Chapter Text
15 Years Ago
“Y/N! Put Mr. Beans back in his enclosure and come finish your homework!” Dad’s voice floats through the lab, cutting into my very important bonding time. I sigh, gently scooping up Mr. Beans, who was being super brave today. I guess I couldn’t blame Dad for interrupting. Homework was, apparently, more important than quality time with a reptile. But, in my defense, Mr. Beans was practically family. I’d named him myself. Actually, I’d named all of them. The moment seven-year-old me laid eyes on the five squiggly, scaly test subjects in their big glass homes, they needed proper names. My parents hadn’t even tried to argue. Like they could win against my serious face.
Now, at the wise and mature age of ten (basically a teenager), I’d taken it upon myself to make sure they felt loved. It was an easy job, really. My parents dragged me to their research lab every night. Every. Single. Night. Even weekends. If I had friends, I’d probably complain. But being the “weird reptile kid” didn’t exactly scream popular, even if someone looked past how awkward I was. That was fine. I didn’t really get lonely. Besides my lab buddies, I had two cats, a chameleon, and a gecko waiting for me at home. Who needs friends when you have a whole zoo of perfect little guys to take care of?
At the lab, I knew every assistant by first and last name. My parents even trusted two of them enough to make them my emergency contacts, just in case. Sofia and Salman Douglass. Twins, though you’d never guess if they didn’t share the same green eyes and matching, kinda-pointy chins.
Sofia is the fun one. She dyed her hair this super bright ginger color that makes her look like Eliza Thornberry, and she’s tall. Like, can-reach-the-top-shelf-without-a-stepstool tall. She’s always the loudest in the room and the first to stir up some kind of mischief. Half the time, she has me cracking up with her silly pranks. The other half, Salman was her target.
Poor Salman. He was a good few inches shorter than his sister, barely reaching her shoulder, with dark brown hair shaved neat on the sides and curly on top. It gave him this classic, clean-cut, “I’m way too cool for nonsense” look. But he wasn’t cool in a mean way. Just… quieter. Maybe that’s why we got along so well.
Obviously, these super-smart scientists had better things to do than babysit their boss’s kid. But they never acted like it. Never sighed or rolled their eyes when I trailed after them. Especially not Salman. He answered every wild question my brain could think up, always with this calm, matter-of-fact tone, like he actually liked explaining things. One time, after I apologized for bugging him for the millionth time, he just shrugged and said, “A curious mind is a wise mind. And a wise mind will never be satiated with what it already knows.”
Naturally, I immediately asked what satiated meant.
My parents were always busy, but never too busy for me. Dinner happened every night, no matter what. It wasn’t always at an actual table. Hardly ever, really, but we always ate together. Mom would tuck me in every night (I had my own bed at the lab), and Dad was the one who woke me up every morning, making sure my belly was full before he drove me to school. Weekends were the best. If I wasn’t hanging around the lab, we were off doing something cool—museums, science landmarks, sometimes even road trips just to see a rock formation Mom read about. But my favorite? Mini golf. It didn’t matter how many times Dad pretended to “accidentally” hit his ball into the water, I laughed every single time. I wouldn’t change a thing about my life.
Weeeelll, maybe I’d drag Salman out of the lab more. He was there way more than my parents, which was kind of impressive, considering they owned the whole building. I plopped Mr. Beans back into his enclosure, giving him a little wave. “Be back later, buddy.” Dad was already waiting for me, sitting at his desk with all his usual research papers and books stacked neatly to the side, like they knew math homework was more important.
Ugh. Math. The one subject I hated with my entire soul. Why did I need to know about fractions? Who cared if you could add or subtract tiny little pieces of things? I drag my feet as slowly as possible toward the chair Dad had pulled up for me, like a prisoner heading to their doom. Dad’s glasses were low on his nose, making him look more like a college professor than a scientist. He twirls my lucky Ticonderoga pencil between his fingers, smiling like he enjoyed this. “Alright, kiddo,” he says. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
I scrunch my nose. “The beginning? Of fractions?”
He peeks at me over his glasses, eyes twinkling. “No, of course not. The beginning of everything. How did it all start? The chicken? The egg?”
“Daaaaaad,” I groan, flopping into the chair.
From the hallway, I hear Mom chuckle. A second later, she appears in the doorway, arms crossed but grinning. “Danny, please actually help Y/N with her homework, not melt her brain. We do want her to pass, don’t we, darling?”
She ruffles my hair as she walks past, then settles onto the couch across from Dad’s desk. He winks at me before leaning back in his chair, all smug and wise. “My little sapling,” he says, like he was about to share the secret of the universe, “whenever I’m stuck on a problem, I go back to the beginning and start fresh. In your case, that’s fractions. So, let’s start at the beginning.”
And we did. For the next hour, Dad walks me through the whole mess of fractions. Why they mattered (kind of), how to add and subtract them without wanting to scream, and even a few silly tricks to remember. He couldn’t resist slipping in some cheesy jokes, and every time he did, Mom sighed dramatically while trying not to laugh. By the end, I’d sort of, kind of gotten the hang of it. Even the next step, multiplying and dividing, didn’t sound completely terrifying. Just mostly terrifying.
“Alright, off you go,” Mom says, stretching as she stands. “We’ll get dinner started.” Another lab dinner. I didn’t mind. It was easier that way, and besides, family dinner was family dinner, no matter where it happened.
I wander off, already on a mission. I needed to find Sofia. Someone had to hear how painfully bad Dad’s jokes had been. I head downstairs to the basement of the building. That’s where Sofia and Salman spent most of their time, where all the real science-y stuff happened. At least, that’s what I liked to think. You couldn’t even get in without passing a security guard and doing one of those cool retina scans, like in spy movies. Totally top secret.
I wave at Carl, the security guy, and let the computer scan my eye. It beeps, and the door slides open. I walk down a long hallway, passing a bunch of glass labs where during the day, people in white coats poked at computers and gadgets. Finally, I get to the last room. The door was open, so I went inside. If you asked me to explain what was in there, I’d just say…a lot. There were computers lined up on one side, weird gadgets on another, and way in the back, a giant tank that looked like something from a superhero movie. Tables were scattered everywhere, covered in wires, tools, and papers.
Salman was sitting at one of the computers, typing like his life depended on it. I sighed. I didn’t want to bug him. He was hunched over the keyboard, his nose practically touching the screen. I bit back a smile. I’d probably find him like that later, still working, so I made a mental note to bring him dinner. I glance around, looking for Sofia. When I don't see her, I turn and head back into the hallway. That’s when I hear it…a faint buzzing, like power lines humming in the distance. One of the lab rooms up ahead glows green, spilling light into the hallway.
Curious, I follow it.
Inside, Sofia stands near the light, holding a clipboard and scribbling notes like crazy. I must’ve made some kind of noise because she glances up, spotting me, and grins. She waves me over, eyes sparkling like she’d just discovered a new planet. But I barely notice. I couldn’t stop staring at the thing behind the forcefield, a metal-looking rock, glowing so bright it almost hurt to look at.
“What is that?” I ask, stopping beside Sofia, eyes wide. Up close, the glowing object was smaller than it looked from afar. The light inside it made it seem huge when you weren’t right next to it.
“Your mom’s been calling it energon reflux. See the rock-looking part?” she asks, pointing.
I nod, completely entranced.
“Well, from what we’ve studied so far, it’s a form of uranium—but not from our planet.”
I snap my head up to look at her, craning my neck to meet her eyes. “Not from our planet? You mean it’s alien? Is that why it’s glowing?” My mind races with questions, tumbling over each other like dominoes.
Sofia laughs and gives me a gentle push toward the forcefield. The air shimmers like heat waves above pavement. “I don’t know about aliens, but it’s glowing because we made it glow.”
Her face shifts into her lecture mode, that look adults get when they’re about to drop a bunch of big words and expect you to keep up. I brace myself.
“When your parents were investigating the site where this uranium was found, they discovered a rare crystalline compound we’re calling Zytrium. We’ve figured out that Zytrium has a unique resonance frequency, meaning it reacts to different types of energy. And as you know, uranium is radioactive. So we combined the two just to see what would happen. And voilà!” She waves both hands toward the glowing rock.
“Zytrium doesn’t just react, it amplifies energy. It can interact with all kinds of forces, like electromagnetic and kinetic energy.”
I blink, trying to keep up. Sofia caught my confused look and chuckles.
“Okay, think about it like this: radio waves, light, water flowing, even you walking. They all use energy. Zytrium can pick up on those energies and, depending on the frequency, react to them. Cool, right?”
I nod slowly, pretending I understood. Science talk always sounded like someone reading the instructions for building a spaceship.
“To get the reaction started, we had to make a special catalyst called Klystron-9. It’s basically a mix of rare earth elements and isotopes. When it’s combined with Zytrium, it boosts the reaction, keeps it stable, and lets it bond with the weird uranium core. Salman came up with that recipe. Smart little—” Sofia stops herself, grinning. “Oops. Forget I almost said a bad word.”
She turns back to the glowing rock. “Right now, the two elements are fused together, which is why it’s glowing. Inside the forcefield, it’s being hit with hyper-accelerated particles from that machine over there.” She points to a huge, humming machine that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
“The particles energize the mix until it hits a critical point—aka, the glow. But it’s still super dangerous, so paws off, got it? Honestly, you shouldn’t even be in here.”
I take a step back, suddenly aware of how close I’d gotten to the forcefield.
“How about this?” Sofia smiles. “You watch the separation process with me, and then we’ll head upstairs and see what your parents are cooking for dinner. Deal?”
After dinner, I sneak back downstairs with a bowl of Mom’s slightly mediocre Kraft mac and cheese, the kind she insists is “fancy” because she dumps chili flakes on top. It just made my mouth burn while still tasting weirdly sad. But Salman had to eat something, and I owed myself five dollars when I find him exactly how I left him: hunched over the keyboard like the fate of the universe depended on his typing speed.
“Called it,” I mutter, sliding the bowl across the table toward him. He blinks at the sound, then glances up, eyes bleary but warm.
“Thanks, Rabbit. You finish your math homework?”
I nod, cheeks heating up at the nickname. “Yup. Barely messed anything up. Though Dad’s jokes didn’t help.” I scowl at the memory of him hovering over my shoulder, cracking terrible puns every time I carried a one.
Salman chuckles, spearing a bite of mac and cheese, only to freeze mid-chew. His nose scrunches as if he’d licked a battery. “Okay, maybe I should start cooking dinner.”
I giggle. “Mom’s cooking isn’t thaaaat bad. Besides, it came out of a box. That’s Kraft’s fault, not hers.”
“Touché, Rabbit.” He pushes the bowl aside, grinning. “Guess I’ll have to write Kraft a strongly worded letter about their noodle crimes.”
I grin back, already imagining Salman typing out a fake-angry email in all caps. But then he glances at his watch, and his smile softens into something more adult-y. Concerned, almost.
“Getting late, huh? You should hop along before you get yourself into trouble.” He raises an eyebrow, and I give him my best who, me? smile.
Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be downstairs without one of my parents. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Besides, neither Sofia nor Salman would snitch. They liked having someone to nerd out to, and, well, their audience options were pretty slim in a lab surrounded by other nerds.
“G’night,” I said, backing towards the hallway. He promises we’ll go to the community library tomorrow. I loved it when Salman took me places. He always let me pick out the weirdest books without asking if they were “age-appropriate.”
I'm almost at the last door, just a few steps from the security station, when I hear it.
Faint. So faint I almost missed it.
I freeze, tilting my head like a dog trying to figure out if the noise was real or just the creak of the old bones in the building settling.
Nothing.
I shrug it off. Salman was right…it was late. I was probably tired. Hearing things. My hand finds the door handle, and as I’m about to pull it open—
There it is again.
My whole body goes rigid, like I’d touched an electric fence. Every tiny hair on my arms, my neck, even the back of my legs stood on end. Because this time, the whisper didn’t just brush past my ear.
It said my name.
Not just out loud, either. It spoke inside me, like the words were echoing in my skull, rattling my bones, humming through my blood like a second heartbeat.
Come to us, Y/N.
My eyes widened. My hand freezes on the handle.
Come to us. You are destined for so much more. Come to us.
I can't move. Can’t think. It wasn’t just a voice, it was a feeling, like something ancient and endless had reached inside me and plucked a string I didn’t know existed.
Come to us, Y/N. All your questions will be answered, with time. Come to us. Your future awaits within you.
I swallow hard, throat dry as chalk. Talk about ominous. Yeah, I know that word. Thanks, Salman.
My future awaits within me? What did that even mean? Who was “us”? My hand trembles as I yank it back from the door, like the handle had turned molten. I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing myself to take a deep breath. Okay. Chill. You’re not crazy. Probably.
Except… wasn’t hearing voices, like, the textbook definition of crazy? Would my parents make me a test subject? Probably. Not the worst fate, honestly. Free snacks and no math homework. I spin around, half expecting to catch one of Sofia’s lab assistants hiding behind a corner, snickering into their sleeve.
But the hallway is empty. Silent.
And that was somehow worse.
The only sign of life is the soft green glow spilling out of the lab Sofia had been working in earlier. My stomach flips. Weird. I could’ve sworn she said she was separating the Zytrium and uranium thingy-ma-bobs before dinner. Shouldn’t that have stopped the glowing? I’m no scientist, but I was pretty sure “separated” meant “not shining like a radioactive nightlight.”
I hesitate, every sensible part of my brain screaming go upstairs, go upstairs, GO UPSTAIRS, but… curiosity? Yeah, she’s a cruel little beast. Besides, the light didn’t just look cool. It felt… right. Like I was supposed to walk towards it. Dad would’ve loved that pun.
My heart is slamming against my ribs when I step into the room. The light isn’t just bright, it’s alive, like something you’d see at the bottom of the ocean. Bioluminescent. Beautiful. And it hurts to look at, but I can’t stop staring. It’s like the light is reaching for me, pulling at something inside my chest. I squint, throwing a hand up to block the glow, but it doesn’t help much. It dances around my fingers, slipping through like mist. I blink, and suddenly, I’m standing right in front of it.
I don’t remember walking.
Up close, the light isn’t so blinding anymore. It’s softer, warmer, like the last bit of sunset right before the sky goes dark. My mouth falls open. I can feel it. Not on my skin, but deeper. Like the air got heavier, like gravity itself was doubling down on me. My arms droop. My legs wobble. Breathing feels like trying to suck air through a straw. That should probably scare me, right? It doesn’t. It just feels… inevitable. I reach out, half-expecting the forcefield to zap my hand, but nothing stops me. My fingers stretch toward the glowing core, and my breath catches.
The forcefield’s down.
That’s bad. That’s really bad.
Come to us, Y/N.
The voice punches through my head like a drumbeat. Not a whisper this time. Louder. Certain. My heart skips. I stumble back, hand still outstretched like an idiot reaching for the stove after already getting burned once.
“Y/N!”
Salman’s voice. Sharp. Panicked.
“Get away! Now! The core’s unstable!”
I whip around, and there he is, standing in the doorway, chest heaving like he’d sprinted the whole way here. His face is pale, eyes wide and wild. I’ve never seen him look like that before. Like he’s scared of me.
No, not me.
The core.
My stomach twists cold and tight. I try to step back, but my foot doesn’t move. Neither does the other. It’s not pushing me. It’s pulling me. Like there’s a hook in my ribs, dragging me forward inch by inch.
“Rabbit, move!” Salman yells, his voice cracking in a way that makes my chest hurt worse than the pressure crushing down on me. I scream as my hand slams into the core. Skin meets metal, and metal meets heat, and heat meets pain.
Blinding, searing, white-hot pain.
I can’t pull away. My hand, my stupid hand, is stuck, melting like wax under a flame. I smell it before I feel it, and then I feel everything.
Salman lunges.
I barely register it before the core pulses. Green light erupts outward in a wave. The first pulse hits Salman square in the chest. He freezes, blinking down at himself in shock.
The next three hit almost instantly after.
One. Two. Three.
His mouth falls open, like he’s about to say something, but nothing comes out. His skin goes gray, like someone drained the color from a photo. His arms are still reaching for me, fingers curled like he could’ve reached me if he’d just moved a second faster.
“Salman!”
The scream tears out of me, ripping my throat raw. My eyes blur, but it’s not from the light. Fat, hot tears roll down my cheeks, dripping off my chin. Not from the pain. Not from my hand burning into the core like meat on a grill.
From him.
From the way his knees buckle. From the way he crumples to the floor, eyes still wide open but empty.
No. No, no, no. This isn’t real. This can’t be real.
I claw at my wrist with my free hand, trying to yank myself away from the core, but every tug sends another jolt of agony screaming through my arm and up into my skull. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t do anything.
“Y/N!”
Dad’s voice.
Oh god.
“Sweetie, you down here?! Y/N?”
Mom.
“I heard screaming, what’s going on?”
Oh Sofia…
They couldn’t come in here.
I try to shout. To warn them. Don’t come in! Don’t see this! Don’t see me!
Nothing comes out.
My throat works uselessly, like a fish gasping on land. I thrash, tears blinding me, as their shadows stretch across the hallway floor, their worried voices growing closer. Panic explodes inside me like fireworks. I can’t let them see this. I won’t let Sofia see Salman lying on the floor, lifeless. I grit my teeth, ignoring the white-hot agony flooding my nerves, and yank my arm back with everything I have left.
The skin peels away first.
Then the muscle.
Then—
POP.
I stumble backward, hand free but not really a hand anymore. A mess of red and white and wrong.
The core screams. Or maybe it was me.
The light goes from sickly green to yellow in a heartbeat, and the room feels like it’s about to fold in on itself. The heat slams into me like a freight train. It’s not outside heat. It’s inside heat. The kind that boils you from the core out. It eats me alive, swallowing every nerve, every thought, every memory. It burns away me.
Who I was. What I knew. Every birthday, every scraped knee, every late-night story under blanket forts.
Gone.
And then—
Cold.
So cold it feels personal, like the universe itself is spitting on what’s left of me. The cold kisses the burns like an apology it doesn’t really mean. It crawls through the cracks the fire left behind, sealing them with icy scars I know I’ll never stop feeling, not until my last breath.
If I even get another one.
Time stretches thin, like someone’s pulling it apart strand by strand. The light pulses one last time.
And then everything goes dark.
⟡𓆗⟡
I never saw my parents, Salman, or Sofia again.
All four were presumed dead once the fire from the explosion—the one I caused—had been contained. No bodies. No scraps of clothing. Just heat and light, and then nothing. The official report said incinerated by radioactive flames, like they’d been wiped off the face of the earth, as easy as erasing a chalkboard.
At the funeral, they buried empty caskets. People cried. They told stories like it mattered, like talking about Sofia’s obsession with lemon mints or Dad’s terrible puns would somehow fill the holes in the ground.
It didn’t.
I stood there, stiff and hollow, while strangers whispered words like tragedy and miracle and poor kid.
I hated them. I hated every single one of them.
I should’ve been in those graves.
I should’ve burned, bones cracking in the heat, skin curling like paper. I should’ve vanished like they did.
But I didn’t.
The core saved me.
That’s what the doctors said, anyway. They found me in the middle of the wreckage, curled up on the scorched floor like a baby in the womb.
Not a single burn. Not a scratch. Not even a trace of radiation.
It didn’t make sense. The core should’ve torn me apart, same as the others. But instead, it had wrapped around me, shielding me from the explosion.
Or maybe it had chosen me.
The first thing I remembered after waking up was the ceiling lights in the hospital, flickering like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to stay on or off. My hand, the one that had touched the core, should’ve been gone, melted to the bone. But it wasn’t.
The skin was smooth, unscarred, like nothing had ever happened.
The nurses called it a miracle.
The doctors called it impossible.
I called it bullshit.
They ran every test they could think of. Blood draws until my arms were bruised. Brain scans that hummed like angry bees. They checked my heart, my lungs, my eyes, even my teeth.
Everything came back normal. Healthy. Whole. Untouched.
“You’re lucky,” one nurse told me, smiling like that would make me feel better.
Lucky.
Yeah. Sure.
No one called it lucky when they realized I had no one left.
My emergency contacts had always been my parents, Sofia, and Salman. With all four gone, there was no one to sign the discharge papers.
No family. No friends. Just me. So, they sent me to a group home. It wasn’t like the books or movies. No screaming kids or evil caretakers. Just quiet hallways, peeling paint, and other kids who stared through me like I was a ghost.
I guess I kind of was.
The staff didn’t know what to do with me at first. I didn’t leave my room. I didn’t talk. I ate what they gave me, slept when I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. One of the older boys, Marcus I think, told me I was creepy. That I looked like a doll someone forgot to put batteries in. He tried pushing me around once.
I didn’t push back. I just stood there, letting him shove me like I was nothing.
Because that’s what I am now.
Nothing.
The counselors called it survivor’s guilt, like putting a fancy name on it would change anything. But it wasn’t guilt. It was rage. At myself. At the universe. At the core for picking me, like I was worth more than the four lives it stole.
I hated the core.
I hated my stupid, perfect hand.
I hated that I was still breathing when everyone I loved had been turned to ash.
And I hated that no one blamed me.
The police said it was an accident. The lab explosion was unforeseen.
No one told me off. No one screamed You killed them! in my face.
But I did. I screamed it at myself, every night, until my throat burned and my face was wet and I didn’t even remember when I’d started crying.
They were gone. Because of me.
And I was still here.
Still breathing.
Still lucky.
Funny how surviving can feel like the worst punishment of all.