A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King, Tom Fowler

damn good at it.
    The fire blasts yellow-blue and then crackles into waves of orange that rumble through the room. The tips of his hair singe, and Pen drops to the floor, allows the worst of the heat to rest over his head, makes sure to keep his hands locked down on the table. The flames hook into his skin and wrench his flesh upward; but his grip’s sure, and he holds.
    The wooden ceiling brace above his head’ll fall, but he can’t move for another fourteen seconds, not until the smacker’s across. He stiffens his body in anticipation of the impact, and when the blow comes—the beam snapping on his back, swaddling foot-long slivers around his skin, slopping sand inside his nostrils and eyelids—Pen retains his stance, his hands slipping, but still pushing, holding.
    Eight seconds. There’s pain, but he holds, his fingers bucking with the ferocity of his grip. Four seconds. The table tips and chortles, and Pen cries out, pushes down. Two seconds. The pain is much worse. One second. Pen holds.
    From the light jerk of the marble, he knows the man’s weight’s shifted to the other side. Pen lets go, and his body retreats into the carpet, the hardened strands of coffee-stained fabric scratching at his cheek. The table, finally left unattended, stutters, whines, and drops.
    The heat follows Pen down. In the old days, he would simply have hid behind that comforting expanse of metal until it was safe, until Ultimate’s skin stopped radiating white and returned to its normal, pleasant silver. Then he’d pop out with some hilarious comeback and pounce on whoever the enemy was on the other side.
    Left alone with the fire, Pen arches his neck and slaps his head, tries to cull some energy together, but smoke sneaks into his chest and caresses his lungs, veils his head, and twirls into his eyes, ears, whispers for him to go down again, descend into the pillowed darkness and sleep until morning. It’s been too long; this is nothing, barely anything. He shouldn’t already be tired. Not this tired. His eyelids slack, and though he seems to push at them, they fall just the same.
    Wait. No. Wait.
    His muscles spasm against the smoke; his arms wave out. There’s no one on the other side. No one to show them where to go. Once this place collapses, the shock wave’ll crash into the building next door, and it’ll fail too.
    The people he’s saved—they need to hurry, find the fire escape on the southeast side. Pen’s got to get back there and tell them. He should’ve told them before. He should’ve thought of that. He’s not as good anymore, and he never was all that good.
    Now they’ll die. They’ll all die. It’s been too long; he’s forgotten so many of the rules, and if you don’t know the rules, you can’t really play the game.
    The heat near the floor is too much, but it’s better than the boiled belting he gets as he stands again in the wake of the flame, as he steps again onto the sill. He needs to come back; he needs somehow to yell to them that they have to move, they’ve got to get somewhere safe. He needs to save them all.
    The smoke has clouded his eyes, and it takes Pen a moment to see the empty skyline. Jesus, they’re not there. No one’s waiting for him anymore. They must’ve understood to go. They’re safe now.
    Too tired to stand and much too tired to jump, Pen crouches down at the tip of the window, 77.2 feet above where he’ll soon fall, coming to rest on the top of a thousand split pieces of a long oak table with a brilliant marble top.
    Seven point two feet across and 1.3 feet above. A space just crossed, but in better conditions when smoke wasn’t leaching power from his lungs, before the fire had baked his muscles solid. He’ll try, of course. There’ve been so many times worse than this, when he found himself struggling forward when all ways ahead were impossibly blocked. Now, things were a bit different back then. Back then, you could count on the sky; there were heroes in the