MY CRUEL PROTECTOR
A heat signature, faint but steady, moving through the ruins of a collapsed dome.
And then, a single word appeared in the center of thescreen, written in the cold, precise font of the Shield:
PROTECT.
I stood up, the grief in my chest turning into a cold, burning resolve. He was down there. Somewhere in thedark. And if he had spent his life being my shield, I wouldspend the rest of mine being his light.