Edward Grant Age 19

Edward Grant was an ordinary nineteen-year-old—well, maybe not quite a man yet, more like a boy still figuring things out. He had some growing up to do.

His family, noticing his anxiety worsening after high school, had suggested he travel to gain some perspective and decide what he wanted out of life. The rigid structure of school had been the scaffolding that kept Ed grounded. Without it, he was adrift, his sleep schedule ruined, and his sense of direction vanished.

That advice, however, had led Ed to what he now considered a huge mistake. He thought Gateway City, with its reputation for being superhero-free most of the time, would also be free of supervillains.

Don’t get him wrong, Ed admired superheroes. The Flash, Batman, Green Lantern—those were guys worth looking up to. He appreciated their efforts in keeping the world safe. But Ed had also noticed a trend: wherever superheroes appeared, supervillains weren't far behind, as if drawn to take down the very icons of justice.

Gateway City, on the other hand, had always seemed like a quiet backwater in the grand scheme of super-powered conflicts. Ed's entire life, the news had shown it as an ordinary, peaceful city. No capes. No chaos.

Well, boy, was he wrong.

It turned out that while the Amazonian Princess, Wonder Woman, officially operated out of Washington, D.C., she had a history in Gateway City. Sometimes, she returned to lend a hand or just to remind people they were safe under her watch.

And where a hero had left their mark, trouble usually lingered.

Unbeknownst to Ed, some of Wonder Woman's enemies—and not just the godlike ones—had stuck around. People like Henry Cobb Armbruster, the ruthless CEO of Armbruster International, had roots in the city. On the surface, Armbruster International was a legitimate company, maybe a little more cutthroat than most, but respectable enough. The darker side of the corporation was something you only learned when it was too late.

Like Ed was about to.

Armbruster had a long-standing grudge against Wonder Woman. Years ago, one of his shady experiments in Boston had caught the Amazon’s attention, and she’d stopped him cold. He’d never really recovered from that humiliation. So, when Ed stumbled upon an ad for an internship at one of Armbruster International’s labs, he thought it was just the kind of break he needed. A chance to do something useful with his time.

He had no idea what he was walking into.

The job turned out to be less of an internship and more of an excuse to turn Ed into a lab rat. By the time he realized something was off, it was too late. They caught him, trapped him in one of their isolation chambers, and told him the ugly truth: he wasn’t here to work. He was here to be experimented on.

Panic gripped him. He wasn’t some comic book hero who could break free of a situation like this. He was just... Ed.

Or so he thought.

In his desperation, something inside him snapped. The lab's sensors went haywire, detecting an internal breach. Delicate equipment sparked and fizzled, struggling to handle the sudden surge of power. Unbeknownst to Ed, he had sent out a wild burst of brainwaves, an energy he never knew he had. The chamber’s design, meant to shield the lab from outside detection, ironically trapped his unleashed power, amplifying it and wreaking havoc on the lab's instruments.

But Ed’s unintended strike wasn’t just felt by the machines.

Valerie Beaudry, the second incarnation of the Silver Swan and Armbruster's former enforcer, had been in the lab when Ed’s power surged. Valerie was a deeply unstable woman, plagued by insecurities and long manipulation. And now, Ed's brainwaves had hit her like a hammer, echoing violently in the enclosed space. The reflective surfaces of the lab’s walls bounced his energy back and forth, amplifying the effect until it reverberated in Valerie's mind, distorting her thoughts, twisting her already fragile mental state.

Ed had no idea what he’d done or the kind of chaos he’d just unleashed. All he knew was that, for the first time, something inside him had fought back, and whatever it was, it had set off a chain of events he wasn’t ready for.