I wasn’t sure what the suit did to keep me alive, and frankly, I probably wouldn’t have understood it even if I had the information. 

All I knew was that, after the explosion, I was the only thing left standing. 

The trees had been blasted away, leaving only scorched dirt and ripped up stumps where they had been before. 

The grass had been completely incinerated. 

In some places closer to the epicentre of the explosion chunks of the ground had been completely vaporised. 

I turned my eyes further afield, the destruction was no longer limited to the park. 

Glass had been blown out of windows, cars had been overturned from the force of the blow and there were… human bodies littering the street. 

I had to try hard to keep the bile from rising up my throat. 

This was… it was too much for me. 

Alien exo suit? Sure. Technologically granted superpowers? Why not. 

But meaningless death on this scale? It would be burned into my mind for the rest of the time I was alive, that much I was sure of. 

I needed to get away. 

I couldn’t be here, not anymore. 

I turned on the spot and began to run. 

Something that a lot of novels and tv shows forgot to include about people with super strength was the fact that they also, by default, had a degree of super speed. 

The exo suit that I had been granted by the fallen spaceship was no different. 

I moved across the park at an impressive speed, clearing the distance from the explosion sight to the far gates in a matter of seconds. 

Unable to stop myself I busted straight through the wrought iron fence at the end of the park as if it weren’t even there, poles of metal scattered throughout the street like spears. 

It was lucky that no one else had been around to be impaled by them, they’d likely already run away from the impact site… or been atomized by the second blast. 

I cast that thought out of my head and broke out into a run once again, trying to control myself now that I knew I was going to be running just a bit faster than I had been used to. 

I ran through the night, fortunately unseen in my exo suit, for only thirty seconds at the very most, but in that time I’d managed to cover at least a mile. 

With a breath, I dismissed the suit. 

I was away from the point of impact. Away from all of that… death. 

“That’s nowhere near as much death as you’re capable of with me kicking around in your system,” The AI of the suit said, almost as if it were proud of the fact. 

“Not the kind of statement I need right now, AI,” I snapped, wishing not for the first time that the thing would just shut up for five minutes so I could be alone with my thoughts. 

“Wow, so mean,” the AI muttered childishly. 

Trust my luck to be linked up with some wise talking AI who had no regard for human life. 

I felt the mental equivalent of a sigh come from the part of my mind I was fast learning the AI now operated from. 

“I don’t not care,” The AI said, “I’m attuned to your biosequences, meaning that when we linked up my neural pathways were modelled off of your own. Giving you someone to be angry at is better than you wallowing in what you’ve just witnessed.” 

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, and I also wasn’t necessarily sure that I agreed with it. Besides, sometimes my head felt too small with just me inside of it, how was I ever going to deal with two of me sharing the same brain?

“Well, technically we don’t share the same brain, I operate off of the living metal the suit is… You know what, never mind, you wouldn’t understand,” The AI said, almost sounding smug. 

Yeah, he was definitely a bit of an asshole. I’d have to learn to live with that. 

The rest of the walk home was, for the most part, uneventful. 

People on the streets were terrified, and police were ordering people to get back to their homes as quickly as possible in case any other attacks were to happen. 

Public transport had also been shut down, meaning there was a lot of people making a lot of long walks. 

Fortunately I didn’t have all that far to go after my quick sprint in the mecha suit, and within a half-hour I was slipping through the front door to my apartment and shrugging off my coat. 

Almost the moment after I shut the door my phone started ringing in my pocket. 

After a quick glance at the screen, I could see it was my mum. She knew the route I’d taken home, the news must have broken on TV. If I didn’t answer she’d panic thinking something terrible had happened. 

I sighed, all I wanted to do was relax, and then brought the phone up to my ear. 

“Xander? Is that you? Are you okay?” My mum asked in a breathless panic. 

“Hey, slow down, I’m okay. It’s okay!” I replied in a desperate attempt to calm her down. 

“Oh thank god,” She muttered, relief dripping from every word, “I know you walk through that park, I thought… well… I thought maybe you got caught up in it.” 

That sliver of ice around my heart felt about a thousand times colder. 

I couldn’t… I couldn’t tell her the truth about what had happened. It would terrify her. 

“No, hey, I wasn’t anywhere near it,” I said, “Already on a train when everything went crazy, we were forced up and out of the station and I had to walk home!” 

“Oh… Okay, sweetheart,” My mum said, “Well in that case I’ll let you get settled, have some dinner. I love you.” 

“Love you too mum,” I replied, hanging up the phone. 

The lie was hard to make, but it had to be done.