And an image. One single image in pencil, drawn from memory, though her artistic abilities failed to capture the moment. When she closed her eyes, she felt it—the cold night temperature, the hard cement under her, stars littering the sky above and a harsh breeze from being on a rooftop. Her hands pressed flat against gravel and chipped cement, and the whir of ventilation units all around, followed by the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of boots. Then across the rooftop, a light from a door opening, and the silhouette of soldiers or armed guards or something marching out in formation.
Then nothing.
A wall of maddening details, puzzle pieces without a frame.
Pinned at the center of the wall was a rectangular name tag, the top part stating “Hello, my name is:” in blue printed letters and the name Zoe Wong written neatly under it. Pin holes scattered across the top border for every time she’d torn it all down in frustration before reassembling it the following morning.
That first day, after waking up in this very apartment lacking recollection of who she was or how she got there, the name tag was the first thing she saw. It sat on top of two sheets of paper and a single key on an otherwise empty key ring; the first sheet was a one-year apartment lease fully paid for by 2D Industries LLC, and the second page held only a small scribble:
You are stronger than you think. Push yourself.
The space itself wasn’t exactly quiet. Every layer around and above her was paper-thin, reverberating noises from all over. And from outside too, it was as if the city’s car horns and shouts funneled straight into her brain, an unnaturally loud soundtrack turned all the way up. And the note, was that to be taken literally? Who even had written it?
That day, she’d paced in her apartment, mind waffling between staying in the space for further explanation or getting the hell out of there.
The former never came. The latter became the only option, especially after she found an envelope filled with a thousand dollars in cash stashed in a drawer. By then, she’d become consumed with Zoe Wong. Was she Zoe Wong? Or did she break into mystery Zoe’s apartment? The mailbox gave no clues, and the apartment itself contained only bare essential toiletries and some bottles of water.
That night, she walked the streets of San Delgado, a quest without a goal, like she was meant for something more but didn’t know what. The feeling gnawed at her, which made buying a cheap bottle of tequila seem quite sensible. Drinking it in the adjacent alley made even further sense, especially when a light rain began sprinkling down.
She’d sat, nothing but the stench of the city surfacing from the rain and the poison-like taste of the five-dollar bottle in her hand. An entire day of seeing things, listening to people, trying to understand the colors she later figured out to be thermal vision, and it all led nowhere. Frustration boiled up, pressurizing at the pointlessness of it all, and fueled by the buzz of half a bottle, she curled her hand into a fist and punched a dumpster.
She watched it lift several feet above the pavement to fly down the alley, moving faster than some of the cars passing behind her.
Her inebriated stumble made catching up with it a chore, but her eyes locked onto the dent in its side. As she approached, the note from the apartment echoed in her mind, now a mission statement more than anything else.
She wound up and punched again.
Again, the dumpster skidded away, the echoey thud of fist on hollow metal ringing through the air.
One thought dawned on her, the only thing that synced up with both her mind and body.
Fuck it, she decided in that moment. She was just going to take the name Zoe Wong until the truth proved otherwise or a better idea came along.
And the name stayed, just like the name tag at the center of her detective board. After the papers had dubbed her the Throwing Star—another name she hadn’t chosen for herself—she’d pinned a crude folded-paper throwing star next to the name tag, and wondered if she should try rebranding as Shuriken, the Japanese word for throwing star. Even though she was pretty sure she was of Chinese heritage rather than Japanese. But whatever. It sounded cool, which took higher precedence than accuracy.
Her eyes trailed over to the lump of wrinkled black leather pieces lying on the floor, the silver zipper tracks reflecting overhead light. At some point, she’d have to get it dry-cleaned, but how could she possibly explain the odd construction of a leather bodysuit in six pieces—two arms, two legs, a torso and a cowl with a mask, each with zippers at odd angles that when fully fastened, apparently formed a rough starlike shape. It was never intended to seem cool or, as one of her early rescuees told the media, like a throwing star flying across the alley after she’d sprinted in with her extraordinary speed. It wasn’t even meant for hero shenanigans; she’d chopped up pieces of torn motorcycle suits recovered from the dumpster behind the Cycle Pro a few blocks down. She wore the leather under her FoodFast polo simply because it just held up better than street clothes for rooftop jumping and sprinting, and the cowl kept her ears and nose warm.
But sometimes she’d hear screams and yells at night, before or after picking up her delivery, and she’d make a choice. She wanted to be more, and the potential ached deep in her bones. She’d choose to take off her FoodFast shirt and hide her delivery bag. Choose to run off and make a difference. Choose to finally fulfill that constant nagging desire without fucking up again.
Then her legend grew. And the name stuck. She supposed it was better than just “Zoe, the crime-fighting semi-loser and sometimes food delivery person.”
Her phone pinged the familiar chime of an available FoodFast gig, though she couldn’t accept it, not with her shirt lost on some random rooftop between here and the bank.
A new thought arrived, the idea of suiting up and going out intentionally, without any FoodFast commitments. But the one time she tried living up to the Throwing Star image had ended with her tripping over her own feet in a Metro station. She never even got to say the cool tagline she’d practiced on her way to the bank.
Zoe stood up, her bare foot knocking over an open can at the base of the futon. “Oh, goddamn it,” she said, scrambling to get paper towels. Mental note: as someone who probably enjoyed alcohol a little too much, solid flooring was preferable to carpeting. If she ever saved enough to move out of this mysteriously rent-free place, that’d be the first thing she looked for. She pressed down into the mess, which was inches from similar stains from a few weeks back, skunky odor wafting up. The paper towels flew into the plastic garbage bin by the sink, and while warm water ran over her hands, she looked at the kitchen window. As she stood silent, the lights in her place dimmed, though the power fluctuation didn’t seem to affect surrounding buildings. She watched across the way, spying on a neighboring family eating pizza, a cluster of children from small to nearly adult, and a smiling but clearly tired man.
The lamps flickered back on, blinking off and on until her eyes adjusted to the illumination, and in the glass, a different face watched her.