Cael had learned how silence could stretch.
At the orphanage, silence meant being overlooked — the kind that settled between the squeak of shoes and the hum of old ceiling lights. Now, in the single-room apartment he rented on the far side of the city, silence meant he could breathe. It meant freedom.
He'd left the home on a wet Thursday morning, not out of anger but simple resolve. At sixteen, he'd already outgrown the schedule, the pity, and the noise. The matron had signed a few papers and barely looked up when he walked out with a duffel bag over his shoulder. No one said goodbye.
The world beyond the gates had smelled of rain and bus exhaust. He remembered the sound of tires on puddles, and how for the first time, nobody was telling him where to go.
He found the apartment through a man who didn't ask questions.
It sat above a pawn shop that smelled faintly of metal polish and dust. His room was small — cracked plaster, crooked blinds, a mattress pushed against the wall, and a single desk rescued from a curb. It was enough.
The first few weeks, he survived on canned soup and day-old bread from a bakery down the street. When the money he'd saved from odd jobs began to run low, he turned to what he knew best — slipping through spaces others couldn't reach.
His first "jump job" had been an accident. He'd teleported to the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse just to practice, and while looking around, found a crate of old brass tokens. They'd been left behind from an arcade that shut down years ago. He cleaned them, melted them, sold the metal to a scrap dealer. It was enough for rent.
From there, he developed a rhythm. He jumped into forgotten places — junkyards, storage rooms, condemned buildings — and collected small things that no one would miss: discarded tools, bits of copper, broken electronics. He sold them quietly, in cash. Never greedy, never flashy. Enough to live.
Every night, he recorded the results of his jumps in a notebook.
His handwriting was small, deliberate — almost mathematical.
One page, near the start, read:
Experiment: Quahog test – Time variance
Departure: 07:18 a.m.
Duration inside: 7 hours, 42 minutes.
Return: 07:26 a.m.
Difference: 8 minutes.
Eight minutes.
He stared at that number for a long time. It didn't feel like the world had paused while he was gone. Time had simply bent around him. The Jumpforce existed outside its current — he was stepping out of the stream, then back in wherever he wished.
It wasn't control over time.
It was freedom from it.
Morning light spilled through the blinds, cutting long slats across the floorboards. Cael stood barefoot, coin in hand.
He flipped it upward.
The instant the coin reached its peak, he pictured a dry plain — cracked earth, endless horizon, the faint smell of heat. The world blinked. The air shifted.
A ripple of blue flared around him — thin, silent, precise. No thunderclap like his early jumps. No spiderweb cracks on the floor. Just a quiet folding of space.
He landed on sand that stretched for miles. The coin fell beside his foot, flashing in the sunlight. Cael crouched, picked it up, then jumped again — this time to a shadowed ridge nearby. Each movement was clean, seamless, smoother than the last.
He felt the control tighten inside him, not as strain, but as calm discipline. The blue tunnel — that swirl of luminous energy — responded like a muscle obeying his breath.
When he returned home, the apartment clock said 07:19 a.m.
He exhaled softly. One minute.
Days became measured in notes and routines. Jump. Record. Eat. Rest.
He'd wake around seven, practice until ten, then walk to the diner three blocks away.
The diner was small, the kind of place that smelled like burnt coffee and buttered toast. The waitress — Ruth, with streaks of silver in her hair — always called him "kiddo." She never pried, which he appreciated.
"Working nights again?" she'd ask when his eyes looked tired.
"Something like that," he'd say, stirring sugar into his coffee.
"You don't talk much, huh?"
"I talk when I have something worth saying."
She'd laugh. "Then you must be saving up for something big."
He smiled, though he never explained. Sometimes he lingered there just to listen to the chatter of strangers, to remind himself that people like Ruth existed — content with simple things. It grounded him.
Back in the apartment, the world felt smaller but steadier. He washed his clothes by hand in the sink, cooked rice in a dented pot, and once a week swept the floor until it stopped creaking under dust. He liked keeping things clean, ordered — every item in its place. Maybe that was his hoarding instinct, manifesting not in piles of wealth but in neat control over his little world.
The experiments grew more complex.
He started with small items — a pencil, then a folded shirt.
Then a chair, which appeared across the room with a soft click. The first time he managed that without a sound, he wrote:
"Energy stable. Room temperature unchanged. Smooth transition."
Each success felt like adding one more jewel to his invisible collection — proof that precision could be an art form.
Once, during a storm, he stood on the roof and jumped to a city park ten miles away. Raindrops seemed to hang in the air for a heartbeat as he passed through the blue tunnel, light bending like glass. When he landed, the rain continued seamlessly, not a single drop out of place.
He couldn't help but grin. This was what mastery felt like — subtle, contained, perfect.
By midsummer, he began testing the difference in return points.
He left in the morning, spent what felt like a full day exploring cliffs in another country, and returned to find only ten minutes had passed.
He left again that afternoon, stayed an hour, and came back to a moment nearly identical to when he left.
He discovered the key was clarity of intent — the sharper his focus before a jump, the more precisely he could control the re-entry time.
It wasn't about power; it was about discipline.
In one test, he departed at 9:00 p.m., traveled to a coastal ruin, and watched the moon rise over shattered walls. When he returned, the apartment clock read 9:03 p.m. He'd lived six hours elsewhere.
He jotted the note: "Three minutes difference. Control consistent."
That night, lying in bed, he stared at the ceiling and whispered to himself:
"I can live whole lives between seconds."
Physical tests came next.
He started with a cardboard box full of books.
Then two boxes stacked together.
Then a bundle of metal rods tied with rope.
The blue tunnel thickened around heavier items, rippling like dense water, but always obeyed his will. The old fractures and noise from his early days were gone. His control made every movement smooth — as though he was no longer forcing reality to bend, but gently inviting it.
Finally, he tried moving a refrigerator door he'd found behind a junkyard. It was heavy, rusted, nearly as tall as he was. He gripped it with both hands, visualized the alley behind the diner, and stepped.
The world folded.
A flare of blue, a faint hum — then he stood in the alley, the refrigerator door beside him, leaning upright against a wall.
He actually laughed, quietly but real, the sound echoing off wet brick. The tunnel didn't resist him anymore. It trusted him.
By late autumn, the notebook was filled. The last page held a diagram: two circles, a twisting blue line between them.
Below it, he'd written:
Distance — no limit.
Time — responsive.
Mass — stable.
Next variable: world.
He sat by the window as evening turned the city amber. Down below, people hurried home with groceries, kids played in the fading light, and a dog barked from a nearby yard. The simplicity of it all made him strangely content.
He'd lived alone long enough to understand the rhythm of small things — cooking rice, paying rent in cash, hearing Ruth call him "kiddo" each morning. But deep inside, a quiet urge pressed at him. A collector's hunger. There were other worlds, other treasures. He wanted to see them, touch them, understand them.
He stood and cleaned the room methodically. Folded clothes, stacked notes, unplugged everything. When he was done, he locked the window and sat in the center of the floor.
The air began to hum.
The faint blue glow formed a ring around him, swirling like slow water. It wasn't violent, not like the early days. It was calm, almost ceremonial — as if the energy itself recognized him now.
Through the growing light, the surface of reality rippled — transparent and fluid. He could see nothing clearly beyond it, only the shimmer of potential.
He reached out. The air felt cool, pliant, alive — a soft resistance, like the skin of a bubble.
He thought of the river he'd always imagined, flowing endlessly between worlds.
And then he thought of stepping across.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
He leaned forward — and the world folded.
The apartment faded behind him as the blue tunnel wrapped around his body like liquid glass. He felt weightless, calm, suspended between seconds. Somewhere ahead, a new reality waited — another world, another beginning.
He didn't rush. He didn't even smile. He simply moved forward, disappearing into the light.