The Aethrium Awakening Chapter 3: The Discovery
The fluorescent lights of the Neo-Tokyo Aethrium Research Institute hummed their familiar tune, a constant companion to Dr. Yuki Sato during her countless late-night shifts. At twenty-eight, she had already established herself as the city's leading expert on Aethrium energy patterns, though tonight felt no different from the hundreds of others she'd spent monitoring the city's mystical energy grid.
She pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose and glanced at the wall clock: 11:47 PM. The building was nearly empty save for the skeleton crew of night shift researchers, their soft footsteps echoing through the sterile corridors. Yuki preferred these quiet hours when she could focus on her work without interruption, when the data flowed clean and undisturbed across her multiple monitors.
"Same readings as always," she murmured to herself, taking a sip of her lukewarm coffee. The bitter taste had long since stopped bothering her. "Aethrium levels holding steady at twelve percent across the city. Nothing unusual to report."
The discovery of Aethrium sixty-five million years ago had changed everything. When that meteor struck Earth, it had brought with it an energy source that would eventually reshape human civilization. Some people could harness this power, manifesting extraordinary abilities that ranged from the mundane to the miraculous. The Aethrium classification system had emerged from necessity—ranks from F to S, with most citizens falling somewhere in the middle ranges.
Yuki herself was a C-rank, her ability to analyze and interpret energy patterns making her invaluable to the research institute. It wasn't flashy like the telekinesis of an A-rank or the matter manipulation of an S-rank, but it was precise, reliable, and had earned her the respect of her colleagues.
She was just beginning to compile her nightly report when every screen in the laboratory suddenly erupted in a cascade of flashing red warnings. The main Aethrium detector—a massive machine that had operated flawlessly for fifteen years—began emitting a piercing alarm that made her ears ring.
"What the hell?" Yuki shot to her feet, her chair rolling backward as she stared at the impossible readings flooding her displays.
⚠️ CRITICAL ALERT ⚠️AETHRIUM LEVELS: 100%LOCATION: PLAINS SECTOR 7THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN
"One hundred percent?" Yuki's voice cracked as she spoke. "That's impossible! The highest recorded reading in history was twenty-three percent during the Great Tokyo Incident!"
Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she initiated every diagnostic protocol she knew. The Great Tokyo Incident had been a catastrophe—a single S-rank individual losing control of their powers had leveled six city blocks and killed over three hundred people. But even that disaster had only registered twenty-three percent on the Aethrium scale.
One hundred percent would mean...
"This has to be a malfunction," she whispered, running hardware diagnostics. Perfect. Software check. Perfect. Calibration verification. Perfect. Every system reported normal operation.
The readings were real.
Yuki's hands shook as she reached for the emergency communication device. "Director Tanaka? I'm sorry to wake you, but we have a situation. A big one."
Within twenty minutes, the Emergency Aethrium Response Unit had been mobilized. These weren't ordinary law enforcement officers—they were elite agents specifically trained to handle dangerous Aethrium users. The ones who killed. The ones who threatened public safety. The ones who could level buildings with a thought.
Agent Kato arrived first, his imposing figure filling the laboratory doorway. At forty-two, he was a veteran of the Response Unit, his S-rank barrier creation ability having saved countless lives over his fifteen-year career. His partner, Agent Mori, followed close behind—a woman whose power nullification abilities made her perhaps the most dangerous person in the city to face if you were an Aethrium user with hostile intent.
"Dr. Sato," Agent Kato's voice was calm but urgent. "Brief us on the situation."
"The detector registered one hundred percent Aethrium concentration at Plains Sector 7," Yuki explained, her voice steadier now that the professionals had arrived. "I've run every diagnostic—the equipment is functioning perfectly."
Agent Mori frowned. "One hundred percent? Are you certain?"
"I've never been more certain of anything in my life. But here's the thing—" Yuki pulled up the current readings on her monitor. "The levels have returned to normal. Twelve percent, same as the rest of the city."
"Equipment malfunction after all?" Agent Ishii suggested as he entered the lab. His A-rank enhanced tracking abilities had made him invaluable to the team, able to follow Aethrium signatures across vast distances.
"Maybe," Yuki said, though doubt gnawed at her. "But I'd like to investigate the site anyway. If there's even a chance that reading was accurate..."
The team prepared to depart, loading their vehicles with specialized detection equipment. Dr. Sato insisted on accompanying them, her portable scanner and analysis tools potentially crucial for understanding what had happened.
The drive to Plains Sector 7 took them through the quiet streets of Neo-Tokyo, past sleeping neighborhoods where ordinary citizens lived their lives blissfully unaware of the potential catastrophe that might be brewing. The plains themselves were a stretch of undeveloped land on the city's outskirts, officially designated as a nature preserve but mostly serving as a buffer zone between the urban sprawl and the industrial districts beyond.
"Readings are still normal," Yuki reported as they approached the coordinates. "Twelve percent Aethrium, exactly what we'd expect."
Agent Kato swept the area with his flashlight, the beam cutting through the darkness. "Equipment malfunction, then. We came out here for nothing."
But Yuki's trained eye caught something that made her stomach clench. "Wait," she called out. "Agent Kato, shine your light over here."
The beam illuminated a large dark stain on the ground, barely visible in the dim moonlight. As they drew closer, the metallic scent hit them—unmistakable and ominous.
"Is that blood?" Agent Mori asked, though they all knew the answer.
A large pool of dried blood covered the ground, with strange scorch marks radiating outward from the center like the aftermath of an explosion. But these weren't ordinary burn marks—they seemed to shimmer with residual energy, patterns that hurt to look at directly.
"I'm getting trace readings," Yuki said, her portable scanner beeping frantically as she approached the stain. "There's Aethrium in this blood, but the concentration is..." She paused, recalibrating her equipment. "This can't be right."
"What is it?" Agent Kato demanded.
"The Aethrium concentration in this blood sample is forty-seven percent. Normal human blood contains point-zero-three percent. This person—whoever they were—they weren't human. Not anymore."
Agent Ishii activated his tracking abilities, his eyes glowing with soft blue light as he scanned the area. "I'm not picking up any trail. Whoever was here, they didn't leave on foot."
Yuki felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. She reached into her equipment bag and pulled out her deep-ground scanner—a device designed to detect buried Aethrium deposits for mining operations. If there had been some kind of energy source here, something that could explain the massive readings...
What she saw on the scanner's display made her blood run cold.
"No," she whispered. "This can't be right."
The display showed a massive hollow space fifteen meters below ground—a cavern that had been carved out of the earth in a perfect sphere. And the energy signatures...
"Agent Kato," she called, her voice barely audible. "Look at this reading."
The agent hurried over and stared at the scanner. "What am I looking at?"
"Fifteen meters down, there's a massive cavity. The Aethrium traces suggest there was a fragment here—fifty times larger than any known fragment. But it's gone now. Completely drained."
The implications hit them all at once. For sixty-five million years, scientists had believed that a single meteor had brought Aethrium to Earth. But if there had been a second fragment, one that had remained hidden until now...
"Dr. Sato," Agent Mori said quietly, "are you suggesting that someone found this fragment and absorbed its energy?"
"I'm suggesting," Yuki replied, her voice trembling, "that we may have just discovered evidence of the most dangerous individual in human history."
Emergency excavation began immediately. Heavy machinery was brought in under cover of darkness, the operation classified at the highest levels of government. What they unearthed over the following hours defied everything they thought they knew about Aethrium.
The fragment was massive—twelve meters in diameter, easily dwarfing any previous discovery. Carbon dating confirmed its age at sixty-five million years, identical to the original meteor fragment housed in the National Aethrium Archive. But this fragment was different in one crucial respect.
It was completely dead.
"Aethrium fragments don't lose their energy," Yuki explained to Director Tanaka over the secure communication link. "They're supposed to emit power for millions of years. The fragment in the National Archive still reads at eighty-seven percent capacity after all this time. But this one..."
She stared at the massive, empty husk that had been pulled from the earth. "This one has been completely drained. Every joule of energy extracted."
"What would that mean in terms of power?" Director Tanaka asked, though his voice suggested he already feared the answer.
Yuki's calculations were precise but horrifying. "If someone absorbed all of this energy, if such a thing is even possible, they would have access to power levels that are... planetary in scope."
The silence on the communication link stretched for long moments.
"Dr. Sato," Director Tanaka finally said, "what exactly are you telling me?"
"I'm telling you," Yuki replied, doubling over as nausea overwhelmed her, "that there's someone in Neo-Tokyo right now who has the power to destroy the entire planet if they wanted to. And based on the blood evidence, they've already killed at least one person."
As the excavation team worked to secure the site, as emergency protocols were activated across the city, as the most powerful Aethrium users in the country were quietly contacted and briefed on the situation, none of them knew that their worst fears were already being realized.
Across the city, in a modest apartment in the residential district, Ryu Takeshi sat alone in his room. The eighteen-year-old stared at his hands as they glowed with an otherworldly light, energy patterns dancing across his skin like living things. The power coursed through him, vast and terrible and barely contained.
He had never asked for this. He had never wanted to be special, to be different, to be dangerous. But the fragment had called to him, singing in frequencies that only he could hear, and when he had finally found it buried in the earth...
The absorption had been instant and total. Sixty-five million years of accumulated power flowing into him in a single, overwhelming moment. The person who had been there, who had tried to stop him, who had threatened to report the fragment's location to the authorities...
Ryu closed his eyes, trying to block out the memory of what he had done. The way the man had simply... ceased. Not just died, but unmade, his very atoms scattered to the wind.
And now the power was his. All of it. More energy than any human had ever possessed, more than any human was meant to possess. He could feel it building, growing, threatening to tear him apart from the inside.
The question that haunted him, that would haunt him for the rest of his life, was simple:
What was he going to do with it?
Outside his window, the lights of Neo-Tokyo twinkled in the darkness, eight million people going about their lives, unaware that their continued existence now depended on the choices of a frightened teenager who had never hurt anyone in his life.
Until tonight.
End of Chapter 3