“Why do I do what I do?” Ryan Nolls asked himself as he trudged back to his place. But no one heard him. Even if they did they wouldn’t know what he meant. No one knew.

He rolled his neck and listened to one, two, three crunches. In one hand he was carrying a bag from the corner store, and he flexed his other hand uneasily, feeling the reverberations of years of violence. His pace was steady, but he felt the pavement a little more in his left heel, a memory of a fracture from someone’s face.

Sleep was all he wanted, escape from his worries. He had to worry about his own life, but these days there seemed to be so much more. The papers were offering a reward for information on his secret identity, the name of the masked hero. Rent was due next week. He’d heard through the grapevine that his friend was off his meds, again, for the fifth or sixth time. The rear wheel on his motorcycle was flat. His sister, his little sister, was pregnant and refusing to name the father.

What’s a vigilante to do?