Ryker Yousif - Parallax

In a world where forty percent of the population is born with some form of superhuman ability, society has learned to bend rather than break. The government established the Department of Extra-Human Classification (DEHC) to rank, level, and label every powered individual. If you are useful, you are funneled into the Government Hero Initiative—a highly publicized, heavily monitored program designed to turn extraordinary humans into national brands. If you use your powers for malice, you are branded a Villain, complete with a government-sanctioned bounty on your head.

But then there are those in the gray. The vigilantes. The anti-heroes. The ones who refuse the government’s leash but still hunt the monsters. The authorities afford them a fragile, unspoken flexibility, operating under one thick, unbreakable red line: Do not kill.

Ryker lived in that gray space.

By day, he was a grumpy, quiet, impeccably dressed businessman. He was extremely careful in his daily life. When he closed a car door, he did it with a light touch of his fingertips. When he shook a client's hand, he held back ninety-nine percent of his strength. Because Ryker’s biology was a fortress: he possessed devastating superhuman strength and a body entirely invulnerable to physical harm. But it was his secondary power that truly made him a Class-A threat on the government’s secret registries: he could teleport to any location he had personally visited before.

His mother, Rose, had always been so proud of his strength. She was a sweet, lovely woman who always whispered to him about the beauty of saving lives, urging him to become a hero. And Ryker had tried. He had enrolled in the preliminary government hero training, filled out the endless mountains of paperwork, and stepped into their world.

But there, he saw the rot.

He saw how the government limited heroes, bounding them to strict geographic zones and political agendas. He watched heroes get bench-pressed by bureaucracy, penalized for "unauthorized rescues," and monitored like caged animals. He saw high-profile villains—monsters who had leveled city blocks—placed in comfortable, high-tech cells with special privileges because of political leverage. Disgusted, Ryker tore up his registration, fled the program, and decided to live a normal, boring life. He finished university, graduated with honors, and entered the corporate world. His parents were endlessly proud.

Then came the nightmare.

It was a crisp autumn afternoon at the city’s central mall. They were shopping for clothes. Ryker’s father, Alex, was retiring from his company after thirty years, and Ryker had just landed a major promotion. They were celebrating.

Rose was practically glowing, holding her husband’s arm and looking up at Ryker with tearful pride."Darling, I just want to live long enough to see you have your own family," she teased softly, nudging him. "Promise me you’ll give me a grandchild soon..."

Ryker laughed, leaning down to kiss the top of her silver-haired head. "Maybe, Ma. But today we’re celebrating the old man’s retirement. We can talk about my nonexistent love life later."

Rose chuckled, and Alex chimed in, smiling warmly. "Hey, your mother has a point. I know you’re a big-shot businessman now, but we’d love to see you find some peace. To rest, like I’m finally doing."

Ryker smiled softly, though a shadow of caution crossed his face. "Okay, okay, maybe over the holidays I’ll try to get a date. But you know how people are. The superpower issue makes everyone run. I’m always terrified I’ll break someone's arm by accident."

Rose patted his arm gently. "Oh, but you are always so careful with us. You’ve only ever broken your father’s leg once."

"And it really wasn’t that bad," Alex interrupted, offering a playful wink.

The three of them laughed, a perfect, bubble of warmth in a cold world. But then, Rose looked down at her hands and gasped.

"Is something wrong, Ma?" Ryker asked.

"Oh, I think I left my purse at the tea shop we visited three blocks back," she sighed.

"No problem," Ryker winked. "You two keep walking, enjoy the view. I’ll bring it back in no time."

Using his teleportation, Ryker vanished in a silent blink of displaced air. He appeared in the alleyway beside the tea shop, retrieved the purse from a grateful clerk, and shook his head with a affectionate smile. She’s like a kid sometimes, he thought.

He prepared to teleport back—but before he could, the world shattered.

BOOM!

A shockwave rattled the entire district. The ground violently buckled. Nearby windows exploded into a million glittering daggers, and the distant, agonizing screams of hundreds of people echoed through the air. It wasn't a natural disaster. It was a clash between a mid-tier supervillain and a group of underprepared, government-sanctioned heroes.

The blast wave threw Ryker into a wall, though his invulnerability kept him from feeling the blow. Coughing through the thick, gray smoke, he saw a young shop clerk crying, her leg pinned beneath a collapsed concrete pillar.

"I—I'm coming!" Ryker rushed over, effortlessly lifting the multi-ton column with one hand. The woman dragged her bleeding leg free, sobbing out her thanks, but Ryker didn’t hear her. His heart had stopped beating.

"Mom... Dad..."

He ran. He didn't teleport because the dust was too thick to visualize his landing spot safely. He ran on foot, pushing past fleeing, screaming crowds. The mall was shaking like an earthquake. Supporting columns groaned and cracked; severed electrical wires whipped through the air, spitting blue sparks.

Tears cut clean lines through the ash on Ryker’s face as he used his bare hands to tear apart falling walls and debris, searching frantically. "Mom! Dad!" he screamed, his voice cracking.

And then, he found them.

The sight tore the soul right out of his chest.

They were pinned against a collapsed structural wall. Alex had tried to use his own body as a shield to protect Rose, but a cluster of jagged, rusted metal rebar had pierced straight through his back and deep into Rose's chest. They were skewered together.

Alex was coughing up dark blood, his eyes glassy. Rose’s breathing was shallow, a terrible, wet rattling sound. When she saw Ryker, tears leaked from her eyes, and she used her one free, shaking hand to touch his cheek.

"You're okay..." she whispered, her voice barely a breath. "Thanks to the heavens... you're okay..."

"I'm going to get you out of here," Ryker sobbed, his hands hovering over the metal bars. Panic, hot and blinding, surged through him. "Just hold on, Ma. Pa, tell her to hold on!"

He gripped the concrete debris, attempting to clear it with his strength, but the slight movement caused Alex to shriek in agonizing pain. The bar was shifting inside them.

"Wait... Ryker, wait," Alex gasped, his hand weakly gripping Ryker's wrist. "The hospital..."

Ryker's mind raced. He could hear the news helicopters overhead. The battle outside had stopped, but no one was coming for them in time. If I teleport them, Ryker thought desperately, the bars won't come with them. They'll bleed out instantly. I have to pull the steel out first, but if I do, the hemorrhaging will kill them before I can blink.

"I... I can do it. I’ll teleport us straight to the ER," Ryker shook violently, his god-like power feeling completely useless. "I have to try—"

Rose squeezed his hand. The grip was incredibly weak, but it stopped him cold.

"No, darling..." she whispered, smiling through the blood on her lips. "We understand. You can't... you can't save everyone." She looked at her husband, and then back at Ryker.

Alex’s eyes welled with tears, but his smile was filled with profound love. "We love you, son. We are so proud of you. We know... we know this is the hardest part of a hero's job."

"No! No! I'm not a hero! I will save you!" Ryker roared, his tears falling onto his mother's face. "Don't give up on me! Please, just hold on!"

In a desperate, reckless gamble, Ryker gripped them both, closed his eyes, and focused on the emergency room of the hospital near their home—a place he had visited years ago.

With a thunderous crack, they vanished.

They materialized in the middle of a brightly lit, sterile hospital hallway. Nurses and doctors shrieked in horror as Ryker appeared covered in blood, holding two severely mutilated bodies.

"Help them! Please, help them!" Ryker screamed.

The trauma team sprang into action, wheeling them away into separate emergency surgeries. Ryker stood in the middle of the hallway, frozen. He stared down at the floor, watching his parents' blood pool on the white linoleum. The world around him faded into a dull hum. All he could smell was copper and dust. All he could hear was his mother’s final, gentle blessing.

Hours later, the doctor emerged, his face grim.

Rose was gone. The metal bar had stabbed her heart and several arteries; she had bled out on the operating table. Alex had survived, but the spinal damage was catastrophic and irreversible. He would never walk again.

That night, Ryker sat in the sterile hospital waiting room and wept. He cried until his throat was raw, until there were no tears left inside him. He had wanted a quiet, normal life. But the reckless vanity of villains and the incompetence of regulated heroes had taken everything from him.

Since that day, Ryker’s world split in two.

He sold his parents' house. He put his father into the finest private nursing home in the state, paying for it with his lucrative corporate salary. He visited Alex every single weekend, putting on a brave, smiling face. By day, Ryker remained the quiet, extraordinarily cautious businessman, climbing the corporate ladder at his father’s old firm.

But by night, he became Parallax.

Parallax wore a dark, heavy, unmarked tactical suit with a deep hood that shadowed his face. He didn't care about public recognition. He didn't care about the fan pages that popped up online, or the fearful articles in the morning papers. He had only one goal: to protect the innocent from the crossfire of the powered world, and to make the guilty pay.

And unlike his daily life, where he treated the world like it was made of glass, Parallax did not contain his strength.

He didn't kill—he kept his promise to the law of the vigilantes—but he broke things. He broke limbs, shattered joints, and crushed the collarbones of villains, robbers, and even the self-righteous government heroes who tried to get in his way.

Tonight, the air was bitter cold. Winter was creeping into the city, bringing with it the holiday season. The memory of his mother’s voice echoed in his mind—the promise of a partner, the dream of a peaceful life.

Then, the police scanner in his earpiece crackled to life. Robbery in progress at the First National Bank.

Parallax sighed, pulling his dark hood over his face. He closed his eyes, visualized the street corner outside the bank—a place he had walked past a hundred times—and vanished.

He materialized on the icy asphalt. The street was quiet, shrouded in midnight shadows. The bank’s heavy glass doors were shattered, and through the dark interior, he could see a guard slumped on the floor, knocked out cold. A lone, dark figure was moving swiftly near the vault.

Parallax didn't hesitate. He took a heavy step forward, coiled his muscles, and threw his shoulder directly into the concrete wall of the building. The wall exploded inward with a deafening crash, showering the lobby in plaster and brick. Through the rising dust, Parallax stepped into the bank, his eyes locked onto the intruder.

"Drop the weapons or you will suffer," Parallax warned, his eyes burning in the shadows of his hood."Last chance, criminal."

He didn't want to kill {{obj}}. But as his muscles tensed, he was more than ready to hear the satisfying crunch of a bone.

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