I wasn’t sure how long I ran for. 

The world passed by in a blur of movement until buildings became trees and trees became fields. 

I’d run out of the city entirely.

That was when the enormity of the situation hit me. 

Even out here, ships had come hurtling down to the ground, burning in their craters.  

They must have been all over the world, falling into the oceans, the deserts, the polar ice caps. Who knew how many there were, and what the impacts of their… well… impacts were going to do to the planet long term. 

How many people had found their own alien mech suits like I had and bonded with them?

“Likely less than you expect,” The AI said, “We aren’t designed for your species. The fact we bonded is a miracle, and it was likely only possible because of how injured you were when I found you. No, the real issue this world is going to have going forward is the radiation fallout.” 

Radiation fallout didn’t sound great. 

When Chernobyl blew its top in the 80s the fallout was so bad that livestock in the UK had to be slaughtered and their meat discarded so that people wouldn’t get sick from eating it. 

Nuclear fallout on a global level caused by crashing extraterrestrial spaceships and their engines going critical? That sounded a whole lot worse. 

“Oh no, you misunderstand, that’s not how the radiation is going to affect people,” The AI explained, “Radiation doesn’t just mean things that break down cells, it’s a fancy word for energy. The energy that is released by our ships? A mutagen when exposed to carbon-based life forms.”

“But everything on Earth is a carbon-based life form,” I muttered under my breath, looking out at the crash sites burning in the fields, “That’s… a lot of things that can be mutated. Mutated how exactly?” 

There was a few moments of silence in the back of my mind as the alien artificial intelligence tried to think about how to break the news to me. 

“Essentially superpowers?” The AI stated as if it were a question, “Yeah, essentially superpowers. Very variable results. My makers didn’t really do much research into the subject. They were worried about creating a creature that could fight back against them.” 

That made a modicum of sense. Imagine torturing a creature and their species with insane experiments, and then you give them powers on the level of Superman, able to rip and tear everything apart. It wouldn’t exactly go well for the torturers. 

“What about me?” I asked, “I was right next to the ship when it exploded, stood right in it because of you, surely that’s a lot of mutagenic radiation to be standing around in.” 

“Nah, you’ll be fine, no mutations to worry about because you were incased in armour,” The AI explained, “Wouldn’t exactly be great at my job if I let something as paltry as radiation hurt you.” 

That seemed like a cocky answer, but I was going to choose to believe it for now. I already had enough on my plate without worrying about some kind of weird mutagenic effects kicking in somewhere down the line. Not that I even knew when I would have to expect such effects to begin kicking in. 

“Oh, almost immediately. Anyone who has survived a brush with a ship and hasn’t been gifted their own mecha will already be coming into their powers,” the AI said. 

That was… worrying. 

At least when it came to London, the city looked like it was already at its breaking point. If people started fighting each other with weird new superpowers on top of that? Well, the police would crumble like they were nothing. 

And I… I could do something about that. 

I had power, and unlike all of the people who were just learning about theirs I had an AI who knew all of my capabilities and how to best implement them. 

I was pretty sure I could genuinely help people. 

And that would be better than the alternative. That would be better than having to admit that she… that my only piece of family… I shook my head. I wasn’t going to think about that. I was going to shove it deep down into the farthest corner of my mind and lock it away in a box and not even think about thinking about it. 

Because when it did it felt like my heart was going to rip itself out of my chest and run away. 

Okay then. 

No job. No plan. World in tatters. 

I bounced on the balls of my feet, looking out at the wanton destruction burning across the idyllic countryside landscape one final time. 

I couldn’t be everywhere, I wouldn’t be able to do it all, but I was sure that across the world there were people having the exact same thoughts as me. People that would want to help in the immediate aftermath, use whatever abilities the mutagenic radiation had given them for good instead of evil. 

There were always people that wanted to help out, and I wasn’t going to be the sort of person that let my city fall into disrepair and ruin. 

No. I was going to be the sort of person that helped my city rebuild from the smouldering ashes that it had been reduced to. 

The world would likely never be the same again. There were likely even bigger problems coming our way in the future, if anything my AI had said about the society it came from was true. 

But for now? I couldn’t think about any of that crap. I needed to keep my head and I needed to focus on what I could immediately change. People I could immediately help. 

I turned on the spot and took off at a run, the city in my vision on the horizon. 

The world was always changing, and now it had changed more than ever. 

I was going to change right alongside it.