BOOM
I was blasted away from the sudden impact, the force shattering my ribs and possibly every bone in my body with a nice, snappy crunch.
Thud. Thud. THUD. I landed at least fifty metres away from where I was.
I lay on the ground, my cheek touching the road. I couldn't move a thing, not a bone or muscle.
I frantically moved my eyes around. Then, I saw it. The reason. I looked at the fight between Invincible and Omni-Man. They were fighting each other, destroying everything in their path.
This wasn't a superhero fight. This was a war zone. A slaughter.
My head was screaming, but nothing came out. Not even a whimper. I tried to blink away the blood in my eyes, but my face wouldn't respond.
I was supposed to die here.
Another shockwave hit. The street under me cracked again. A light pole came crashing down nearby, throwing sparks everywhere. Fire alarms wailed from half-destroyed buildings. Sirens, screaming—so much screaming. I could barely hear myself think.
But I was still alive.
How?
COUGH
I looked at the ground. I wasn't just coughing, I was coughing blood.
It spilled out in thick globs, dark and wet on the cracked asphalt.
I was dying. I knew it. My body knew it too.
There was something wrong with my chest. It didn't move right. My ribs weren't just broken—they were gone, pulverized. I could feel the bones floating loose inside me like puzzle pieces in the wrong box.
I couldn't move. Not really.
But I could feel everything.
The pain wasn't sharp. It was dull, massive. Like I was being smothered under my own skin. Numbness had crept into my fingers. Cold was crawling up my legs. My vision kept narrowing, tunneling in and out.
Above me, another building collapsed. Something—someone—smashed through it and kept going.
A woman screamed nearby. Then was cut off.
I wanted to close my eyes. I really did.
But something wouldn't let me.
That tension came back—worse now. Coiling up inside my spine, stretching under my skin like cables pulled too tight. Like my muscles weren't breaking down… they were changing.
I felt something pop in my shoulder.
Not a bone.
A shift.
Wet and unnatural.
Then my arm—my right arm—twitched. It didn't hurt. That was the terrifying part. I watched it slide out in front of me, lengthening. Stretching.
Flesh rolled like taffy, bones bending and not snapping. Fingers dragged across the pavement, way farther than they should.
No sound came out of me. Just a rasp.
What the hell was happening to me?
My heart was pounding too hard, way too hard. It felt like it was trying to break out of my chest. Each thud pumped more heat into my limbs. Every second, my body felt less like a body and more like something pressurized, swelling, too tight to hold itself together.
I dug my fingers into the ground. They bent backwards. Then forward again.
I was angry.
Angry I was here. Angry I was just some kid who got caught in the crossfire. Angry that my body was tearing itself apart and putting itself back together into whatever the hell this was.
Few minutes later
Then I heard it. A voice. Close.
"We got a survivor! We got a survivor! Get the stretcher, quick!" Someone shouted. [The pun was not intended.]
Shadows moved over me. Footsteps. The sound of boots hitting concrete—heavy, hurried, organized. Don't know who they were, but they weren't wearing the uniform of any emergency services.
"Eyes open," one of them said, low and clipped. "We don't know what the hell we're walking into."
Another voice responded, closer. "He's alive. Somehow."
Somehow.
A shape crouched beside me. Helmet. Visor. Not military. Not police. Something else.
"He's… changing."
No shit.
I wanted to say something. Anything. But my throat was thick with blood and grit. All I could do was let out a half-breath—more wheeze than sound.
His gloved hand moved toward my face, slowly, like I might bite.
I didn't.
I just watched. Helpless.
His fingers reached my cheek, pressed lightly. I felt it stretch under the pressure. Skin dragged slightly under his touch, like pulling latex.
He pulled back. "His tissue's unstable. We need containment now."
"Should we sedate?"
"No. Not until we know what triggers it. Just lock him down."
A second figure approached—bulkier, armored differently. His voice came through louder. More authority. "Stretcher's on its way. Bag him and tell the director of his condition."
I coughed up more blood.
It spilled down my chin, warm and thick. I felt it hit my collarbone, roll into the shredded fabric of my hoodie. My body convulsed weakly, like it was trying to eject something it couldn't name.
The guy next to me flinched.
"Vitals dropping," someone said.
"He's hemorrhaging internally," another answered. "But his tissue's still reconfiguring."
Reconfiguring.
Like I was a machine.
One of them knelt beside me again, pulling out some kind of injector—long, silver, humming faintly.
"Don't move," he muttered. "This won't hurt."
He stabbed it into my neck.
He was right. It didn't hurt.
The agent held up a scanner. The light passed over my body, beeped twice, then glitched. It flickered red.
He stared at it. 'Readout's unstable. His energy levels are spiking again."
Then my arm twitched.
Just once.
But it was enough to make the guy flinch backward.
My forearm lengthened half a foot without warning, flopping off the side of the stretcher. It hit the ground with a slap and kept stretching, dragging behind the gurney as they wheeled me toward the evac van.
"He's going active!"
"Keep him restrained!"
"DO NOT engage unless he breaks containment!"
I wanted to scream—tell them I wasn't doing it on purpose. But my mouth barely worked. My jaw hung open slightly, twitching, like it didn't belong to me anymore.
Like none of me did.
They loaded me into the vehicle. Slammed the doors. I felt the rumble of the engine underneath me. A man sat across from me, helmet off, bald, middle-aged. Tired eyes.
He didn't say anything at first.
Just looked at me.
Studying.
He tapped his earpiece. "Director… yeah. We've got a live one. No idea how he survived. No visible implants. No GDA registry. No known lineage. Just some civilian… and now he's—this."
They think I'm a monster...
The way they looked at me, like I was going to snap. Like I already had.
But maybe I was wrong.
The man across from me looked tired in a way that went beyond sleep—he didn't flinch when my fingers stretched again. He just watched.
"Do you have a name?" he asked, voice low. Calm, not cold.
I tried to answer.
"Ja…son." My throat barely worked. It came out like a broken zipper, but it was there.
He gave a slight nod. "Jason. Alright."
He tapped his earpiece. "We've got a name. Civilian ID likely. He's still coherent, responding. Might be earlier onset than we thought."
Earlier onset? What did that mean?
I closed my eyes, but all I could see was the blood. Mine. Everyone else's. The city is folding in on itself. Omni-Man ripping people apart like paper. That building, I almost died in. That scream, I never saw the face behind.
And now here I was. Arm flopped over the edge of a metal stretcher, still too long, still not right.
I stared at my fingers, dragging faintly across the floor of the van. They curled up on their own. Like they were testing the surface.
"Jason," the man across from me said, "you're going to be okay. Alright? We've seen stranger things, alright. You're not the first, and you won't be the last." [Again, pun unintended.]
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out.
"We're going to the Pentagon," he said. "We'll run tests, check your vitals, it's all for your safety, Jason," he assured me.
Fuck, am I about to become a lab rat?
I looked straight, and I was starting to feel dizzy. I think I'm gonna lose consciousness over here.
I didn't want to pass out. I really didn't.
Then, blackout.
___________________
I was lying on something padded, but stiff. The ceiling above me had recessed panels, vents, and small mounted cameras—one pointed straight at my face. I was hooked to machines. Wires running from my arms, one needle still buried in my forearm.
I looked at my body, everywhere. It was all back to normal.
The door hissed open.
Footsteps. Two people.
One of them spoke. Female. Measured voice. Professional, but not unkind.
"Patient is awake. Stabilized overnight. Vitals are still erratic, but he's lucid."
The other voice was male.
"Jason."
I blinked slowly, turning.
I didn't know this guy.
He wore a nice suit, and he had some kind of disfigurement on his right jaw. He had white hair, hair that reached up to his shoulders.
"You're in a secure medical facility," he said. "Not a prison. Not a lab. Just a place to help you heal. You've been unconscious for about three weeks."
My mouth was dry, lips cracked.
He stepped closer, keeping his hands in full view.
"You probably have a thousand questions. And I promise, we'll get to them. But for now, just tell me how you feel. Right now."
"Fine, I feel great," I told him.
He nodded, like that was expected.
"What else?" he asked me.
"I feel very flexible." I adjusted my arm.
The woman beside him scribbled something on a tablet.
"Tension in the connective tissue matrix has increased again," she said. "Still storing energy even at rest."
"Yep, his body is storing the kinetic energy of every tiny movement."
I looked at my hand, studying it. I grabbed my index finger and pulled it. It extended as far as I pulled.
"Yes, you also have elasticity. You have an abnormal amount of elasticity. I assume it's the result of a mutation, or you were born with it. The traumatic event, the Chicago incident, must've pushed your body to a limit, which caused your powers to appear."
I kept tugging my finger. It stretched like melted rubber, almost weightless. Then I let go, and it recoiled with a soft snap, landing perfectly back into place like it had never moved at all.
No pain. No resistance. Just... elasticity. Like my body forgot it was made of bones.
The woman watched carefully. Her stylus hovered, then tapped the screen.
"A biological mutation wouldn't explain the kinetic output. Something else is amplifying it. A catalyst. We just haven't identified what yet."
The man looked at me. Calm, steady. The kind of calm that made you want to punch something just to see if it would crack.
"Do you remember anything," he said, "right before the transformation started?"
I nodded slowly. "Yeah. I remember dying."
Silence.
The woman didn't look up from her tablet, but she paused. Just for a second.
"Go on," he said.
"I mean—" I exhaled. "I felt everything go. My ribs were dust. I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. But I could feel. Every bit of it. And then... something pulled tight. Like a wire snapping inside me. And I started—changing."
"Spontaneous restructuring under extreme trauma," the woman muttered. "Full systemic adaptation... cellular and neurological."
"Sounds like bullshit to me," I said. "You're saying I melted and came back together as a stretchy nuke?"
The man smirked faintly. "I'm saying you survived something no one else did. And your body rewrote the rules to make that happen."
"Cool," I muttered. "Real comforting."
I sat up more in the bed, wires pulling slightly from my arms. I was tired of lying down. Tired of being observed.
"So what now?" I asked. "Do I get a name? A number? You guys gonna run more tests or just wait till I explode?"
The woman responded first. "We'd like to move you to a controlled testing environment soon. Let you move freely, under supervision. See how far the elasticity and kinetic buildup go."
"And if it goes too far?"
"You won't be alone," the man said. "We'll be there. Monitoring, guiding."
Right. Monitoring.
I ran a hand through my hair. It stretched weird, too. My scalp tingled where my fingers lingered — like my nerves were... looser.
I looked up at them. "You haven't told me who you are."
The man tilted his head slightly. "Cecil Stedman. Director of the GDA."
"And her?"
"Dr. Emilia Rojas. Lead biophysicist, power physiology division."
Cecil folded his hands behind his back, watching me carefully. "We didn't bring you here to lock you down, Jason. But what you've become... we've never seen anything like it."
"Yeah," I muttered. "Me neither."
He walked to the door and paused. "Get some rest. We'll start with controlled motion exercises tomorrow. Nothing aggressive."
"When can I get out?" I asked.
He stayed silent for a moment, as if he didn't know how to answer. "As soon as we think you're safe to get out."
Well, that's not too nice.
"Did you inform my mother?" I asked, "Of this."
Cecil didn't flinch. He didn't look away. But the pause told me everything.
I didn't like pauses.
"We tried," he said. "But there's a complication."
My chest clenched — not from the energy, not from the mutation. Something deeper. Older.
"What do you mean, 'complication'?"
Dr. Rojas tapped her tablet. Cecil gave her a slight nod before he stepped in closer, voice measured.
"Your mother's last known residence was in Sector Three. That area was hit early in the conflict. When Omni-Man and Invincible tore through the loop, the building took a direct impact."
I stared at him. Felt my breath catch.
"You're saying she's dead?"
"We don't know that," he replied quickly. "The building collapsed before we could get any confirmation. We've been scanning hospital logs, rescue manifests, even satellite tags. So far, no match. But that doesn't mean—"
"She's gone," I said. Quiet. Cold.
Silence.
I could hear the machines clicking behind me. One of them gave a soft beep.
I didn't blink. I couldn't. The inside of my skull was ringing. My hands were trembling — subtly, but enough. That hum was back under my skin. That tension.
"No body. No photo. No proof," I said. "You're the most powerful surveillance agency on the planet, and she's just... missing?"
"She's not forgotten," Cecil said. "We're not giving up."
I laughed once. No humor in it.
My arm flexed. The tension built again, coiling from shoulder to wrist. I could feel the bed creak under me. Fabric shifting as kinetic energy rolled off me in waves. Controlled, but barely.
"Jason," Dr. Rojas warned. "You're spiking. We need you to breathe. Count it out."
I forced a breath through my teeth. My fingers uncurled. The sheet beneath them was singed — just a little. A faint scorch mark.
"I'm fine," I lied.
Cecil gave me a long look.
"We'll keep looking," he said. "She's out there. Until we know otherwise, we treat it like she survived."
I didn't answer.
He turned to leave. Dr. Rojas hesitated, watching the monitors stabilize again.
"Tomorrow, we start physical control trials," she said. "Nothing aggressive. Just range of motion and safe compression. Baby steps."
I didn't look at her. Just stared at my hand, still half-curled, still not quite mine.
She tapped something into the panel on the wall. The door hissed open.
"Rest, Jason."
They left me alone.
If she was gone — if my mom didn't make it — then there was no one left who really knew who I was before.
____________________
[A/N: How's the chapter? This is a new concept that I thought of because I was dying of the hype that Fantastic Four: First Steps was giving me. Hope you like it! Gunaaaaaaai (Good Night)!]