Mr. Harrison's reaction spoke volumes, a silent scream etched onto his face. Color abandoned his skin, leaving it the stark, unsettling white of bone, a ghostly pallor that deepened the shadows under his widened eyes. They weren't wide with mere surprise now.
This was something colder, something that burrowed beneath the surface of shock, a dawning horror that mirrored the escalating storm outside. His mouth formed a silent 'O,' a vacuum of unspoken words, no denial, no explanation rushing to fill the space.
He simply stared, frozen, his expression a terrifying tableau of disbelief, raw fear, and something else simmering beneath, darker, indefinable, sending icy tendrils snaking through Perca's small frame. The truth, monstrous, impossible, hung between them, a tangible weight in the air, unspoken yet screamingly real.
The silence stretched, a taut rubber band threatening to snap. Rain hammered against the windowpanes, a relentless drumbeat, each drop a hammer blow against the fragile quiet. Distant thunder rumbled, low and guttural, each sound amplifying the oppressive tension that had solidified in the science room.
Mr. Harrison's gaze remained locked on Perca, unblinking, an unnerving stillness that held him captive. It felt as though Perca had uttered a forbidden word, shattered an invisible boundary, and the consequences were just beginning to ripple outwards.
Then, Mr. Harrison blinked. A slow, deliberate drag of his eyelids that felt like an attempt to break free from a trance. He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing sharply against his pale throat, and a smile stretched across his face, strange and jerky, utterly devoid of warmth. It was a performance, a poorly constructed mask.
"Metahuman?" he repeated the word Perca had used, the sound strained, too loud in the hushed classroom.
"Perca, really, where did you… you must have misheard something. There are no… such things." He attempted a chuckle, a brittle, forced sound that cracked and died in the suffocating air. "Metahumans. Sounds like something from a… a comic book."
But his eyes betrayed the performance. They flickered away from Perca's unwavering gaze, darting nervously around the room, seeking purchase anywhere but on the boy's face. They landed on textbooks, posters of the periodic table, even the flickering fluorescent lights overhead, any escape from Perca's steady scrutiny.
His hands, clenched tight moments before, now fisted again, knuckles stark white against his draining skin. He shifted his weight, a restless fidgeting, a dance of unease completely at odds with his usual composed demeanor.
Perca watched, his unease solidifying, hardening into a cold, unwavering certainty in his gut. Mr. Harrison was lying. It wasn't a misunderstanding, not ignorance. This was a deliberate, conscious fabrication. And the fear clinging to him, the genuine shock that had cracked his professional facade – it wasn't the reaction of someone amused by a child's fanciful question. It was the raw, naked fear of exposure, fear of the very word itself.
"But I heard you," Perca insisted, his voice small yet firm, pushing past the sudden sandpaper dryness in his throat. "In the hallway. You were talking to… Mrs. Gable." His chest tightened, the air feeling thin and difficult to pull in.
"You said 'metahuman policy.'" The words tasted strange, foreign on his tongue, but he repeated them, grounding himself in the memory of that overheard conversation. "And then… the other teacher, outside… he said it too. About Kael."
He paused, his gaze unwavering, searching Mr. Harrison's face for a hairline fracture in the carefully constructed wall of denial, a flicker of truth in the shifting eyes.
"And… the lightning. It was Kael, wasn't it? That was his… his power." The word felt heavy, charged, a live wire in the silent room.
Mr. Harrison flinched, a physical recoil as if Perca's words were sharp stones thrown at him. He took a step back, distancing himself, his hands rising slightly, palms outward in a placating gesture that felt weak, insincere. His eyes remained wide, trapped, hunted, scanning the room with desperation. They snagged on the closed classroom door, a silent consideration of escape flashing across his face before he forced it back down.
"Perca, look," he began again, his voice dropping to a strained whisper, leaning closer as if sharing a perilous secret, yet keeping his volume low, instinctively, against nonexistent eavesdroppers.
"This… this isn't something children need to worry about." His breath hitched, and he swallowed again, audibly this time. "It's… adult things. Complicated things."
His gaze darted around again, landing briefly on Perca before skittering away. "You must have… misunderstood. Metahuman… it's just… a word. People use words sometimes… they don't always mean anything real."
His explanation was weak, flimsy strands of thread attempting to hold back a flood. An insult to Perca's dawning awareness, even for a child of his age. It was the practiced dismissal adults deployed when cornered, wanting to shut down uncomfortable questions, to make a child recede without offering genuine answers.
And with each carefully chosen, hollow word, Mr. Harrison solidified Perca's certainty. The truth was real, undeniably terrifying, and Mr. Harrison was desperately, pathetically, trying to bury it.
A flicker of light, far brighter, far more violent than the sluggish hum of the fluorescent tubes above, ripped through the gloom outside the window. It painted the classroom in stark white for a heartbeat, followed almost instantaneously by a sharp, cracking explosion of thunder, closer now, resonating in their chests, making several children jump in their seats despite the suffocating tension.
Mr. Harrison started, his body snapping rigid, every muscle tensing. His eyes, already wide with fear, darted to the window, then back to Perca, a new layer of raw panic glazing his already pale face.
"Look, Perca," he said again, his voice tight, brittle, a barely contained urgency bubbling beneath the surface. "Let's… let's just forget about this, alright?" He pleaded, his eyes darting around again, finding no escape.
"There are no… metahumans. It's just… just a story. A silly made-up word." He attempted the strained smile again, even weaker this time, failing to reach his eyes.
"We can talk about… about something else. Anything else. How about… how about we start our lesson for today?" He gestured vaguely towards the science textbooks stacked haphazardly on the desks, a desperate, flailing attempt at normalcy.
"We were supposed to be learning about… chemical reactions, remember?"
Chemical reactions. The words hung in the air, hollow, devoid of meaning, utterly divorced from the charged atmosphere crackling in the room, the suffocating weight of unspoken fear. Perca stared at Mr. Harrison, his green eyes unwavering, clear and steady against the teacher's frantic performance. He wouldn't be dismissed. He wouldn't be pacified. He wouldn't be lied to. Not anymore.
"But Mr. Harrison," Perca began, his voice cutting through the forced cheerfulness, clear and surprisingly steady.
"If there are no metahumans… then what was Kael?" He paused, letting the question hang, heavy, loaded with implications that even he was only beginning to grasp.
"What made the lightning happen? What made him… glow?" The word felt inadequate, childish, but it was the closest he could come to describing the impossible sight.
Mr. Harrison's carefully constructed composure finally shattered. It fractured, crumbled, leaving behind raw, unadulterated terror. His eyes widened again, not with fear this time, but with a stark, raw horror that seemed to hollow him out from the inside. It was a look far more frightening, more visceral than any monster Perca's childish imagination could conjure.
His breath hitched, a ragged, gasping sound, his chest rising and falling in frantic, shallow bursts. His hands began to tremble visibly now, small tremors that rippled up his arms. He stared at Perca, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, like a fish out of water, struggling for breath, for words, any words to deflect the inescapable truth closing in on him.
And then, before Mr. Harrison could utter another denial, before he could stammer out another flimsy lie, it happened.
A blinding flash of light, impossibly bright, erupted from the back of the classroom, near the window behind Perca's desk. The shattering shriek of glass exploded through the room, an earsplitting crack that seemed to tear the very fabric of the air apart.
The classroom plunged into momentary, shocking brilliance, a white-hot glare that seared itself onto Perca's retinas, followed instantly by a deafening roar of thunder, directly overhead, shaking the very foundations of the school building. The sound vibrated through the floor, through their bones.
Mr. Harrison screamed, a high-pitched, strangled cry ripped from his throat, pure, unadulterated terror given voice. Children shrieked, a chorus of panic erupting through the room. Chairs scraped against the linoleum, a screeching cacophony.
Papers erupted into the air in a chaotic whirlwind, swirling around the room like startled birds. But through the chaos, through the blinding light and deafening noise, a strange stillness settled over Perca. A detached calm, unexpected, surreal, even as his muscles clenched tight with shock.
Lightning. From Kael. The thought wasn't just a conclusion, it was a sudden, undeniable knowing that flashed through his mind with crystalline clarity. He knew, instinctively, inexplicably, that this was Kael's lightning, Kael's raw, untamed power, unleashed again, and directed, impossibly, at him.
Then, the force hit him. Not just the searing light, not just the concussive wave of sound, but a physical, brutal force, slamming into him with the unyielding weight of a runaway truck. He gasped, the air violently expelled from his lungs, his small body convulsing as raw, searing energy ripped through him.
Lines of fire, or what felt like fire, erupted across his skin, invisible but agonizing, every nerve ending screaming in protest, a symphony of pure agony. He was thrown backwards with impossible force, his body weightless, flying through the air like a discarded rag doll. The classroom spun around him in a dizzying kaleidoscope of color and chaos, a sickening vortex.
He glimpsed, for a fleeting, horrifying moment, the shattered window, a jagged maw ripped in the glass, shards raining down like glittering, lethal knives. He saw the liquid from overturned beakers spraying in slow motion from the lab table, iridescent in the unnatural light.
He saw the horrified faces of his classmates, mouths open in silent screams, frozen in time. He saw Mr. Harrison's face, contorted, a grotesque mask of pure, unmitigated terror. Then, everything dissolved, fractured, blurred, and he was swallowed by a maelstrom of pain and sensation.
He crashed into something solid, unyielding, the sharp crack of wood against his spine echoing through his skull, louder than the receding thunder, louder than the fading screams. Chemicals splattered around him, acrid fumes stinging his nostrils. Glass crunched under him, sharp shards pressing into his skin.
The air filled with the metallic tang of ozone, thick and suffocating, and something else, beneath it, underlying it, a faint, acrid scent of burning, something organic, something… him. Muscles spasmed uncontrollably, his vision tunneling, blurring at the edges, white light flashing behind his eyelids, even when they squeezed shut.
Pain exploded, blossomed, consumed, overwhelming, all-encompassing. His eyes fluttered, heavy as stones, and then, darkness rushed in, a welcome oblivion, a merciful escape from the agonizing assault.
But even as consciousness began to slip away, as the pain threatened to drown him completely, a strange, unexpected sensation surfaced, pushing through the agony. Beneath the fear, beneath the raw terror, beneath the all-consuming chaos, a different feeling began to bloom, unfurling slowly, like a flower pushing through cracked earth.
A warmth, not the searing heat of the lightning, but a gentle, internal warmth, spreading outwards from his core, a sense of… recognition.
Time warped, stretched, compressed, losing all meaning.
Opening his eyes felt like an impossible exertion, each eyelid weighted down with lead. When they finally flickered open, the world was… different. Not just the classroom, now a scene of utter devastation, a landscape of shattered glass and overturned furniture, but something deeper, something fundamental had shifted.
It was as if reality itself had subtly, almost imperceptibly, yet irrevocably, realigned during the moments his eyes were closed.
A swirling vortex of light and feeling enveloped him, not the harsh, violent light of the lightning strike, but a softer, more diffused luminescence, an internal glow, a warm, vibrant energy that seemed to hum just beneath the surface of his skin, resonating with his very being.
It was a sensation beyond words, beyond comprehension, a symphony of light and feeling and emotion, overwhelming in its intensity, indescribable in its complexity, and yet… strangely, impossibly familiar.
And beneath the throbbing pain, still insistent, still a dull roar in the background, a new sensation arose, pushing upwards, a feeling that resonated deep within him, a primal chord struck in his soul, a sense of… coming home. It was illogical, impossible, a cruel joke of his pain-addled mind to feel 'home' while crushed beneath the wreckage of a chemical cabinet, his body screaming silent protests.
But the feeling persisted, undeniable, insistent, a magnetic pull, a deep resonance, a profound sense of… belonging.
He didn't want to open his eyes fully. He didn't want to shatter the fragile spell, to lose this strange, beautiful, terrifying sensation that was unfolding within him. Fear, a primal instinct, warred with an unexpected, burgeoning reluctance to return to the mundane, to the ordinary, to the predictable world that had existed just moments before the shattering light.
But the pull was too strong, the shift too profound, too irreversible. Something had changed, irrevocably, at a level he couldn't yet comprehend. And Perca knew, with a chilling, exhilarating certainty, that nothing in his life, in his world, would ever be the same again.