Greg Veder has spent most of his life arriving late.
Late to understand that someone was mocking him.
Late to say the right thing.
Late to help without making it worse.
Late to become the person a moment needed.
Then, one day, he sees someone about to die.
He moves.
And the world catches fire behind him.
Greg becomes Redline, a fire-wreathed speedster whose power does not come from any shard, passenger, or known parahuman mechanism. Instead, he is connected to something far stranger: the Burning Road, an extradimensional force of motion, momentum, arrival, and the heat generated when reality is forced to happen faster than it should.
At first, everyone assumes he is simply an unusual cape.
The PRT classifies him.
Armsmaster trains him.
Amy Dallon notices the awkward, sincere boy beneath the cape identity and becomes his first real love.
Lisa Wilbourn notices something else: Greg's emotions are readable, his wounds are obvious, but the power behind him refuses to resolve into anything her instincts understand.
As Brockton Bay burns through bombings, Leviathan, gang wars, Somer's Rock, Coil, the Slaughterhouse Nine, and Echidna, Greg rises from overeager teenage hero to one of the most dangerous beings on Earth Bet.
But Burning Fast is not only a story about becoming powerful.
It is a story about what power rewards.
About the way usefulness can become addictive.
About how urgency can start to feel like moral authority.
About how saving people can blur into deciding for them.
About love, betrayal, recovery, and accountability.
About an autistic boy learning that being first is not the same as being right.
By the time the world realizes Redline is not part of the shard network, it may already be too late to treat him as anything less than an S-Class concern.
And by the time Scion notices him, Greg Veder may be the single greatest threat the golden man has ever faced.
Late to understand that someone was mocking him.
Late to say the right thing.
Late to help without making it worse.
Late to become the person a moment needed.
Then, one day, he sees someone about to die.
He moves.
And the world catches fire behind him.
Greg becomes Redline, a fire-wreathed speedster whose power does not come from any shard, passenger, or known parahuman mechanism. Instead, he is connected to something far stranger: the Burning Road, an extradimensional force of motion, momentum, arrival, and the heat generated when reality is forced to happen faster than it should.
At first, everyone assumes he is simply an unusual cape.
The PRT classifies him.
Armsmaster trains him.
Amy Dallon notices the awkward, sincere boy beneath the cape identity and becomes his first real love.
Lisa Wilbourn notices something else: Greg's emotions are readable, his wounds are obvious, but the power behind him refuses to resolve into anything her instincts understand.
As Brockton Bay burns through bombings, Leviathan, gang wars, Somer's Rock, Coil, the Slaughterhouse Nine, and Echidna, Greg rises from overeager teenage hero to one of the most dangerous beings on Earth Bet.
But Burning Fast is not only a story about becoming powerful.
It is a story about what power rewards.
About the way usefulness can become addictive.
About how urgency can start to feel like moral authority.
About how saving people can blur into deciding for them.
About love, betrayal, recovery, and accountability.
About an autistic boy learning that being first is not the same as being right.
By the time the world realizes Redline is not part of the shard network, it may already be too late to treat him as anything less than an S-Class concern.
And by the time Scion notices him, Greg Veder may be the single greatest threat the golden man has ever faced.
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