Chapter 4: Testing Limits
Sleep became impossible after the awakening. Every time Ben closed his eyes, he saw blue afterimages that weren't there—phantom visions of attacks that had already happened, echoes of a power that had fundamentally changed everything he thought he knew about himself and his situation.
The gym opened at six. Ben was there at five-thirty, pacing the empty space like a caged animal.
"You're early," Marcus observed as he unlocked the front door, taking in Ben's haggard appearance with the practiced eye of someone who'd seen plenty of people wrestling with their demons.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Bad dreams?"
You could say that.
"Something like that. Mind if I use the space for a bit? Work some things out?"
Marcus shrugged. "Your funeral. Try not to bleed on anything."
Alone on the mats, Ben tried to recreate what had happened in the alley. He threw punches at the air, kicked at imaginary opponents, even asked Marcus to take some swings at him when the older man emerged from his office with coffee.
Nothing.
No blue afterimages. No impossible clarity. No preview of incoming attacks. His body felt normal, his reflexes merely human.
"You're holding back," Ben said after Marcus pulled a particularly slow punch.
"Course I am. This is training, not a death match."
"What if you didn't? What if you actually tried to hit me?"
Marcus set down his coffee and studied Ben with uncomfortable intensity. "Son, you got something you want to talk about? Because you're acting like a man with ghosts chasing him."
More like a man trying to figure out if he's becoming a ghost himself.
"Just testing a theory."
"What theory?"
Ben hesitated. How do you explain that you might be developing superhuman abilities without sounding completely insane? Especially when you couldn't even prove it yourself?
"I think I might be better at reading attacks than I realized. Last night, I had to... handle some trouble. And it felt like I knew what was coming before it happened."
It was as close to the truth as he dared get.
Marcus nodded slowly. "Happens sometimes. Combat flow state. Adrenaline can make time feel like it slows down, make you notice things you'd normally miss. But that's just your brain working faster, not magic."
If only it were that simple.
Ben spent the next hour researching online, being very careful about his search terms. "Enhanced reflexes." "Combat precognition." "Awakened individuals." The internet was full of conspiracy theories and claims about people developing impossible abilities, but buried in the noise were a few consistent patterns.
Powers seemed to manifest during moments of genuine danger. They responded to threat, not simulation. And they always came with costs that weren't immediately obvious.
So I can't just turn it on whenever I want. There has to be real risk, real danger. My body has to believe I'm actually threatened.
The implications were both reassuring and terrifying. Reassuring because it meant the power wouldn't accidentally activate during normal daily life. Terrifying because it meant he could only access it when he was already in life-threatening situations.
His first class of the day was mostly regulars—people who'd been coming for weeks, learning the basics of self-defense with grim determination. But there was a new face in the crowd: a girl who couldn't be more than sixteen, with the kind of nervousness that spoke of someone who'd never been in a gym before but desperately needed to be there.
Ben was halfway through demonstrating basic escape techniques when trouble walked through the door.
The guy was maybe thirty, with the kind of smile that never reached his eyes and clothes that cost more than most people in the Glades made in a month. He looked around the gym with obvious distaste before his gaze settled on the teenage girl.
"There you are, sweetheart. Been looking all over for you."
The girl's face went white. "I told you to leave me alone."
"Come on, don't be like that. We had plans, remember?"
Ben's anger spiked—a sudden, volcanic surge that came with the recognition of a predator circling prey. And with the anger came the blue afterimages, ghostly previews of the man's movements blooming around him like deadly flowers.
The power responds to emotional threat as well as physical danger. Interesting.
The afterimages showed the man stepping closer to the girl, his hand reaching for her arm with practiced casualness. Ben intercepted the movement before it fully began, placing himself between them with movements that felt choreographed.
"I think the lady asked you to leave."
The man's smile never wavered, but his eyes went hard. "This doesn't concern you, muscle head. This is between me and my girlfriend."
"I'm not your girlfriend!" the girl snapped, but her voice shook.
The blue afterimages cascaded now, showing Ben a dozen different ways this could escalate. The man had a gun in a shoulder holster—concealed carry, probably legal. He was also carrying something else, something that made Ben's newly awakened senses scream warnings.
Knife. Spring-loaded. He knows how to use it.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," Ben said, his voice carefully controlled. "This is a private business, and you're making our students uncomfortable."
The afterimages showed the man's hand moving toward his jacket, the casual gesture that would end with steel between Ben's ribs. Ben was already moving, his hand clamping down on the man's wrist before the motion could complete.
"Bad idea," Ben said quietly.
For a moment, they stared at each other. The man's expression shifted from confident predator to something more wary as he realized Ben was stronger than he looked and positioned himself with the casual competence of someone who knew exactly how dangerous he was.
"This isn't over," the man said finally.
"Yeah, it is."
Ben maintained eye contact until the predator turned and left, trailing implied threats and wounded pride. Only when the door closed behind him did Ben realize his hands were shaking slightly.
"Damn," said Sin from the back of the class. "You moved weird there. Like you knew what he was going to do before he did it."
Too observant by half.
"Body language," Ben said with a shrug he hoped looked casual. "Guy was telegraphing his intentions pretty clearly."
Sin's expression suggested she didn't entirely buy the explanation, but she let it slide. The teenage girl approached him after class with tears in her eyes and gratitude that made Ben's chest tight.
"Thank you," she whispered. "He's been following me for weeks. The police won't do anything because he hasn't actually hurt me yet."
Yet.
"You did good coming here," Ben told her. "Learning to defend yourself is smart. But if he shows up again, you call me immediately, okay?"
She nodded and left with a group of other students, safety in numbers. Ben was packing up his gear when Marcus approached with a thoughtful expression.
"You want to tell me how you knew that guy was armed?"
Ben's blood went cold. "What do you mean?"
"I've been around violence my whole life, son. I know how men move when they're carrying, and I know how other men move when they can tell. You spotted his gun before he made any move toward it."
"Think fast. Marcus is too experienced to fool with vague explanations about body language. But I can't tell him about the power either. One wrong word and I'll be explaining myself to people I really don't want to meet."
"Experience," Ben said finally. "I've seen that type before."
It wasn't a lie, exactly. He had seen predators like that in his previous life, and his transmigration had come with enhanced perception and reflexes that made reading threats easier. But it also wasn't the whole truth.
Marcus studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Fair enough. Just remember that experience can cut both ways. Sometimes knowing how dangerous someone is makes you more likely to find trouble, not less."
The walk home took Ben through a part of the Glades where two gangs had been circling each other for weeks, territorial disputes that would probably end in blood before the month was out. Ben had been avoiding the area, but tonight he was distracted, his mind still processing the implications of his power's activation patterns.
He realized his mistake when the blue afterimages exploded around him like a supernova.
Seven armed men. Three on the roof to his left. Two in the alley to his right. Two more moving to cut off his retreat. Gang colors he didn't recognize, but their positioning was professional, coordinated.
This isn't random. They're hunting.
The afterimages cascaded, overlapping and contradicting each other as Ben's power tried to track too many threats simultaneously. Gunfire from the roof. A shotgun blast from the alley. Crossfire patterns that would turn the street into a killing zone.
The sensory overload hit like an icepick through his skull. Ben's vision fractured, blue light bleeding into real sight until he couldn't tell what was prediction and what was happening now. His knees buckled, and he barely managed to stumble into an alley before the world tilted sideways.
Blood dripped from his nose onto cracked concrete. His hands shook as he pressed his back against a brick wall, waiting for the phantom gunshots to stop echoing in his skull.
"Too much. The power has limits, and I just found one of them. I can track one or two threats easily, but more than that and the system overloads. Good to know. Terrifying, but good to know."
The gang war erupted thirty seconds later—automatic weapons fire lighting up the night, screams and sirens and the particular sound of bullets punching through car windows. Ben huddled in his alley until the violence moved elsewhere, then made his way home through side streets that stank of gunpowder and fear.
Back in his apartment, Ben started a new journal. This one would be even more carefully coded than his record of future events, because documenting superhuman abilities in a world where metahumans were still mostly theoretical seemed like a fast track to becoming someone's lab rat.
But he needed to understand what was happening to him. The power's triggers, its limitations, the costs of using it. If he was going to survive in the Arrowverse—let alone make a difference—he needed to know exactly what he was capable of.
Prescience activates during genuine threat scenarios. Emotional or physical danger both qualify. Range appears to be approximately three seconds. Can track 1-2 opponents easily, 3-5 with increasing difficulty, 7+ causes system overload and temporary incapacitation.
Note: Power responds to heart rate above approximately 120 BPM in threatening situations. Training scenarios don't trigger activation because the body knows it's safe.
Note: Overuse results in nosebleeds, vision problems, and severe headaches. Recovery time unknown.
Note: Tell absolutely no one. Ever.
Ben locked the new journal alongside his coded record of future events and tried not to think about what would happen if either document fell into the wrong hands.
Outside his window, Starling City hummed with its usual mixture of desperation and defiance. Somewhere out there, Oliver Queen was still on his island, learning the skills that would make him into the Arrow. Somewhere else, Malcolm Merlyn was finalizing plans that would kill thousands of people.
And here in the Glades, Ben Hale was discovering that he was no longer entirely human, with all the terrible responsibility that realization entailed.
Three weeks until Oliver returns. Seven months until the Undertaking. And I'm developing powers I barely understand in a world that will soon be filled with people who shoot arrows at crime bosses.
Time to figure out exactly what I'm becoming, before I become something I can't control.
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