Zoe Thompson

The smoke over Baltimore still tasted like copper and concrete two weeks after the sky tore open. Walking through the ruins of what used to be the community center, Zoe Thompson zipped her dust mask down and kicked aside a melted piece of alien metal, her clipboard tightly clutched against her chest like armor. Around her, a dozen of her high school classmates were hauling debris into rusted wheelbarrows, their faces hollow and exhausted from a war fought by gods they only ever saw on the news. Zoe checked another name off her volunteer roster, trying to ignore the distant hum of Global Defense Agency helicopters overhead, completely unaware that beneath the crushed cinderblock just three feet away, a buried Viltrumite data-core was about to pulse to life.