Jayden opened his eyes to pre-dawn grey filtering through cracked windows. His body ached in ways that had nothing to do with the crash and everything to do with twelve hours of teaching himself not to explode.
He sat up slowly—actually slowly, not lightning-burst slowly. Small victory.
The half-burnt hospital shirt finally gave up, disintegrating as he moved. Designer jeans worth three grand he'd changed into now looked like they'd gone through a war. Which, technically, they had.
A war between him and his own nervous system.
He stood, placing each foot with deliberate care. No crater. No electrical discharge. Just... standing. Like a normal fucking human being.
"Progress," he muttered, and only a few sparks escaped with the word.
The office around him looked like ground zero of an electrical apocalypse. Everything electronic was slag. The wall where he'd practiced walking bore scorch marks in a perfect line, each impact a little lighter than the last. Evidence of hours spent learning to pull his punches against reality itself.
His stomach cramped—when had he last eaten? The hospital felt like days ago, not hours. But first things first. He needed clothes, food, a new phone, and a way to stay hidden while he figured out what the fuck to do next.
Credit cards? Might as well send up a flare. His family would have every account monitored by now. Bank cards, trading accounts, even his fucking Starbucks app—all of it compromised.
But Jayden Luther Cross hadn't survived seventeen years as the family disappointment without learning paranoia.
He walked—actually walked—to what used to be his desk. The drawers had melted, but the floor safe beneath remained intact. Biometric locks were fried, but the manual backup still worked. Inside: two hundred and fifty thousand in cash, split between dollars, euros, and yen.
Three fake IDs. A gun he'd never used but kept because it felt like something a criminal should have.
And the crown jewel—a phone that had cost him ten grand through underground channels.
Not some burner flip phone bullshit. A real smartphone, bleeding-edge tech modified by some Level 40 technomancer in Koreatown. Military-grade encryption, spoofed IMEI that changed every twelve hours, bounced signals through seventeen different proxies.
The kind of phone that crime lords and paranoid billionaires used. Untraceable unless you were God himself.
In a world where a Level 30 psychic could read your texts through your skull, where technopaths could hack your shit by looking at it, where the government had awakened individuals whose whole power set was digital surveillance—regular security didn't cut it. You needed underworld tech. The kind that cost more than most people's cars.
Paranoid trader habits. Finally paying off.
He pocketed the cash—all quarter million of it distributed across his burnt designer jeans. Left the gun. What was he going to do, shoot lightning?
The ten-grand phone powered on with a soft hum, its techno-enhanced shielding protecting it from his ambient electrical field. Another underground innovation—electronics that could survive proximity to electrical awakened. The technomancer who'd built it had bragged it could work next to a Level 100 electrokinetic. Time to test that claim.
Meanwhile, the regular burner phone he'd hidden—wrapped in a Faraday cage because he'd watched too many conspiracy videos—had also survived. One message waiting on that one, sent to the number only Rico knew:
*Shadow daddy's coming. Stay low.*
"Fuck."
This time the profanity came with a massive surge, frying the burner phone and adding new scorch marks to the wall. So much for perfect control.
Shadow daddy. Their code for his father from back when they used to laugh about family dysfunction. If Rico was using it, he was under pressure. Real pressure. The kind that came with Marcus Luther Cross's particular brand of parental attention.
Which meant this location was blown. Rico knew about it, which meant his father would know about it soon. If not already.
Jayden looked around the destroyed office, the ruined kingdom he'd built for himself. He couldn't go home—that was obvious. Couldn't contact Rico or any of his racing crew; they'd all have shadows on them by now.
Couldn't even walk into a store without someone recognizing the newest viral sensation.
The power that should have made him free had turned him into a prisoner.
"Well," he said to the empty room, "what did I expect?"
Seventeen years of wanting power, and now he had so much he couldn't even buy a fucking burger without potentially leveling a city block.
The irony tasted like copper and regret.
He needed to move. But where? How? He couldn't take a car—too trackable. Couldn't take public transport—too visible. Couldn't even call an Uber without leaving a digital footprint his father's people would trace in minutes.
For all his power, he was trapped in a burning building of his own making.
The morning sun crept higher, painting the destroyed office in shades of gold and shadow. Somewhere out there, Los Angeles was waking up. The news would be running his story on repeat. His family would be crafting their narrative. Heroes and villains alike would be making plans.
And Jayden Luther Cross, a potential Level 150+ and climbing, sat in the wreckage of his old life with thirty grand in cash and no idea what to do next.
The blessing of power had become a burden overnight.
He stood, decision made. He'd figure it out. He always did. But first, he needed to get the fuck out of here before shadow daddy arrived.
Jayden walked to the window—controlled steps, no explosions—and looked out at the city. Somewhere in that sprawl was a way forward. He just had to find it without destroying everything he touched.
No pressure.
Blue lightning flickered across his fingers, responding to his anxiety. He clenched his fist, forcing it down.
Time to disappear.
The question was: how does someone who glows with electric fire vanish in broad daylight?
He was about to find out.
****
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