The Sweeper's Secret
In the neon-drenched metropolis of Aethelgard, superheroes aren't born—they are sponsored. The city is policed by The Apex, an elite coalition of heavily branded heroes owned by Aethelgard Dynamics. Reno Vance....
In the neon-drenched metropolis of Aethelgard, superheroes aren't born—they are sponsored. The city is policed by The Apex, an elite coalition of heavily branded heroes owned by Aethelgard Dynamics. Reno Vance works as a low-level "Sweeper" for the superhero league, cleaning up the blood, rubble, and collateral damage left behind after high-profile battles. Cynical and bitter, Reno harbors two massive secrets: he possesses Density Shift—an illegal meta-human ability to alter his atomic weight to phase through matter or become heavy as tungsten—and he carries an unshielded, volatile fusion reactor implanted in his chest by his missing scientist father. His Density Shift is the only force keeping the reactor from detonating and leveling half the city. Reno’s quiet life shatters when he recovers an encrypted hard drive from a slain "rogue" villain. The files reveal a horrifying truth: Aethelgard Dynamics manufactures the very villains their heroes defeat, deliberately infecting working-class citizens with unstable meta-genes to stage artificial attacks for stock price spikes and public relations. When a corporate cleanup squad targets Reno, he is saved by Null, a ruthless armored vigilante executing corrupt heroes involved in the program. After stopping an attempt to poison Sector 9’s water supply, Null executes a defeated target in cold blood and unmasks—revealing that Null is actually Valkyrie Prime (Elena Cross), Aethelgard’s top corporate superhero using a secret persona to wage a bloody war against her own handlers.