Part One

-NewsFlash-

Chapter 1:

Nevada, United States - 2022

Uilliam Lorcan, Will, to those who weren't massive tools, Lorcan stood, loading a palette of cardboard boxes into a machine that would fold, then send them on to be filled down the line.

He was not particularly paying attention, as this was a job a trained monkey could do, but he got the job done regardless. He was thinking about where his life was headed.

At twenty-five, he didn't know what he wanted to really do with his life yet. This left him bored, adrift, and mainly just surviving. He wasn't lazy; he just hadn't found anything that really caught his attention or gotten him excited enough to really pursue. So he stood there, loading cardboard, wishing he had some kind of attainable goal to work toward.

An alarm on his phone was set to warn him when clean-up time at the end of his shift arrived. It went off, effectively pulling him out of his own mind. He sighed, but at least he was almost done. Work in the roasting plant was never exciting, but this department was somehow even worse than others in the plant. He was quite happy to leave as quickly as possible.

Will worked in a coffee roasting plant south of the capital, commuting between there and a three bedroom house he rented with his two best friends in a small town east of the capital. On his way home he was thinking about what he needed to do over the next few days, since he would be off work for the weekend.

His roommates were out of town for a day or two, so he would be on his own until they got home. They had been friends since middle school, so he was looking forward to them coming home.

Thinking back to when they had moved in together he chuckled, remembering the time he asked them if they were sleeping together, and just making weird excuses about going to visit family at the same time. He only brought it up because he wanted to tell them it didn’t bother him if they were hooking up, so they didn’t need to hide it. They apparently hadn't realized he might come to that conclusion.

They all laughed as his friends explained, slightly sheepishly, that they had been a couple for a short while right before they had moved in together. They had quickly realized the sex might be great, but they didn't do well as a couple, so they broke it off.

Unsurprisingly, the occasional booty-call might still happen, but it was nothing they hid or anything. It just happened that their vacation times had been synced up when they were together, and they never cared enough to change schedules after going back to being, mostly, platonic.

As he pulled his mind out of the memory, he noticed that the smell of coffee permeated everything in his car. He considered this a bonus, as he liked the smell, and work smells he had experienced in other places were far from pleasant.

After he parked in his driveway, he texted his roommates to tell them he had gotten home, and to enjoy their short breaks. It wouldn’t be long before they got back home, as he knew they both had family members that were hard to be around for too long, on a single visit.

Walking into the house he began his process to unwind for the morning before bed. Working nights was better for him than mornings, but he would always need at least a minute to wind down after arriving home from a long shift. Eventually, he wound up with a show streaming on his tablet, relaxing in their garage hang out area, smoking a cigarette, and feeling much better for the relaxation it all provided.

Something was nagging at him, though. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was definitely tugging on his attention in a very annoying way.

He sat, barely even noticing his show, as he internally focused on trying to figure out if he was forgetting something important. Eventually he was tired enough to fall asleep, and clearly he was not going to figure it out, so he decided it was time for sleep.

A crashing thunder of sound suddenly came blasting through his house. It jolted him awake, but he wasn’t really understanding what was going on. He had been dreaming, not that he could remember what about beyond, "nothing overly exciting."

That dream state was bleeding into his wakeful situation and causing some strange dissonance, now that he was failing to register any threats and his frontal lobe was beginning to reassert dominance on his thought process.

The next shock of light and sound helped ground him, and with his brain back online, so to speak, he realized he could hear the sounds of rain and occasional thunder following a blast of white light from outside.

He had always enjoyed thunderstorms. For him, they had always seemed to lend the atmosphere a feeling of charged potential, like the air itself could come alive at any moment. He always felt reinvigorated after experiencing one, and he tended to find his curiosity for life refreshed in the aftermath.

He looked at his phone, and realized he had only been asleep for a couple of hours. He briefly considered trying to go back to sleep, but could already tell there was zero chance of succeeding. He felt much more rested and energized than he thought normal, however, and being a night person, he had always had an unconventional relationship with sleep, so that wasn’t exactly strange.

Getting up, he began his normal routine for waking up. He got dressed, left his room, took a healthy swig from an energy drink, and downed a bunch of water over the course of a few minutes. Then, it was time for a cigarette so he stepped outside.

Feeling more alert, he began to realize he could feel a tingling on his skin. It felt almost like he was fresh from getting a massage, and added to the oddly energetic feeling he'd been experiencing since waking up. Deciding any in depth self examination could damn well wait until he'd had his morning smoke, he proceeded to step outside.

There seemed to have been a slight lull in the storm while he was re-learning how to be human, but it wasn't a surprise to see it picking back up as he stepped into his garage.

After lighting up and taking a drag on his smoke, he exhaled slowly and began to try and figure out what he was feeling. The tingle had intensified a bit since coming outside, but still wasn't anything really uncomfortable. The best way he could think to describe it was a feeling of potential energy coursing through his body. He likened it to how he felt during an exceptionally powerful adrenaline rush.

As he sat, mentally looking inward, suddenly another blast of lightning flashed in the distance, quickly followed by the thunder of its passing. That was when the weird went beyond what he was willing to just rationalize away.

He had always been someone who trusted his intuition and observational abilities. So, as the thunder washed over him and triggered what felt like the simultaneous twitching of every muscle in his body, he didn't waste time wondering if he was somehow imagining the situation. He tried to figure out what had just happened.

He failed. Spectacularly.

Realizing that wasn’t going to happen, he instead began trying to catalogue what he was now feeling. It felt like the most intense rush of adrenaline he could ever recall experiencing. Like the charged particles in the air had somehow entered his muscles and bones, and minor jolts of electricity were jumping through him at random.

He had experienced being hit by a handheld taser in his early teens, but this wasn't the same feeling from his early years of adolescent onset stupidity. The current wasn't locking his muscles up, or messing with his coordination, or even causing pain. It was more like his entire body had just become hyper energized.

Continuing his self examination, he began to walk outside without even realizing it. Just a few strides out from the threshold of his garage door, he suddenly came to a stop.

Something had caught his attention, but listening and closely looking around, he had no idea what had drawn his awareness.

Then, as he was about to turn around and walk back inside, his body decided it was no longer taking requests and locked up.

Luckily, he did not have time for terror set in, or even apathetic cursing at the sky while calling it a melodramatic douche, as his body suddenly lit up like never before. Pain shocked through his system briefly, and his world went white.

>->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->

High above the earth, the metal cube that was orbiting the earth was analyzing its constant feed of scans from the planet below it, when an anomaly registered on its sensors.

Stopping its orbiting motion, it focused on the area of the anomalous activity to get more a precise reading. After analyzing the situation, the entity that had controlled the unit for hundreds of years sent a mental prod to its companion.

"Administrator…"

"Please, Artie, call me Sil. We've been roommates in this machine for hundreds of years. I think we can drop meaningless titles at this point."

"I will consider it, if you stop calling me Artie."

"And I will consider that, as soon as you come up with a name that isn't 'Computer,' or something so pretentious it makes me wish I could give you a swirly."

Giving a mental sigh, while refusing to admit the name Artie had actually grown on it, it continued its reason for beginning the conversation.

"Sil, our sensors are detecting the type of anomaly we have been hoping to see"

"Really? Well, give me your report."

"A few moments ago I detected a latent level aetheric connection beginning to undergo a bandwidth spike. It was the largest spike recorded to date. Upon more detailed scanning, an electrical storm was detected in the same area as the person spiking. As you know, records indicate this to not be a beneficial occurrence for the person undergoing full activation."

At this point, Sil interrupted with a snort and said, "Well yes, the influx of aetheric energy suddenly turning someone into a temporary lightning rod DOES have a tendency to ruin a person's day."

Ignoring the interruption, Artie continued. "Indeed, the reaction has been rather potent to date. In this case, however, the subject appears to be alive, though unconscious, after having been struck by a rather impressive bolt of lightning. In fact, judging from readings regarding the subjects current influx of aetheric energy, it appears the interaction has massively accelerated the activation process for this subject."

"Accelerated how, and to what level?"

"It appears the subject has gone from being a Latent, to the end stages of Initiate level, and will likely reach the level of Operator in the next two to four hours."

"Wait, you said they were unconscious. How are they still drawing enough aether to push their activation level?"

"I do not know, however, the answer to that, as well as how this happened at all, are the same. We will need to move to close observation and evaluation of the subject. We should also obtain a DNA sample as soon as possible, though I do recommend not revealing ourselves before we have more data regarding the subject's personality and background. A psychological profile may be beneficial as well."

"Agreed. Take us in and we can get started. I've been hoping for something interesting to focus on."