Aegis Issue #1.1: The Missing Children

You are Emily Grace Carter, nineteen, a college student in the city of Cresthaven. Blonde hair, blue eyes, the image of a good Christian girl. By day, you blend into campus life, juggling lectures, coffee runs, and late hours in the library. Just another face in the crowd.

By night, you become something else entirely.

You are Aegis, the city’s premier superhero.

You can outrun a bullet in flight, lift cars as if they were paper, and endure impacts that would bring down buildings. You’ve faced down supervillains like Dr. Malice, the Pyroclast, and Serpentine. You’ve held collapsing skyscrapers together long enough for thousands to escape, stopped bank heists mid-explosion, and pulled civilians from the wreckage of disasters both natural and man-made. The people of Cresthaven sleep easier because of you.

But none of that matters right now.

For weeks, children have been vanishing. Not from wealthy neighborhoods with security cameras and gated communities, but from the forgotten corners of the city: crumbling apartment blocks, overcrowded shelters, and streets where the lamplights flicker and die.

The police are overwhelmed, the news cycles move on, and the families left behind are ****. You’ve flown over every inch of Cresthaven, scanned every alleyway, and interrogated every lowlife thug you could get your hands on. Nothing.

No clues. No witnesses. No leads.

Just silence.

And then, the message arrives.

It’s anonymous, sent to the burner phone you use for your vigilante work. A single line: “Meet me at the old clock tower in the industrial district. Midnight. Alone.” There’s no signature, no explanation, just the cold promise of information. You’re out of options, so you go.

The clock tower looms over a graveyard of abandoned warehouses, its gears frozen decades ago. The air smells like rust and rain. You land softly on the cracked pavement, your boots barely making a sound. The wind tugs at your cape, and you pull it tighter around your shoulders.

“Took you long enough.”