Oleg paused and answered his phone on the way to class. He listened to the message, and every muscle in his body went stiff. His eyes flared, the pupils glowing red with nascent rage. His hand twitched and all of the control he kept over his body was gone in that instant, and the plastic of his phone shattered into thousands and thousands of little pieces. They fell and clattered to the ground and Oleg did not care in that time and in that place about the expense of breaking the small contraption. The only thing on his mind was that he needed to act fast or else Chloe would end up a disfigured corpse jammed into a locker.<br/><br/>Then Oleg broke out into a run.<br/><br/>He took one step, and it was fast. Not superhumanly so, but perhaps approaching such. He took a second, and he moved faster than any human being could under their own power. He took a third, and he was moving faster than the naked eye could perceive. He took a fourth, and time seemed to slow down, as if everyone and everything except him were trapped in molten amber. To the rest of the world he was a blur of black and green and the blazing red of his rage-filled eyes. Oleg was known as a gentle type. He was not known for getting into fights or hurting people. As a consequence, he was not someone you would think was capable of murder. This was not a correct evaluation of his character. It was a fair one, though, given the deception that Oleg enacted daily to keep people from knowing the truth of his extraterrestrial origin.<br/><br/>In fractions of seconds Oleg was at the Torch's newsroom. He did not stop at the door, instead barreling through it and breaking it into pieces even as he knocked it off of its hinges. The same went for the door of the dark room: it broke under Oleg's superhuman might, unrestrained by human notions of propriety and any consideration of keeping everything inside of him denied and unknown to the outside.<br/><br/>His red eyes blazed and refused to calm down. He refused to calm down. His heartbeat was loud and furious in his ears and his blood felt as hot as the atomic reactions of the sun that gave him his powers. If only he were faster, if only he had arrived sooner, he might have been an avenging angel, the heat in his eyes ready to be unleashed as his terrible swift sword. Now he was just too late. Too late to save his friend, to save the woman he loved. It was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow to have all of these amazing abilities and then to see the one person above all others he wished to save brutalized and to have done nothing to stop it.<br/><br/>Oleg clenched a fist and took a breath, trying unsuccessfully to breathe the fire from his lungs. Blood vessels bulged all over his exposed flesh, his body drowned in adrenaline and other chemicals, prepared for a fight that was not to transpire. He went to Chloe, pulling her down from where she had been hung up. She weighed so little in his arms.<br/><br/>"I'm so sorry, Chloe." Oleg said softly. The words came with difficulty, the red glow fading as his fury was replaced by sadness and the dull stab of impotence. He wanted to ask who did this to her. But right now . . . it seemed like he should get her to a doctor. "I will take you to the hospital, and call the sheriff, and . . ."