attention and warned him that he was running out of time. The hero nodded, entering the building a final time.
When he came blasting out, it was with a sleepy old man. The building collapsed around him, Harper catching a large piece of debris before it had the chance to land atop the suddenly homeless people. With her superhuman strength, she caught it like it was barely heavier than a bowling ball and tossed it aside.
The hero, who Felix could see was a man with a long, grey beard in a classic eye-mask, touched down on the street, looking on at the rubble. Felix mirrored his action, knowing that there was no way the man had been able to evacuate everyone from that building. People had died that night.
Harper struck up a brief conversation with the bearded guy, one that Felix was too far away to catch. Then, they corralled everyone together until the fire department took over – they had arrived just moments after everything went sideways. She dodged the police and ran to Felix.
When they finally left, Felix was saddled with an enormous headache, and enormous guilt.