Chương 3: What he burned

"Meow." I groaned, tugging at the sheets. Damn, the bed was comfortable.

"Meow." It was just the best bed. Glad I spent money on it, rather than just buying a cheap one. It really made a dent in my finances, but my back pain had all but vanished since. And the house… the ground floor was so cool and nice, with all the stone keeping the heat out.

"MEOW!" I jumped. Oh, it was just the cat. And he was rather pissed.

"Sorry," I mumbled. I had slept past the alarm, hadn't I? I checked, and nope. The cat was just hungry and therefore angry. Hangry. I looked at him sideways and he challenged me, until I finally relented and fed him. As I did, I recalled yesterday's event—the awakening. It almost felt like a dream. But it couldn't be. I was a Supe now! I called for my power, waiting to see what it was going to be, and nothing happened. I tried again, frowning. Nothing. I blinked. What?

I tried not to despair, but it still hit me like a runaway truck. I knew it wasn't a dream. I felt the hint.

"The world will wait for you," it said. But the power… did nothing? Was it a passive power, one so subtle I don't even notice it? I spent the whole morning going through the motions, doing work only to stop and try the power again, straining to notice any differences. Nothing. Just nothing. Weeks turned to months as I slowly repaired the house and even managed to plant some veggies in the garden. A mostly neglected apple tree bore some fruit, making me think about my grandfather.

That in turn made me think about the power I got, or lack thereof. Money was tight but I found a job at a grocery store, one of those places where they work you 12 hours a day, pay you for 6 and officially make it figure as if you have only been there for 3. But I needed the money, no matter how extortionate. As autumn rolled in, however, customers began to dwindle. There were less tourists coming to visit the city, and this year was a bad one because the weather wasn't looking too good.

It was already rather chilly. The Onset had not just gifted superpower to humanity; it had changed the whole world. Monsters, and climate patterns. All that warming that humans had been responsible for vanished overnight, replaced by weather never seen before. At least the seasons were still mostly normal, but the changes were stacking up, and speeding up. It was just another day. The sky was overcast, but I didn't think it was going to rain.

After parking my truck (and I made a note that it would need a checkup soon, it made a worrying noise), I began to walk my way to work. I passed by a billboard I saw pretty much every day, advertising a new product from Latnium Industries. They had just opened a branch in the city. Think the laws of telepathy are too lax? Good. Protect this thought and all your other thoughts from unwanted intrusions. Choose the Latnium Industries Mind Privacy™ product line. And, like every time, I just could not help but think.

Telepaths scared me shitless. It wasn't the mind-readers, although they were already pretty disturbing, but the mind-shapers. They could just twist your mind into knots however they wanted, and if they had a bit of talent their touch left with you none the wiser. They made you pliant, your brain scrambled, planting thoughts into your head that you never suspected weren't yours. After some sick fuck used a telepath on national TV to advertise a product, politicians moved quickly.

And, to be honest, it could have gone much worse. Or maybe, it had gone much worse, just… nobody knew. Nobody would know if the telepath did a good job, would they? Damn. It made me think about the Trellein Files. That big scandal that made me believe in most conspiracy theories, given that it proved that they were true. Since then, my approach has been believe unless proven to be false rather than the other way around. To shake my thoughts from the conspiracy machine, I thought about technology.

How did Latnium manage to use tech to counteract telepathy? It was known that powers couldn't be affected by mundane tech, which meant that they must have had a mad scientist making the trinkets for them. Maybe a tinkerer. But then again, the whole theory did not survive contact with whatever my grandpa had left in my house's basement. Which was still there, still sealed. I was still trying to think how to deal with it the smart way, without getting myself killed in the process.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Sometimes, when I was at home or around the garden, I thought I was being watched. It was enough to spike my paranoia to truly crazy levels, and I wasn't sure if that shadow I kept seeing was a figment of my imagination or a real thing. Every time I looked, it resolved into just a gnarled tree or a cankered branch or just… nothing. It nagged at me.

I would go investigate and find strange patches of withered plants, like circles in the fallow fields at the bottom of the hill, or shriveled underbrush at the side of the road overlooking the house. As if the city guys had spilled weed-killer there. But this far from the city, they barely even maintained the road, no weed-killer for us. Not anymore, not with the monsters and the villains and the superheroes and their collateral damage. I liked the country, but it didn't have many amenities anymore.

Which was fine, pulling weeds from the side of the road was a price I was glad to pay to live in bucolic paradise. If only it didn't come with strange shadows and crop circles. And bad plumbing. At work, I quickly slipped into my uniform and awaited orders.

"Go unload the truck," I was told, and suppressed a sigh. They had other employees enhanced with low-tier superstrength, so why me? I complied, beginning to unload the boxes of vegetables, balancing them as best I could without folding like a lawn chair under their weight. I was getting muscular thanks to all the menial work I did around the house, but my diet was the poor student's diet and was holding me back. I was distracted, the stack of boxes cluttering most of my field of view, when the robbery happened.

It was a Supe, a villain. He shrieked and barked orders, making a mess of things with what I assumed was telekinesis. I stared with wide eyes as his destruction reached even me, making the box at the top of the stack explode in splinters of wood and a fine mist of what had once been lettuce heads. Could have been my head and I would have never known. The world wasn't like the novels, where people couldn't get their brains scrambled because mana or some shit kept their guts protected.

Here, a low-tier telekinetic could just turn your brain into an omelette and leave you dead, even if his power wasn't good for anything more than lifting a nickel. Then the world slowed down. My body was trapped in molasses, but I felt that it wasn't the villain's doing. It was coming from me. Something burned in my chest, my own power, making me see everything at half speed.

I tried to move, to be heroic, but my body responded in slow motion, trapped as it was to move at the same glacial pace as the rest of the world. Which wasn't so glacial after all, because it all caught up to me when the still intact boxes tumbled from my arms and landed on my right leg. For a moment, the world was still slow, and the pain almost dull, but then the power died and it all returned to normal. A sharp stab of pain, the boxes spilling all their contents.

I fell, vaguely aware that there were two more people now, clad in strange bright uniforms. Superheroes. They apprehended the small-time villain, saluted the store owner, then waited for the police to come. Someone helped me, and I struggled to keep the weight on my leg, limping and wincing. When the cops arrived, they congratulated the heroes and took away the villain.

"Don't thank just us," one of the heroes said, winking at the gathered crowd I was now a part of.

"Thank Latnium's superhero branch!" Was this a sales pitch? It was a sales pitch, for fuck's sake.

"Well, you heard him. Congratulations, heroes," the other officer said, a bit unsure how to react to the blatant shill. But the heroes doubled down, inviting everyone to visit the website and tell any Supe they know to join the organization, claiming it was the one true future of organized superhero activity. There was even a referral bonus if you got people to sign in or join the newsletter. Then they left, and I was left speechless with them. Until I was fired.

I tried to argue, but the owner just gave the same sad smile the cafe owner also gave me, months ago. Or the landlord, when he raised the rent on me. The power activated again, as if feeling my anger, making the man look comical as he spoke in a low-pitch, his lips flapping about. A few seconds later, the world snapped back into normalcy like a rubber band. Was this the meaning of the world waiting for me, as the hint said? It was a shit power; that's what. I hated it. Utterly useless. And the man wasn't even done.

Was he firing me in slow motion? As if the power wasn't joke enough.

"You are a good lad, I can see that, but it's just… we have less customers, and your leg… you will not be able to work anyway. How about you take it easy, a sort of sabbatical, alright?" He didn't mention the fact that my contract was illegal and I had no way to get insurance for the injury. I limped my way back home, my brain sizzling with anger and frustration. The truck sputtered and made an awful noise, but I just kicked the hood and hoped it would get the message for next time.

I used my good leg and still winced in pain. At home, I threw the keys on the table and screamed. The cat looked at me like I was crazy, but then nuzzled his head against my ankle before bouncing away into the garden. Talk about mixed signals there. I hissed. The leg was beginning to swell.

"Fuck!" I wanted to scream some more. But I stopped after a while; what good would it do? Nothing, that's what. The world just wasn't fair, was it? And I didn't even get to have a fucking decent superpower. I had no job. No money. Just the house, and… The key. It caught the low rays of the sun as they filtered in through the window. The key to the strange underground lab where there were six vials filled with silvery liquid.

A nanomachine swarm my grandpa had created because fuck this stupid world and the rigged lottery giving people random powers. I found myself there before I could stop myself and think rationally. I was so angry. Furious. Why had I been dealt such a shit hand? I thought about Mom and Dad… but they were dead. Grandpa was dead. I was alone. I jabbed the injector into my arm. Repeatedly. Six times—all six vials emptying inside my bloodstream.

Pain exploded inside of me, and I was thankful I was sitting on a chair, because otherwise I'd have hit my head on the hard, sterile floor when I collapsed.