West London, June 2017. Weeknight. The wall clock over the coffee machine blinked 00:45 in watery blue. Most of the city slept. Not the five Americans in the chicken shop.
The owner—an older Indian gentleman with kind eyes—had already upended chairs onto tables and rolled the shutter halfway down. A crooked WE'RE CLOSED sign clung to the door. He should've sent them away two hours ago, but the big man in black had rumbled, surprisingly gentle for his size, "No. I'm finishing the hot‑wing challenge." It sounded like a threat even if he didn't mean it that way, so out of old habit the owner had ducked behind the counter where a chef's knife lived for rough closes. Before panic could grow teeth, the smaller American named Frank lifted his hands and, in careful Malayalam, offered an apology and a hello. The owner blinked, recalibrated, and smiled. Frank explained: the big one was "a special person, not dangerous." The owner shrugged, still shaken but amused, and let the night run long.
Now the two fair‑skinned American kids were a blur of capes and foam blades, still wired despite the hour. Emma, six, a red‑haired "Highlander" in tartan and a toy greatsword, fenced her brother Ben, seven, a blond "knight" with a plastic sword and shield. They whisper‑shouted Warband lines like blessings and curses:
"Surrender or die!" "Your money or your life!" "For honor and glory!" "Yield or die!" "Charge!"
Their blades thunked softly. Sarah, the mother, watched with a crease of worry. Frank, the father, said, "They're fine," and meant it.
Frank drained the last of his hot sauce, pushed his tray aside, and leaned in for a kiss. Sarah's ocean‑blue eyes flicked once; her platinum hair shifted as she lifted a handkerchief like a tiny white shield.
"No hot lips, soldier. Not tonight. Maybe later."
"Brutal," Frank said, half‑laughing, milk moustache and all.
"Ew, ew, ew—no kissing!" the kids chorused, scandalized.
Bruce said nothing, but he agreed. Kissing seemed weird—something women wanted to do that risked suffocation—and he knew blocking your airway was bad for life and for lifting heavy weights and such things. Also: yucky.
He pushed his sunglasses up his egg‑shaped head, then settled them again. He sat beside Frank, folded into a booth a size too small for him. He was over two meters tall—"six‑seven" in American—and his shoulders made the seams of his black coat complain whenever he shifted. He had no eyebrows; he'd singed them off years ago doing a stupidly heroic thing with a burning car and a trapped pet rat. Sunglasses parked where eyebrows should be seemed correct; in movies nobody laughed at people who wore sunglasses indoors, especially if they looked like Neo.
He lifted a wing. The booth groaned. He bit.
Hellfire.
Tears stung up uninvited. He tried to keep a flat, cool face—because Neo, or Peter Parker when he was being brave, didn't cry unless it was important—and dropped into the movie‑quote cadence he used when his own words got tangled.
"There is no… s‑s‑spice. It is not the s‑spice that burns—o‑only myself."
The kids pointed and howled. "Uncle Bruce is quoting again!"
For their sake—and because it hurt—Bruce did his stiff‑armed robot: shoulders clanked, wrists flicked, elbows ticking in little squares while he kept eating. The pain went somewhere useful when they laughed.
Behind the counter, the owner murmured, "Crazy Americans," smiling in his half‑sleep.
Bruce smiled back through the heat and slid his sunglasses down to hide the watering eyes. And then his thoughts did what they always did: ran off a cliff into the dumpster behind his brain to rummage for answers to questions no one ever seemed to answer.
Women were loud, mysterious creatures. He still didn't really know how babies were made, except health class had mentioned eggs—eggs—and factories and arrows on a diagram. Chickens laid eggs, but Sarah didn't, and yet somehow there was a baby growing in there and Frank already knew that, and Sarah's stomach got a little bigger each day. Were there hundreds of thousands of eggs? If so, where did all the extra kids go? Dissolve? Turn into ghosts? Could an egg be angry? He had asked Frank, dead serious. Frank had laughed so hard he'd never answered. It hadn't been a joke.
The wood under Bruce's mass complained. He wasn't fat; he was big—gym‑hours and stubborn muscle. (Sarah wasn't light either, technically; she weighed about as much as he could curl with one hand, which was interesting.) Being big helped you carry things and protect things. He'd hoped once that being big would make people stop laughing; mostly it made strangers step aside or cross the street at night. Big didn't make friends. It just made people wary.
He took a long pull of milk and stared down the next wing like it had insulted his level‑79 gnome warrior, HappyMan, who still hadn't hit max level because the game kept raising the level cap. That was fine. He liked challenges.
Across from him, Sarah reached in one smooth, maternal motion and dabbed sauce from the corner of his mouth with her handkerchief. "There you go, Bruce." Warmth in the voice. As she sat back, the keyhole of her cream polka‑dot dress shifted and the soft line of her cleavage flashed in the pendant light. Bruce flushed and looked away fast. Chests were a puzzle. At the gym, bigger chests on men meant stronger. Sarah's chest was… well… larger than his pecs. She could quiet two kids with a look, so maybe size and power matched for women too? Could women flex them like pecs? Why were they soft and bouncy when men's weren't unless the man was fat? And why did women make milk and men didn't? Questions arrived like arrows. He batted them down before his head overheated. Unknown meant danger; making women angry was very dangerous—he had learned that much by existing near them.
Under the table, Emma and Ben crawled and clashed plastic, popping out between benches, then vanishing again. Ben chanted, "Your money or your life!" in a knightly whisper; Emma answered with, "I'll drink from your skull!" and tried to keep a warrior face but kept giggling. Bruce's chest loosened. Kids were mysteries too—tiny once, now school‑big—but good mysteries that had once fit almost in his palms.
Then his phone buzzed. Little shopping‑cart icons marched across the screen—another order from Amber back in the united states, then another: rush shipping. He flipped the phone face‑down and slid it under a Bodiam Castle brochure.
Years ago, on a blue‑uniform shift, he'd found Amber sleeping rough on the street. She'd approached him with a strange proposal: she would be his "girlfriend" if she could live with him or for twenty dollars. He took girlfriend literally—girl + friend—and because he had almost no one besides Frank and the family, he said yes, plus he didn't have twenty dollars in his pocket back then. So he took her home and he gave her the bed, the bank login, and the house's quiet so she could be happy and sleep well. It was fine until she tried to kiss him and he said, "Ew, that's gross, Amber. Please don't suffocate me, and I don't want germs." After that she sent him to the yoga mat or the couch. Helping still felt right, even if it made him poor and stiff. Understanding wasn't his strong suit.
"Four left!" Ben announced from under the table, apparently keeping count the whole time. He held up five sauce‑slick fingers, squinted, and folded one down.
"Finish line, big guy," Frank said, nudging Bruce's shoulder with a grin. "You got this. Do it for the kids."
Emma tried to be serious and failed. "If he cries, we only laugh a tiny bit, okay, Ben?"
Ben nodded, already smiling.
"Honey, chew properly and finish your milk," Sarah told Frank, tapping the corner of her mouth.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, cheerful even while it burned.
Bruce went back to the wings and let his eyes drift over the table—castle leaflets, keep diagrams, a dog‑eared guide to Anglo‑Norman towers. On a grease‑stained receipt he'd sketched his favorite doomed trick from Medieval II: archers boxed in by peasants. It never stopped cavalry or catapult stones, but it felt fair—peasants were cheap and deserved a job, and he hated leaving units idle. Longbows didn't judge your face; they put arrows where you aimed. That was nice.
He set his sunglasses down, lifted another wing, and did the robot again—if a man had to suffer, he might as well make people happy while doing it. The owner chuckled in his doze. The fridge hummed. The coffee machine blinked. Chili‑vinegar hung in a thin ribbon over everything: pepper, oil, the wet‑metal smell from the doorway rug.
Then the night made the wrong kind of flicker.
Bruce's palm found the glass. Past his reflection, under the Westway's ribs, a tower block loomed—most squares black, a few stubborn glows. In one fourth‑floor square, a new color learned how to breathe. Not lamp‑yellow. Not fridge‑white. A thin, unnatural orange—the kind that didn't belong inside any home. It pulsed once, testing lungs, then widened.
Bruce's body stood before his brain finished the thought.
He scooped his wallet, shook out everything—crisp pounds saved for fish‑and‑chips and castles—and slid the stack beneath the salt. "I'm s‑sorry. I have to go," he said, voice flattening. The kids' laughter switched off.
Emma's shield dipped. Ben's sword sagged against his shoulder.
Frank followed Bruce's stare. Nearly a kilometre of sleeping city lay between them and that window, but once you saw it you couldn't unsee it: the wrong orange where cool dark should be. "Call nine‑nine‑nine," he told the owner, already sliding from the booth. "That tower. Fourth floor."
The owner leaned to the glass, saw it, and his smile vanished. "Yes," he said quietly into the phone. "Fourth floor—fire."
At the door, Bruce lifted the crooked entry bell with two fingers so it wouldn't jangle. He looked back once at Sarah and the kids. "I'm going to see if they're all right over there," he said. "I don't want to leave anyone's fate to chance."
"But why you?" Ben blurted.
"Because it's the right thing to do," Bruce said, and went.
"Bruce—be careful," Sarah called, her hand settling on the small swell under her sweater without thinking. Frank kissed her anyway—spice and all—quick and sure. "Back to the hotel," he said, locking eyes. "And if have to come then stay behind the police tape, ok. You stay behind it. I'll call if I need to."
He pulled the kids in, squeezed, and let them go. "Guard your mom, brave warriors. And stay strong!" he added, for their grinning benefit.
Emma hiccup‑laughed. Ben straightened like a very small soldier.
Frank shoved into the cool, metal‑smelling night—T‑shirt, shorts, runners—and matched Bruce's long, awkward stride in three steps. Bruce's gait ate distance even when his mind was elsewhere.
"Let's do what we can," Frank said low. "No crazy heroics."
"Y‑Yeah. I'll try," Bruce said, eyes locked on the tower.
They ran under the Westway—shoes slapping old rain, breaths settling—past puddles holding upside‑down sodium moons, past shuttered shops and damp brick. Behind them, the chalkboard clock clicked to 00:48, and a steady voice said into a phone, "Yes—fourth floor—I think there's a fire." Ahead, the thin orange grew teeth with a tiny electrical pop and a hungry flare along the frame.
"Don't be a movie hero," Frank added, not looking over. "You're not Neo. You can't dodge bullets or resist fire like some game character."
Bruce kept running. "Y‑Yes. I'm not N‑Neo," he said. "Just trying to be useful."
Frank didn't argue. The serious part of him had the wheel now. He brought his phone up, mind already laying out doors, knocks, stairwells, alarms. Bruce's hands opened and closed as he ran, priming to knock, carry, calm—whatever the next minute asked. He thought of longbows and silly quotes and of kids who didn't know the rules yet, and of how, when a window learned the wrong color, you didn't wait.
They went—together—toward the wrong orange.