The world was a cacophony of accusation.
The screams had faded, replaced by a low, anxious murmur that vibrated through the polished floor of the school hallway. The air was thick with the chalk-dust smell of pulverized plaster and the sharp, clean scent of fear. Shards of frosted glass, like frozen tears, glittered amidst the wreckage of the cast-iron fixture, a monstrous sculpture of sudden violence. Teachers formed a nervous cordon, their voices overlapping in a frantic attempt to impose order on the chaos. Paramedics, summoned with shocking speed, moved among the scattered freshmen, their red and white uniforms stark against the muted institutional colors.
But for Raymond, it was all background noise, a blurred painting around a single, terrifying point of focus: the faces staring at him.
The red-haired girl, now with a stark white bandage on her forehead, wouldn't meet his eyes, but when she did, it was with a look of pure, animal terror. The boy who'd accused him of feeling like a car impact was now silent, his gaze locked on Raymond as if he were a venomous snake that had somehow learned to wear a human face. The other students, the teachers, even Mr. Henderson—their looks were a volatile cocktail of confusion, suspicion, and a dawning, unbelievable awe.
How?
The unspoken question hung in the air, more tangible than the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams that now streamed through the hole in the ceiling. He could feel the weight of it, a physical pressure against his skin. His secret, so carefully guarded, had been torn from him in a single, instinctual, life-saving moment. He had traded anonymity for their lives, and now he stood exposed, a strange new creature under a microscope.
Principal Gupta's voice cut through the din, firm and authoritative. "Everyone, back to your classrooms! Now! The hallway is closed. Raymond," she said, her dark eyes finding his, their usual academic sternness replaced by a deep, unsettling intensity, "to my office. Please."
It wasn't a request. The "please" was a formality, a thin veneer of civility over the steel of a command.
As he was led away, the crowd parted for him like the Red Sea. He didn't walk; he floated through a tunnel of whispers, their words sharp and distinct in his enhanced hearing.
"—impossible speed—"
"—no one's that fast without a power—"
"—but he's azero—"
"—maybe he's not—"
He was deposited into the stark, formal silence of the principal's office. The door clicked shut behind him, muffling the chaos. The room smelled of lemon-scented polish and old, important paper. A large, framed portrait of the school's founder glared down at him with judgmental, painted eyes. He was told to wait.
Alone, the full force of what had happened crashed down on him. His heart, which had been a steady, powerful drum during the crisis, now hammered against his ribs like a frantic prisoner. He could still feel the ghost of the impact in his shoulder, the precise, brutal calculation of force. He looked at his hands, resting on his knees. They looked ordinary. But they were not. They were instruments that had just defied physics and re-written his destiny.
What would they do? Call the Hero Organization? The Enforcers? Would the man in the trench coat, his "benefactor," hear of this? Would he come to reclaim his property?
A cold sweat beaded on his forehead. He felt a tremor start deep in his core, a tremor of pure, undiluted panic. He was trapped. The four walls of the office felt like they were closing in, the air growing thin. He needed to focus, to ground himself. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the overwhelming present.
And without warning, the memory descended. It did not come as a gentle recollection, but as a full-sensory ambush, vivid and brutal in its clarity.
---
The Memory
The world was not sharp and terrifying, but soft and golden. The air was warm, thick with the sweet, green scent of late summer and the earthy perfume of the old oak tree. The light was different—not the sterile, fluorescent glare of school, but the honeyed, late-afternoon sun of August, filtering through the dense canopy of leaves and casting a dappled, shifting pattern on the weathered plywood floor.
He was fifteen. He sat with his back against the rough-hewn wall of the treehouse, the splinters catching faintly on his cotton t-shirt. A book on astrophysics lay open but forgotten in his lap. The words "quantum entanglement" blurred as his attention was pulled away.
Iris was there. She was cross-legged in the center of the single, threadbare rug, her brow furrowed in concentration. A deck of playing cards was fanned out in front of her. But she wasn't looking at them. Her gaze was turned inward, a faint silver sheen glazing her eyes, the tell-tale sign of her telekinesis at work. One card, the Queen of Hearts, was trembling an inch above the floor, wobbling erratically.
"It's like… trying to hold water in your hands without spilling a drop," her voice spoke directly into his mind, a private channel of shared frustration and effort. The mental voice was her, but layered with the strain of her focus. "The harder I squeeze, the more it wants to slip away."
Aloud, she muttered, "Come on, you flimsy piece of cardboard. You will obey."
From the corner, lounging with an effortless grace that seemed to mock Iris's struggle, came Jayden's laugh. It was a warm, rich sound that fit the golden light. He wasn't even looking at her. He was staring at his own hand, his fingers loosely curled. A tiny, perfect flame, no larger than a honeybee, danced just above his palm. It wasn't a wild, sputtering thing like Spark's electricity. It was controlled, beautiful. It pulsed, shifted shape from a sphere to a teardrop to a four-pointed star, all without a flicker of uncertainty. The air around him shimmered with a comfortable, radiating heat, and the scent was not of smoke, but of clean-burning candle wax and summer sunshine.
"You're trying too hard, Iris," Jayden said, his eyes still on his miniature star. "It's not about force. It's about… agreement. You're not making the fire; you're asking it to be. And it agrees."
"Easy for you to say," Iris shot back telepathically, the thought laced with a spike of playful annoyance. "Your element is a drama queen that loves to show off. Mine is a stubborn, invisible mule."
The Queen of Hearts gave a final, violent shudder and dropped to the rug with a soft thwap.
Iris sighed, the silver fading from her eyes, and slumped forward. "Ugh. My head is pounding."
Raymond watched them, the familiar, warm ache of belonging settling in his chest. This was his center. His gravity. Iris, with her fierce, intellectual mind trying to bend the unseen world to her will. Jayden, all instinct and natural talent, already a master of his vibrant, dangerous element.
"You'll get it," Raymond said, his voice soft in the quiet of the treehouse. "It's like anything else. Practice. Neural pathways."
Jayden finally looked over, a smirk playing on his lips. "See? Even Ray knows. It's just science." He closed his hand, and the fire-star winked out of existence, leaving behind a faint, pleasant warmth and the ghost of its light on their retinas. "Besides, you're the one who's going to move mountains. A playing card is beneath you."
"It's the principle," Iris grumbled mentally, rubbing her temples. She then looked at Raymond, her expression softening. "What about you, Ray? Any tingles? Strange dreams? Sudden urge to calculate the square root of pi in your head?"
It was a familiar, gentle teasing. The weekly inquisition.
Raymond gave a small, self-deprecating smile. "Nope. Still just me. I did finally understand Schrödinger's cat today, though. So that's something."
Jayden swung his legs down and sat up. "Forget the dead-and-alive cat. When your power hits, what do you think it'll be? I'm betting on super-intelligence. You'll become a human computer."
"I think it'll be something quiet," Iris mused, her telepathic voice thoughtful. "Something deep. Like empathy. The power to truly feel what others are feeling, to heal emotional wounds."
Raymond looked down at his book, at the diagrams of spinning galaxies and collapsing stars. A universe of immense, impersonal power. "I don't know," he murmured. "I think… I'd just like to be able to keep up."
The moment stretched, comfortable and full. The treehouse creaked gently in a passing breeze. A ladybug landed on the windowsill, its shell a brilliant spot of red in the sun.
Then Jayden's expression grew uncharacteristically serious. He looked from Iris to Raymond, his gaze intense.
"Listen," he said, his voice losing its playful edge. "When it happens for all of us… when we're all powered up… we stick together, right? No matter what."
Iris nodded immediately, her eyes gleaming. "Always. The Triumvirate. Against the world."
"The Hero Organization will be begging for us," Jayden continued, a grand, confident vision unfolding in his words. "We'll be a team. Iris, you're our shield and our strategist. You'll see threats before they happen. Ray, you'll be our brains, our mission control. You'll figure out the science, the weak points, the plans. And I'll be the… well, the spectacular firepower." He grinned that infuriating, brilliant grin. "We'll be unstoppable. We'll change the world."
The promise hung in the warm air, as tangible and real as the wood beneath them. It was a future painted in the brightest colors, a destiny they would forge together. Raymond felt it, a solid, certain thing in his heart. They would never be parted. Their friendship was their first and greatest power.
"Promise?" Iris's thought was soft, a vulnerable thread woven between them, seeking confirmation.
Raymond looked at his two best friends, illuminated in the golden hour light, so full of potential and certainty. He felt a love for them so fierce it was almost painful.
"Promise," he said, and the word felt like a vow etched in stone.
---
End Memory
The echo of that word—promise—shattered, its fragments slicing through him with the sharpness of the glass littering the school hallway.
The warmth of the treehouse vanished, replaced by the sterile chill of the principal's office. The scent of summer oak was obliterated by the smell of lemon polish and his own cold sweat. The golden light was gone, leaving only the flat, shadowless glow of the overhead fluorescents.
The promise had been broken. Irrevocably.
Iris wasn't his strategist; she was in a gleaming spire, learning to sort through a symphony of alien minds without him. Jayden wasn't his spectacular firepower; he was crafting phoenixes from flame in a room with a view of the stars, a view Raymond would never share.
He was alone. He had become the very thing they had jokingly envisioned—the brains, the calculator—but it was a cursed, stolen power, and he was using it not to plan their heroic missions, but to desperately calculate how to survive the exposure of his own existence.
The memory was no longer a comfort. It was a wound, freshly salted. The echoes of their laughter, the certainty of their future, the warmth of their shared vow—it was all a lie. A beautiful, painful, gut-wrenching lie.
The door to the principal's office opened. Principal Gupta entered, followed by a stern-looking man in the sharp, dark grey uniform of the Hero Organization. It wasn't a full Hero, but an Enforcer, an agent. His eyes, cold and analytical, scanned Raymond, missing nothing.
The past was a ghost. Its echoes faded, leaving only the crushing weight of the present.
Raymond looked up, meeting the Enforcer's gaze. The boy from the treehouse was gone. In his chair sat someone harder, someone who had been broken and remade in a sterile lab, someone who had just shattered the world's perception of him.
The memory had reminded him of what he had lost. But it had also, in its painful clarity, shown him what he had to become. He was on his own now. The Triumvirate was a fairy tale.
It was time to write his own story.