The Enforcer's name was Agent Corvus. He had a voice like gravel being slowly crushed under a boot, and eyes that didn't blink enough. They were the color of a winter sky just before a storm, and they held no warmth, no curiosity, only a flat, professional assessment. He didn't sit in the plush chair opposite Raymond in Principal Gupta's office; he perched on the edge of it, his posture rigid, a hawk ready to stoop.
The interrogation was a masterclass in subtle pressure. Principal Gupta had offered Raymond a glass of water, her demeanor a fragile blend of concern and institutional fear. Agent Corvus had declined one for himself with a curt shake of his head. The water sat on the desk between them, untouched, condensation beading on the cool glass. Raymond could hear every individual bubble of air escaping the water, the sound magnified in the tense silence.
"Let's go through it one more time, Raymond," Corvus said, his voice devoid of impatience, which made it all the more intimidating. "You were approximately forty feet away from the group of freshmen when the light fixture failed."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement, a fact laid out like a piece of evidence on a sterile table.
"Yes," Raymond said, his own voice carefully neutral. He kept his hands folded in his lap, willing them not to tremble. He could feel the thrum of his own power beneath his skin, a caged animal sensing danger.
"You saw the fixture begin to fall."
"I heard a noise.A ping. Then I saw it tilt."
"And your first instinct was to run towards the potential impact zone."
"I…I don't know what my instinct was. I just moved."
Corvus's eyes narrowed a fraction of a millimeter. "You 'just moved.' And in the space of, by all witness accounts, less than two seconds, you covered forty feet through a crowded hallway, navigated around several students, and managed to shove five people out of the path of a falling object weighing several hundred pounds."
He let the statement hang in the air. The impossibility of it was a physical presence in the room, thick and suffocating.
"It was adrenaline," Raymond said, repeating the flimsy lie he'd concocted in his panic. "People can do amazing things when they're scared. There are stories of mothers lifting cars…"
"Those are stories, Raymond," Corvus interrupted, his tone cutting. "And they are almost always exaggerations. What happened in that hallway was not an exaggeration. It was an anomaly."
He leaned forward slightly, and Raymond could smell the faint scent of coffee on his breath and the sterile, antiseptic smell of his uniform. "The World Hero Organization maintains a registry of all emergent superhuman abilities. It is a matter of public safety. Late-blooming manifestations, while rare, are not unheard of. But they are always documented."
Raymond's blood ran cold. Registry. Documentation. This was it. They were going to tag him, file him away, put him in a box labeled 'Supe.' And then what? Tests? Scans? Would they discover the nanites? The truth of Project Genesis?
"I don't have a power," Raymond insisted, the lie tasting bitter. "It was just a… a fluke."
Corvus's gaze was unwavering. "A fluke that left one of the freshmen with a bruised rib and another with a sprained wrist from the force of your 'rescue.' The kinetic transfer required for that is inconsistent with an un-augmented human frame, even under extreme duress."
He tapped a data-slate on his knee. "Your school records show no prior physical exceptionalism. Quite the opposite. Your medical history is unremarkable. And yet…" He gestured vaguely towards the door, towards the hallway. "…today, you performed a feat of speed and strength that would be notable for a registered C-Class meta."
The classification felt like a brand. C-Class. He was no longer a zero. He was a statistic.
"I can't explain it," Raymond whispered, looking down at his hands. He focused on the grain of the wood in Principal Gupta's desk, counting the rings, losing himself in the microscopic landscape to escape the macro-level disaster of his life.
"Perhaps you can't," Corvus said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial low that was more threatening than his official tone. "Or perhaps you won't. The Organization has a vested interest in understanding these… anomalies. For your safety, and for the safety of the public. An uncontrolled, unregistered ability is a liability."
He stood up abruptly, the movement crisp and efficient. "You are not in any formal trouble, Raymond. In fact, you likely saved lives. That will be noted. But this incident is now on our radar. We will be in touch. I strongly suggest you and your mother consider the Organization's offer of a full physiological and psionic evaluation. It is for the best."
He didn't wait for a response. He gave a curt nod to Principal Gupta and left, the door closing behind him with a soft, definitive click.
The silence he left behind was heavier than before.
Principal Gupta let out a long, slow breath. "Raymond… regardless of the how… what you did was very brave." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as him. "But Agent Corvus is right. This is… beyond the school's purview. You need to go home. Talk to your mother. I've already called her."
Of course she had. The walk of shame from the principal's office to the front entrance of the school was worse than the first one. The hallway had been mostly cleared, but the evidence remained—a large, taped-off area, the corpse of the light fixture still lying in pieces. Students and teachers alike watched him pass. The whispers were different now. Not speculative, not fearful, but… certain.
"They said he's a late-bloomer."
"An Enforcer was here for him."
"I always knew there was something off about him."
"Guess he's not a zero after all."
The words should have been a victory. He was being recognized. But it felt like a sentence. He had exchanged one label for another, and this new one came with the full, terrifying attention of the very system he needed to hide from.
His mother was waiting for him in the car, her face pale and tight with a fresh layer of fear. The ride home was silent. The air in the car was thick with unspoken questions. He could feel her anxiety radiating from her, a high-frequency vibration that set his teeth on edge. He stared out the window, watching the city blur past, a prison of windows and eyes.
When they got home, the dam broke.
"Raymond, what in God's name is going on?" she cried, the moment the front door closed. She rounded on him, her hands gripping his shoulders. "The principal said you moved faster than anyone could see! That you saved those children! How? How is that possible?"
He looked into her eyes, saw the love and the terror warring within them, and he knew he couldn't tell her the truth. The truth would break her. The truth would make her a target.
"I don't know, Mom," he said, his voice hollow. He pulled away from her grip, walking into the living room. "It was like Corvus said. A late bloom. Adrenaline. I don't know."
"Don't lie to me!" Her voice was sharp, cracking with emotion. "I'm your mother! I've seen you fall off your bike and cry for an hour. I've seen you get a paper cut and act like you needed a tourniquet. You don't just 'bloom' into someone who can do… that!" She gestured wildly, encompassing the impossible event.
"Well, I guess I did!" he shot back, the frustration and fear of the day finally boiling over. "What do you want me to say? That I've been bit by a radioactive spider? That I'm a secret alien? I don't have an explanation! It just happened!"
He was shouting now, pacing the room. The air felt too thick to breathe. The grandfather clock's ticking was a maddening metronome counting down to his doom.
"The Hero Organization, Raymond," she said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "They want to evaluate you. What does that mean? What will they do to you?"
"I don't know!" he yelled, whirling to face her. "But I'm not going! I'm not letting them turn me into a lab rat!"
"And what's the alternative?" she pleaded. "You can't just ignore this! That man, Corvus… he wasn't asking. This is happening, whether we want it to or not!"
The weight of it all crashed down on him—the laboratory, the transformation, the escape, the exposure. He was trapped. There was no way out. The walls of the living room felt like they were the white, sterile walls of the lab, closing in. He needed air. He needed to be away from here, from her fear, from the ticking clock, from the crushing certainty of his future.
He turned and ran for the stairs.
"Raymond! We are not done talking about this!" his mother called after him.
He didn't stop. He slammed his bedroom door shut and leaned against it, his chest heaving. His heart was a runaway engine. His vision swam, the details of his room—the posters, the trophies, the photo—sharpening into a painful, hyper-real focus. He could hear his mother crying downstairs, the soft, broken sounds a physical pain in his own chest.
He stumbled to his desk, gripping the edge. The wood groaned in his hands. He looked at the photo of the three of them, at their smiling, stupid, hopeful faces. The echo of their promise rang in his ears, a taunting ghost.
Unstoppable.
We'll change the world.
A hot, bitter fury rose in him, so sudden and intense it stole his breath. It was all a lie. They had left him. They were in their perfect, powered world, and he was here, a monster in the making, hunted and alone.
With a roar of pure, unfiltered anguish, he swept his arm across the desk.
It was not a controlled movement. It was a raw, violent expulsion of the power he had been trying so hard to contain.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The desk didn't just tip over. It exploded.
The sound was a thunderclap in the small room. The solid oak desk, a heavy heirloom, shattered as if it were made of balsa wood. Splinters and shards of wood erupted outwards in a storm. The computer monitor vaporized in a shower of glass and plastic. Books were torn to confetti. The framed photo of him, Iris, and Jayden disintegrated, the glass powdering, the image shredding into a thousand meaningless fragments.
The force of the blast slammed into the opposite wall, cracking the plaster in a spiderweb pattern and shaking the entire house.
Silence.
Absolute, deafening silence.
Raymond stood amidst the devastation, chest heaving, his knuckles white. Tiny pieces of his former life drifted slowly to the floor around him like black snow. The air was filled with the smell of sawdust, ozone, and ruptured electronics.
He heard a gasp from the doorway.
His mother stood there, her hand clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide with a horror so profound it was beyond screaming. She was staring at the obliterated desk, at the wreckage that had, seconds ago, been her son's room. Then her eyes shifted to him, standing unharmed in the center of the destruction.
He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes. This was not a late bloom. This was not adrenaline. This was something else. Something violent. Something dangerous.
The look on her face—the fear, not for him, but of him—was the final, shattering blow.
He had triggered. Not just his power, but the inevitable.
He looked at his hands, then at the destruction he had wrought with a single, uncontrolled gesture. This was the truth of what he was. This was the power the man had given him. It wasn't for saving people. It was for this. For breaking things.
He looked at his mother's terrified face, then back at the ruins of his past.
There was no going back now. The zero was gone. The boy was gone. All that remained was the trigger, and the terrifying power waiting behind it.
Without a word, he walked past his speechless mother, down the stairs, and out the front door, into the cooling twilight. He didn't know where he was going. He only knew he couldn't stay.
The trigger had been pulled. The bullet was in motion.