Night bled into the dorm like ink.
The whole campus was restless—doors slamming, voices rising, screens glowing with half-baked theories. Ethan had passed out on his bed. Kaito was on a late-night phone call with his brother, pacing the hallway.
Cyrus sat alone at his desk.
The shockwave still echoed inside him, like the last note of a song stuck in his bones. The feeling of that wave going through him he couldn't forget it.
He replayed the moment with the girl on the rooftop.
The wind exploding from her.
The agents hauling her away like a hazard.
Whatever happened to her… is happening to others too.
And to him.
He couldn't ignore it anymore.
His eyes drifted to the pen lying on the wooden desk.
A stupid little thing.
Plastic.
Blue ink.
Insignificant.
His heart began beating harder anyway.
"…Just to check," he whispered.
He reached out—not physically, not fully aware of how he was even doing it—just a tiny intent. A mental push, a nudge.
Nothing happened.
The pen didn't twitch.
Didn't wobble.
Didn't even sway.
Cyrus exhaled sharply, leaning back in his chair.
"Maybe I'm overthinking it," he muttered to himself. "Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe—"
Then he turned away.
And the pen moved.
It rolled toward him.
Slowly.
Smoothly.
Against the grain of the wooden desk.
Cyrus froze.
Every hair on his arms stood up.
His breath caught mid-exhale.
"…No. No way."
He stared at the pen as if it were a live snake.
He extended his hand again—this time not with curiosity, but with intent.
A sharp, focused line of thought.
Move.
The pen trembled.
Lifted.
Barely an inch—just enough to make his stomach drop.
Then it fell back with a soft clack.
That tiny sound was the loudest thing in the room.
Cyrus whispered, stunned, "I'm not imagining it."
Something inside him opened in that moment—not power, not confidence—awareness.
A sense that the world had cracked wide open, and he was standing at the edge of the fracture.
A power.
Weak.
Fragile.
Barely there.
But real.
And real was enough.
--
Then came the first siren.
A distant, heavy wail.
Unlike police sirens on NYPD cars—slower, deeper, manufactured to cut through panic instead of traffic.
A warning to the city:
Something's wrong.
More followed.
Layered.
Echoing between skyscrapers like a chorus of dread.
Cyrus stepped to the window.
New York was dim, but not asleep.
Military trucks barreled through the avenues—black, armored, lights off to avoid drawing attention.
Government agents poured out across the district.
Not searching randomly.
Moving with purpose.
Scanners in hand.
Detectors humming.
Pulling people aside.
Testing them.
Tagging them.
Removing them.
The girl on the rooftop wasn't an isolated case.
Ethan stirred behind him. "What's happening…?"
Cyrus didn't answer.
Because he knew.
He watched an agent pull a man from a taxi, scan him, shake his head, then let him go.
The next person they dragged out was cuffed immediately.
Kaito appeared in the doorway, breathless. "Dude. They're sweeping the whole campus."
Ethan rubbed his eyes. "Are we being evacuated?"
"No," Kaito said darkly. "We're being screened."
Cyrus kept staring at the street—at the way the agents moved, at the urgency, the precision.
"They know," he said quietly.
Kaito turned to him. "Know what?"
"That whatever that wave was… it changed people."
He swallowed.
"And they expected it."
---
The sirens kept wailing.
The city kept shaking, not from earthquakes—but from fear.
And Cyrus Hale, who woke up every day unsure of what he wanted to be…
…had just slipped into a new world
where he could never be directionless again.
Because now he wasn't just a smart-ass anymore l.
He was something else.
And someone out there was hunting people like him.