Today was his birthday, but his father was absent, as usual.
The chocolate cake sat untouched on the kitchen table, seventeen candles slowly drowning in their own wax. Rell stared at the empty chair across from him—the one that had been empty for most birthdays he could remember.
Dr. Bet, his father, was a scientist obsessed with alien technology ever since he stumbled upon it thirty years ago.
Ever since that day, he had poured himself into a project, collecting any piece of alien tech he could get his hands on, legally or otherwise. The basement had become his world, and his family had become ghosts that occasionally drifted through his peripheral vision.
At first, his father's distance had carved a hollow ache in Rell's chest. He used to wait by the basement door, hoping today would be different, that today his father would emerge with something more than a distracted nod. But hope was exhausting.
Over the years, that ache had scarred over into something harder, something that barely hurt anymore.
At least his mother cared. She treated him like he was the most important person in her world, maybe trying to love him enough for two parents.
"Rell, honey, aren't you going to eat your cake?"
She walked over to him, her hand gentle on his shoulder. Her eyes held that familiar worry—a look that appeared whenever she noticed him staring at that empty chair.
"It's your favorite. Double chocolate with strawberry filling."
He could smell it, rich and sweet, but his stomach felt like lead.
"...Mom, I'm going to go get Dad from his lab."
Her hand stiffened on his shoulder. "You know he hates being disturbed. I thought you'd moved on from all this."
"I have, but this is getting ridiculous." His voice cracked slightly, betraying the emotion he tried to keep buried. "What kind of dad ignores his family like this? It's my seventeenth birthday, Mom. Seventeen years of this."
She couldn't answer that. Her lips parted, then closed. She knew his father's behavior wasn't right, but what could she say? That she'd given up trying years ago? That she'd learned to live with the loneliness?
"If he won't come out, I'm giving him a piece of my mind. I've been quiet long enough."
He got up, the chair scraping against the floor with a sound that made them both wince.
"Rell, please—"
"It won't take long."
But he was already walking away, leaving her standing there with her hand still extended, reaching for a son who was tired of being the only one trying.
Each step down to the basement creaked beneath him, a countdown to a confrontation seventeen years in the making. The familiar musty smell hit him—machine oil, ozone, and something alien that had seeped into the very walls.
At the bottom, he approached the heavy silver door at the far end. His hand hovered over the doorknob.
He paused, exhaling deeply, his breath visible in the cool basement air.
"Haha, look at me—acting all tough, and now I'm second-guessing myself."
But no.
Not this time. He'd rehearsed this moment too many times in his head to back down now.
Slowly, he reached for the doorknob and turned it. The metal was surprisingly warm.
Then the world exploded.
The blast hit him like a wall, lifting him off his feet. Time seemed to stretch—he saw the door flying off its hinges, saw the brilliant white-blue flash that seared his retinas, felt the heat wash over him like dragon's breath. Then he crashed hard into the wooden stairs, pain exploding across his back.
For a moment, everything was ringing silence and spots of color dancing in his vision.
Stunned, ears ringing, he struggled to his feet. The burning room gaped before him like the mouth of hell. Orange flames licked at the ceiling, consuming years of research, years of obsession, and somewhere in there—
"Dad!"
The word tore from his throat before he could stop it. His dad might have been distant, might have been a stranger living in their house, but he was still his father. He was still—
He rushed to the emergency extinguisher mounted on the wall, his hands shaking as he yanked it free. He made his way inside, step by step, the extinguisher hissing as he fought back the flames eating their path toward him. The heat was overwhelming, making his eyes water, his lungs burn with each breath.
"Dad! Where are you?"
Suddenly, an alarm shrieked to life—not a fire alarm, but something else, something that had been built into the lab itself. The room turned freezing cold in an instant, so fast that Rell's next breath came out in a cloud of vapor. The flames died instantly, replaced by a thin coating of frost on everything.
After a few moments, the temperature slowly returned to normal, leaving only the acrid smell of smoke and something worse.
That's when he saw him.
The charred figure on the floor barely looked human anymore, but Rell knew. The wedding ring on the blackened hand—titanium, because his father said gold was too soft for lab work. The melted remains of glasses fused to what had been a face.
"No... no, no, no..."
He dropped to his knees beside the body, his hands hovering uselessly. He wanted to check for a pulse, but where? He wanted to perform CPR, but on what? Everything was...
A sound escaped him—not quite a sob, not quite a scream but something raw. His father was dead, and the worst part was the confusion in his own chest. Grief? Relief? Anger? How could he mourn someone who had never really been there? But how could he not mourn his father?
"Dad, you stupid... you stupid man. I just wanted... I just wanted you to eat cake with us... just once."
"Honey! What is going—OH GOD!"
His mother's scream cut through everything. It was the kind of sound that would haunt him—pure, visceral anguish. She stood frozen in the doorway for a heartbeat, her hand over her mouth, eyes wide with a horror that seemed too big for her face.
Then she collapsed.
Her knees hit the floor hard, and the keening wail that came from her was worse than the scream. It was the sound of thirty years of patience, of love, of hope finally, finally breaking. She crawled toward the body, her hands reaching out, then pulling back, reaching out again like she couldn't decide if touching him would make it real.
"BET! No, no, no, please! PLEASE!"
She grabbed the charred shoulders, shaking them, black ash coming off on her hands. "Wake up! You can't—we never—you promised me! You promised you'd be done soon!"
Rell knelt down beside her, his own tears finally coming as he watched his mother fall apart. He pulled her against him, and she fought him at first, trying to get back to the body.
"Let me go! I need to—he might be—"
"Mom, he's gone... he's gone."
She went limp in his arms, her sobs shaking both of them. They stayed like that for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, surrounded by the destroyed remains of a life's work and a life.
Finally, when her sobs had quieted to exhausted whimpers, he helped her to her feet. She could barely walk, leaning heavily on him as they made their way back upstairs. Every few steps, she'd turn back, as if expecting to see him following them, finally coming up from his lab.
He settled her on the couch, grabbed the phone with numb fingers.
"Hello, I'd like to report an explosion... yes... only one casualty..." His voice sounded strange, empty. "7th Street, House 9... thank you."
He hung up, glancing back at his mom. She was staring at nothing, her hands still covered in ash, trembling. He grabbed a washcloth, gently cleaned her hands but she didn't seem to notice.
"I'm going to... I need to go back down. Just for a minute. To make sure it's safe for when they arrive."
She didn't respond.
He returned to the basement, each step heavier than before. The lab was a disaster—equipment worth millions destroyed, research notes turned to ash. But some things had survived, protected by cases that looked far too advanced for anything that should exist.
'Where did he get all this stuff? And how did some of these things survive that blast?'
He stepped closer to the body, covering his nose against the smell of burnt flesh. He needed to check if there was anything that might explain what happened, anything the authorities would need to know.
That's when he saw it.
Lying beside his father was a bracelet—no, more like a gauntlet—pulsing with many colors that made his eyes water trying to focus on them. It was massive, with circuit lines that seemed to move, to breathe, far too advanced for anything on Earth.
"Was this what he spent his life on? This?"
Anger surged in him suddenly. Seventeen birthdays. Hundreds of family dinners. His mother's quiet crying when she thought no one was listening. All for this chunk of alien metal?
"A fancy bracelet? You died for a BRACELET?"
It was not just a bracelet, part of him knew. It was a massive device with technology beyond anything he'd seen. But he didn't care about that. He couldn't care about that.
His father had chosen this thing over them. And now he was dead, and they were left with nothing but questions and ash and a hole in their family that had been there long before he died.
Frustrated, furious, grieving, he grabbed it, planning to throw it against the wall, to destroy it like it had destroyed their family.
But as soon as his fingers closed around it, the bracelet clamped onto his hand like a living thing.
"What the—?"
He tried to yank it off, but it wouldn't budge. The metal was warm, then hot, then it started to move, to liquify. But that was impossible—
"No, no, no!"
It started sinking into his skin, disappearing beneath the surface like water into sand. He could feel it spreading, moving through him.
"H-Hey, get off! GET OFF!"
He slammed his hand against the wall, clawed at his skin, but there was no stopping it. The bracelet embedded itself completely, and then he felt it—a strange sensation flooding through him, rewriting him from the inside out.
'Ugh, I feel...'
Fire in his veins. Ice in his bones. His vision fracturing into impossibly colors. He doubled over, and then came the blood—so much blood, mixed with bile and everything else in his stomach. He was coming apart, dissolving, reforming, and the last thing he thought before the darkness took him was that maybe this was justice—dying the same place as his father, destroyed by the same obsession.
He passed out in a pool of his own blood.
A red glow began to radiate from his skin, enveloping him in a thin, protective layer. The blood on the floor started to disappear, absorbed back into him.
[User registered. DNA match confirmed. Beginning transformation.]
---
Hours later, he opened his eyes to darkness.
He was in his room but how?
His head pounded like crazy, if felt like being hit with a hammer to his skull from the inside. He struggled to stand, vertigo making the world tilt, and he had to grab the bedpost to keep from falling.
Everything felt wrong. His skin felt too tight. His bones ached like growing pains multiplied by a thousand and there was something else, something whispering at the edge of his consciousness.
He wobbled his way downstairs, one hand on the wall for support, each step an effort. Halfway down, he heard voices—his mother's, thick with recent tears, and someone else's, a man.
"I don't know. This is all too sudden. First my husband, and now..."
"You don't need to worry, ma'am. We'll take good care of him and make sure he wakes up. Our facility specializes in cases like this."
Cases like what?
"Well, if you think you can help—"
The man glanced toward the stairs as Rell appeared at the bottom. His mother turned, and the relief that flooded her face made his chest tight.
"Son? Oh thank God, Rell!"
She practically ran to him, her hands immediately going to his forehead, his cheeks, checking his temperature and pulse with the practiced efficiency of a worried mother. Everything felt normal, but was everything really normal?
"Are you feeling okay? You've been unconscious for hours. I found you in the—in the lab, and I thought..." Her voice broke slightly.
"Yeah, I think I just inhaled too much smoke."
"Thank god. I was so worried when I found you passed out on the floor. After everything that happened..."
Fresh tears threatened in her eyes, and he pulled her into a hug.
"Yeah, about that... Sorry for making you clean up my mess."
She pulled back, confused. "What mess?"
"Hm? The blood and vomit?"
He was certain it had happened. He could still taste it in his mouth.
"Honey, are you sure you're okay?" She felt his forehead again, worry creasing her face. "We didn't find any blood or vomit—just you, passed out next to your... next to him. The doctors said you wouldn't wake up due to some issue in your blood, so they wanted to take you to a special hospital."
He looked over at the man on the sofa. Expensive suit, too expensive for a normal doctor. And the way he was sitting, alert, watching—not like medical personnel at all.
'Special hospital? That's suspicious as hell.'
He walked over to the man, noting how his eyes tracked his movement. "Sorry to have caused trouble, but I'm fine now. I won't need any special treatment."
"I see," the man replied, but his eyes had drifted to Rell's right arm—the one he'd used to grab the bracelet. The stare was too intense, like he knew exactly what he was looking at.
'Why is he staring at my hand like that?'
[Warning.]
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, echoing in his mind before fading.
Rell tensed.
"Huh? Mom, did you hear that?" He whispered, but she looked at him blankly.
"Hear what, honey?"
'Maybe I just need more sleep. Maybe I'm still—'
[Alien detected.]
'There it is again.'
This time he knew for sure it was no imagination. The voice was coming from inside his head.
Suddenly, his right eye burned. Not painful, but hot, like looking directly at the sun. His vision shifted, the world taking on a red tint, and he could see—oh god, he could SEE—
The man on the sofa wasn't a man at all. Beneath the human appearance was something else, something with skin that rippled like water.
'W-what the hell? Is this real?'
The thing wearing a human face smiled at him, and its voice came out smooth, too smooth.
"Interesting. Very interesting indeed."