Chapter 2:

In his driveway, Will started to wake up. Opening his eyes, he let out a groan.

"Damnit, I really thought I'd put the waking up in strange places part of my life behind me."

He was surprised that he didn't feel at all groggy. As he stood up, he did notice that napping on concrete was not totally consequence free, as his back and joints began to protest their existence.

"Now, why am I in my driveway…" he said. At this point he figured his natural penchant for talking to himself was low on the list of things to worry about.

It was still dark out, and he remembered stepping out for a smoke at night, so he hadn't been out too long. His clothes felt unpleasantly damp, so he looked down to check everything over. What he saw left him confused and at a loss for words.

Everything he was wearing was… singed. He honestly suspected they'd be largely burnt off, if not for the amount of what appeared to be blood soaked into them, as well as crusted on his skin.

"Well, at least the strange place wake-up wasn't a nude one, this time."

Apparently his words were back.

Deciding looking like he'd been in a car accident while blankly staring, probably, wasn't a great look, he started to go inside. As he went to open the door from his garage to enter his house, a spark of electricity suddenly jumped from his finger to the doorknob.

Aborting his natural reaction of cursing, the time from before passing out in his driveway suddenly rushed back into his brain. Then the cursing started, with a bit of extra gusto.

Going inside, he decided he needed to be pragmatic about his situation. This particular trait was one that had caused people to call him an asshole on multiple occasions, but he was even more happy he had it now than normal.

After briefly reflecting on how it probably said something about him that he enjoyed a part of his personality that semi regularly got him called an asshole, he got down to planning his next few steps.

Going to his bathroom, he stripped off his clothes and threw them into the back of the tub for his shower. Being dark colors, he figured attempting to save them might be worth it. He then checked himself over for any sign of injuries.

He was expecting to see some burns, at least, but what he saw made no sense to him. It seemed likely he'd been struck by lightning, but he didn't have any contact burn marks to show for it.

There seemed to be a tracery of some kind on the right side of his chest. Looking closely, it almost looked like lines of electricity radiating out from a central point. It didn't hurt to touch it, and didn't seem to be affecting him so he moved on.

After finding no sign of real injury, he got into the shower to get cleaned up. It was still confusing him that he didn't seem to have any mental fog, beyond the normal track skipping of his brain right after waking up.

"And now I've compared my brain to a cd player from the early 2000's. Getting old is lame."

After rinsing himself off, he decided to try the clothes. Luckily, there wasn't as much wet blood as he had worried, and the dried stuff flaked off in the spray fairly easily. The shirt, however, was a write-off. It had a hole burned through it conveniently placed where it would've covered the tracery on his chest. Also, the charred remnant of a cigarette had somehow fused to the fabric. For the rest, he opted to run it through the laundry and see what it looked like after.

Some soap and water later, he got out of the shower, dried off with his towel from the rack, and went to his room to get dressed.

Then, he got another surprise when he noticed that he'd left his phone on his nightstand charging pad. After thinking it over, he said, "well, not looking that gift horse in the mouth." He then moved on with his day.

While getting dressed, he began to debate his next steps. He couldn't afford to go to an urgent care, and given he felt pretty great for the most part, he wouldn't have, regardless.

Deciding some web searches for lightning strike concerns would probably be a good call, he left his room to grab his water and energy drink, before heading back to his relaxing spot in the garage.

Pulling out his phone, he got down to the business of sorting real information from all the reasons he was dying of cancer. Given the state of his shirt, it was most likely that he had been hit by a direct strike.

With that explanation, the seizing up of his body would make sense. Residual body aches would as well, though the fact that they seemed no more severe than having slept on concrete seemed odd.

He definitely hadn't received any first aid, especially not from an AED, which implied if his heart rate or nervous system had gone momentarily crazy, the problem had already corrected itself while he was knocked out. Basically, as far as he could tell, he should either be dead or seriously injured right now. Which made the fact that he felt great even stranger.

Following that thought, he realized even his aches had pretty much dissipated.

"So, to sum it up, I was likely struck by lightning, but have zero evidence supporting it. Even if I did go somewhere, given how I feel, they wouldn't believe me; they'd still likely run all kinds of tests to charge me for; and I'd be sent on my way with a shrug. Yeah… no. Not worth it."

Deciding his best bet was to watch himself closely, and keep an eye on the mark on his chest, he went about his day. He cleaned up his room and the kitchen a bit, did laundry, went to the store, and generally got stuff ready for his next week of work. It was mid afternoon by the time he decided he was done with his weekend chores, and he realized he should likely have been in bed already if he was going to maintain his sleep cycle.

"Oops. Well, might as well try for a nap."

With that, he went to get ready for sleeping. He wasn't feeling tired, but felt obligated to at least try for a somewhat normal human sleep pattern.

Laying down, he was not optimistic about his chances for sleep. While not a new experience, this particular time he did notice that he still felt something off, internally.

Wanting to figure out what was wrong with him,he dropped into what he considered a half-assed version of meditation he used when trying to get to sleep. He immediately noticed an odd feeling, but had trouble describing it.

It felt like his whole body had some sort of warm energy flowing through it. It seemed to radiate from his chest outward, and soak in wherever it reached. He had no idea what to think about it, let alone what to do. Thinking about it, he decided to see if he could somehow manipulate it.

Physical movement did nothing. Instead he tried to focus on it, and pictured it flowing in a more condensed way to gather in his hands. He was surprised to actually feel it respond to his mental command, and his hand rapidly warmed up. He couldn't be sure, but it felt like the temperature of his hands had actually gone up from the effort.

Following that success, he decided to see about directing it to the rest of his body. When he got to his head, he decided that might be a bad idea. If the temperature really did rise, he had no desire to learn what it felt like when the place where his brain lived experienced a heat wave.

Instead, he mentally looked back at all the areas he had already addressed. At this point, the only place he hadn't messed with was the very center of his chest, which was where the warmth seemed to come from.

Focusing, he began to mentally pull right at where the source seemed to be, without focusing on sending it anywhere in particular. That gave him a feeling he had not experienced yet. Pulling there seemed to cause the energy to rush into his entire body at a much higher rate than before. This time it also included his head, but he still didn't notice anything beyond a strange twitchy feeling, and a vague sort of euphoria began to settle into him.

Suddenly, it felt like some kind of barrier had dissolved, and the energy began to seriously pour into his body. He didn't notice how warm he'd gotten, until he started to sweat.

Thinking he probably shouldn't push too much, yet, he decided to stop his mental pull. He was surprised when the flow only slightly lessened, but was also blasted with a feeling of drowsiness. He didn't even have time to get concerned before he passed out.

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Now hovering in a camouflage mode a few inches above the roof of Will's house, Sil commented to his companion, "Well, that was certainly interesting."

"Agreed," said Artie while analyzing the aetheric energy readings from the man in the house below them. "He's broken through to Operator level already. That speed is a first for this world. Also, I believe I know where we can get a DNA sample without him becoming aware."

"Do tell…"

"It seems he threw a shirt into the trash receptacle in the garage. I have a micro drone examining it. It appears to be bloody, mildly burnt, and has a significant hole burned into the right pectoral region of the fabric. I'm having my drone bring us back a sample now."

"How long do you think analysis will take?"

"Likely a few hours. Perhaps you should pull up that movie you were planning to watch before this came up."

"Are you trying to distract me, like some child who gets annoying when bored?"

"Yes."

"Fair enough."

A few hours later, Sil returned his attention to Artie. "So, my AI friend, what have we learned?"

"It's been enlightening. This man's genetics are exceptionally compatible with our technology. I would say it's entirely possible one of his distant ancestors was someone from our previous world. It seems that his compatibility allowed a deeper initial bond to be formed between the host and nanites than we have previously recorded.

I can't be entirely positive, but I am guessing his systems began activating beyond the latent stage just in the last few days. He is well within the age range for adult onset activation, and given his compatibility they could have begun ramping up activity without his conscious will, or even knowledge."

"That would explain him going from Latent to Initiate, but he is well beyond that now and has little idea what is happening to him. He also survived a lightning strike that should have killed him."

"Yes, I considered that. I believe his compatibility allowed for a much more instinctive grasp of the nanites in his system.

This allowed him to absorb enough energy from the aether to begin pushing beyond Latent level without conscious thought. In turn, he was able to pull in external energy much faster than he normally would have been, and having been drawing so heavily on aetheric energy before that his system would've been significantly hardened against the damaging effects of that sort of energy surge. Lastly, I believe when the strike hit, he instinctively channeled the electricity into his system, and shunted what he couldn't hold back through his aetheric connection."

"That… is a lot of conjecture, but it does seem reasonable, and would handily explain the bit about how he is still breathing instead of being a lump of charcoal in his car park."

"Indeed. Given the nature of aetheric channels, I should mention that electrical energy will not dissipate while there. It's likely to slowly seep back into his system over time. While not a large concern, it could have interesting effects on the development of his abilities."

"Especially given he's passed through Initiate level in a fraction of the time it normally takes humans to do so."

"Indeed."

"Well Artie, time to dig up every scrap of information we can find on him. He could get to be extremely powerful, and it absolutely would not help our mission to lose a super-powered psychopath on this world. They have enough of the regular kind."

"I have already begun."

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