The scent of decay, heavy and cloying, dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind a hollow echo in its wake. The strange surge in my powers, the unnerving tether with the stray cat, it all receded, returning to the familiar, frustrating normalcy. I stood in the shadowed alley, the city's hum a dull drone around me, the brief, unsettling experience leaving me with a chilling sense of unease.

  The questions that had been simmering beneath the surface of my consciousness now boiled over, demanding answers. My abilities, once a simple extension of my will, were changing, shifting in ways I didn't understand. The scent, the sudden, amplified tethers, it wasn't just a random anomaly. It was a sign, a clue, a whisper of something larger, something I couldn't ignore.

  "What the hell is happening to me?" I muttered, my voice a low growl in the quiet alley.

  The city provided no answer, its neon-lit streets and shadowed corners holding their secrets close. I needed information, knowledge beyond the fragmented whispers and rumors that circulated in Neo Lyon's underbelly. I needed to understand the nature of my powers, the truth behind my transformation, and the strange, unsettling changes that were occurring.

  The city’s silence stretched, pressing against me like a weight. I exhaled sharply, shoving my hands into my pockets as I turned back toward the main streets. The buzz of flickering neon and the distant murmur of traffic welcomed me back into the world, but the sense of normalcy felt false, like cheap wallpaper barely hiding the cracks underneath.

  For a moment—just a moment—I had felt something. Something vast, alien, unknowable. And now, it was gone.

  I bit my lip.

  I wasn’t the type to dwell on things I couldn’t explain. That way lay madness. But this? This felt important.

  There was no handbook for metahuman abilities. No clear rules. People liked to pretend there was, cobbling together theories based on what scraps of knowledge they had, but in the end, it all came down to what worked and what didn’t.

  And this—whatever had just happened—wasn’t something I’d ever heard about.

  Maybe I’d been too quick to dismiss the internet. Sure, most of it was nonsense, but every now and then, someone managed to scrape together something useful. Maybe there were others out there who had experienced something similar. Maybe there were records, hidden deep within forums, old blogs, or the darker corners of the web.

  Or maybe I was chasing ghosts.

  Still, I had to try.

  Back at my apartment, I kicked off my boots and collapsed into my chair, reaching for my laptop. The screen’s glow cast sharp shadows across the cluttered desk as I opened the browser and started typing.

  First, let’s check the metawiki. This place is maybe the only where metahuman info is somewhat believable.

  The Metawiki was a mess.

  Half-conspiracy theories, half-pseudoscience, with the occasional nugget of truth buried in layers of speculative garbage. Anonymous users throwing around half-baked ideas, citing sources that didn't exist, arguing over whether metahuman powers were the result of genetic mutations, government experiments, or divine intervention.

  I scrolled past the usual nonsense—some thread about how certain meta abilities were actually "echoes from parallel universes" (sure, and next you'd tell me the government was hiding alien corpses under the Neo Lyon sewers)—until I landed on a discussion that looked halfway promising.

  "Sudden Surges in Metahuman Abilities – Documented Cases?"

  Click.

  The thread was older, months at least, with only a handful of replies. The original post described a metahuman experiencing an unexplained spike in their abilities, followed by an immediate return to normal. The details were frustratingly vague—no descriptions, no context, just the claim that it had "happened more than once" and that they were looking for others with similar experiences.

  The first response dismissed it outright as adrenaline boosts. The second went on about "resonance events" and quoted some obscure physics article. The third linked to a defunct website that no longer existed.

  I frowned.

  Nothing concrete. Just more ghosts.

  Leaning back in my chair, I drummed my fingers against the desk. Something had happened to me in that alley. I had felt it. The shift, the pull, the momentary surge of power—real and undeniable. But just as quickly as it had come, it had vanished, slipping through my fingers like smoke.

  And no one online seemed to have a damn clue why. And I was going to leave some of my traces online by answering the post.

  I continued scouring the forums, stumbling on posts like:

  “I think powers change based on emotions! Like, if you get really mad, you might unlock something new!” or “I heard about a guy whose fire powers got stronger during a solar storm. Maybe external factors play a role?”

  Surely written by people that never even met a meta in their life….

  I rubbed my temples, closing the tab. Maybe the Metawiki was a lost cause, but it wasn’t my only option. There were other places.

  I went broader, searching for any academic papers on metahuman abilities, but those were either government-controlled or written in technical jargon so dense it made my head ache. University studies, restricted files, classified research—the real knowledge was locked behind layers of bureaucracy and security clearances I didn’t have.

  I pushed my chair back with a frustrated sigh, staring at the screen as the neon glow of the city pulsed against my apartment window. No real answers. Just the same recycled theories, half-truths, and wild speculation.

  Metahumans had been around since like the 50s, surely someone had figured out something concrete by now. Or so I thought. All I had were whispers, dead-end forum posts, and the occasional paper written in language so dense it might as well be in code.

  Still, I wasn’t done. Not yet.

  I switched gears, diving into research papers. Most were the kind of academic fluff that universities pumped out to keep funding rolling—studies on the "sociological impact of metahuman integration" or the "psychological stress of enhanced individuals in urban environments." Interesting, maybe, but nothing I could use.

  Then, buried beneath a stack of links, I found something.

  "Theoretical Origins of Metahuman Abilities: A Multidisciplinary Approach."

  Written by some professor out of the University of Old Lyon, the paper argued that metahuman abilities weren’t just genetic flukes or random mutations. According to him, they were responses—reactions to unseen forces, environmental triggers, or even something deeper.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  I adjusted my chair, leaning closer to the screen. The paper was dense, the kind of academic writing that made my eyes glaze over after a few paragraphs, but the premise hooked me. The professor—Dr. Emil Tressard—proposed that metahuman abilities weren’t purely genetic. Sure, the whole "mutation" theory held water, but he argued there were external catalysts, something beyond biology.

  "Metahuman abilities have emerged at statistically significant rates in specific geographic and sociopolitical conditions. This suggests a potential correlation between environmental stressors and activation thresholds. Furthermore, recorded anomalies in power manifestation suggest an external, possibly non-physical factor influencing ability flux."

  That part got my attention.

  I skimmed further, searching for anything useful. The professor went deep into historical cases—early metas in war zones, people developing abilities in cities thick with pollution, cases of spontaneous power surges in regions with higher electromagnetic interference. A lot of it was theoretical, but some of his examples sounded eerily familiar.

  One passage in particular stood out:

  "Anomalous events, such as sudden increases in ability potency or momentary loss of control, have been observed in metahumans operating in areas of unknown energy fluctuations. These have been dismissed as 'stress responses' or 'adrenaline-based spikes.' However, emerging evidence suggests that metahumans are not simply reacting to their environments—they are resonating with them. The nature of this resonance remains unclear, but it implies that metahuman abilities are not entirely self-contained."

  I exhaled sharply.

  Resonating with the environment.

  Was that what happened to me? Was that why the cat had suddenly linked to me like that—because something in that alley had triggered it?

  I scrolled further, looking for anything more concrete, but the professor had wrapped his theory in layers of technical language. He referenced quantum field anomalies, bioelectromagnetic signatures, and a whole lot of other terms that meant nothing to me. The takeaway, though, was clear enough: something beyond just genetics determined how our powers worked.

  And if I could figure out what it was… maybe I could learn to control it.

  I closed the paper, rubbing my eyes.

  “I need more info…”

  And so, I trawled through old news reports, looking for historical incidents of metahumans exhibiting sudden jumps in power. The results were frustratingly vague—mentions of unusual events, cases of metas exceeding their normal limits, but no deeper analysis. Either no one cared enough to document it properly, or someone had made sure the records stayed buried.

  Neo Lyon had its own legends, of course. Stories of metas whose powers had "awakened" under extreme stress, pushing beyond what was considered normal. Some of them were famous—like Kingfisher, the vigilante who had supposedly doubled his strength overnight. Others were whispered rumors, urban myths passed around in dark corners. I even found rumours about the infamous Feu Divin. They are saying that his fire wasn’t that strong until he burnt Old Lyon to the ground. He would even be considered a simple C-List Villain if the listing existed back then.

  “Yet after the fact they decided to categorize him as S-List…”

  Hours passed. My tea had gone cold, the light outside shifting from neon haze to the dull glow of street lamps. I had gone from legitimate sources to scraping the bottom of the internet’s filthiest barrels. Paranormal blogs. Fringe theory sites. Places where people talked about "energy frequencies" and "spiritual awakenings" as if those meant anything.

  My fingers hovered over the keyboard, the screen’s cold glow flickering in my tired eyes. I had spent the better part of the night chasing ghosts—half-baked theories, academic speculation wrapped in technical jargon, and urban legends dressed up as fact. And yet, for all my searching, I had found nothing solid.

  Just a hundred different ways of saying: We don’t know what the hell is going on either.

  “70 years and some of Metahumans; a third generation of Metahuman is already roaming the streets; and yet, we know so little…”

  I sighed, rubbing my temples in exasperation and tiredness.

  The scent of decay from earlier still lingered in my mind, as if clinging to the edges of my thoughts. The strange surge in my powers, the sudden connection with the cat—it wasn’t normal. I had felt something, something beyond the usual ebb and flow of my abilities. And if Dr. Emil Tressard’s paper was even halfway right, then metahuman powers weren’t just internal—they were reacting to something external.

  Resonating.

  I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling. It was a dangerous idea. If metahuman abilities could be influenced by environmental factors—by stress, by location, by unseen forces—then that meant they weren’t as stable as people thought. It meant that what I had experienced tonight could happen again.

  Or worse—it could happen on a much larger scale.

  What if an entire district of Neo Lyon had its metas suddenly surging out of control? What if the right—or wrong—circumstances triggered something in all of us? No one seemed to have a concrete answer, but the implications were unsettling. What exactly were we tapping into to use our abilities?

  I didn’t like the possibilities that were forming in my head.

  A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I turned to the window. The city stretched beyond the glass, neon and steel and darkness. Somewhere out there, some metahuman gangs were robbing, fighting, murdering each others.

  And they didn’t know jackshit about their powers. Same as me.

  I exhaled sharply, straightening in my chair. I need answers.

  And I needed them from people who actually had powers, not just some anonymous internet theorists or stuffy professors writing from behind university walls.

  Which left me with exactly two names.

  Tempus. Libra.

  The only metahumans I knew personally. The only ones I could actually reach out to.

  I hesitated for a moment, fingers poised over the keyboard. Libra was practical, methodical, someone who approached problems with cold logic. If there was an answer to be found, she’d know where to start looking. And Tempus… well, Tempus had been around long enough to see things. He had connections. Experience. Maybe even a few stories of his own.

  They weren’t exactly friends, but they were my best shot.

  I opened a secure channel with Scrap’s device and started typing.

  Got a minute? Got a sudden weird power boost for a few. Not sure what’s causing it. Ever hear of anything like that?

  I read, reread, and read again my message. I wasn’t sure if I should send it. Could I really trust them with this kind of news about me? It feels a bit too personal for some circumstantial allies.

  Should I really send it?

  I hesitated, fingers hovering over the screen. The words sat there, waiting. Simple. Direct. But the act of sending them felt like a risk in itself.

  Tempus and Libra weren’t just allies. They were metahumans with their own agendas, their own secrets. We worked together when it was convenient, when our goals aligned. Trust? That was something else entirely.

  Still, what were my alternatives? Go at this alone, fumbling in the dark, chasing scraps of information that led nowhere?

  I exhaled sharply and hit send.

  Seconds passed. Then minutes.

  Nothing.

  I drummed my fingers against the desk, glancing toward the window. The city hummed beyond the glass, oblivious. I told myself I wasn’t expecting an immediate response, but the quiet stretched on just long enough to make me regret pressing send.

  Then, a soft chime.

  A reply.

  Libra: When. Where. Details.

  I almost chuckled. “Exactly how I thought she’d text. So curt.”

  Replica: Few hours ago. Middle of a random alleyway. Just walking and suddenly can switch with no contact.

  I waited for what felt like years but must have been a few minutes before I got an answer back.

  Libra: Something else before that? Mental State? Hallucinations?

  This is weirdly close to what I experienced.

  Replica: Happened to you?

  Libra: Answer.

  So abrupt. I don’t want to expose my life to her, though. Guess I should just vaguely answer.

  Replica: Different. Smelt death around me.

  Libra: I see. Good luck. Back to work for me.

  Tempus: And off she goes! LOL

  Tempus: And sorry, wound-darling, I never heard of such things myself.

  Tempus: Hopefully Liberty-darling will get back to you with more info.

  Replica: Please. Tempus. Stop with those ridiculous names.

  Tempus: Gotcha, sweetheart.

  This man… So infuriating…