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Seattle, Washington
Chronicle Universe - Day 2
10:23 AM
Marcus woke to sunlight filtering through the alley's fire escape, his body stiff from sleeping on cardboard like a homeless man. His head, which had been pounding with agony the night before, now felt... different. Clear, but changed.
He sat up slowly, checking his surroundings. The alley was still empty—just dumpsters, graffiti, and the detritus of urban life. Good. No one had bothered him while he'd been unconscious from the crystal's effects.
Rubbing his temples, Marcus noticed the swelling sensation from last night had completely disappeared. But something new had taken its place. He could feel it—a presence in his mind that hadn't been there before. Like discovering a new limb you'd never noticed.
"So this is telekinesis," he muttered, focusing on the sensation.
The power was intangible yet somehow substantial. Under his mental direction, he felt it shift and change, trying to take form. He concentrated on a bottle cap near his feet, willing it to move.
Nothing happened.
He tried harder, focusing until his newly healed nose threatened to bleed again. The bottle cap trembled—barely a vibration, but it moved.
"Pathetic," Marcus said to himself, but he was grinning. It was real. He had actual telekinetic ability, even if it was currently weaker than a newborn's grip.
According to his understanding of the Chronicle timeline, the three teenagers had taken weeks to develop their powers from moving baseballs to flying. But they'd been ordinary kids. Marcus had his enhanced intelligence from the NZT, plus knowledge of what the power could become. He could accelerate the process.
Standing and dusting himself off, Marcus checked his pockets. He'd brought exactly $1,000 in cash—the maximum weight he could carry through dimensions without additional Source Point cost. In 2012 Seattle, it would be enough to get started.
First, though, he needed more money. And he knew exactly where to get it.
Emerald Queen Casino
Four Hours Later
The pit boss was sweating, and Marcus could understand why. In four hours, he'd turned $1,000 into $100,000, and the casino's other patrons had noticed. A crowd had formed around the blackjack table, with other gamblers following Marcus's bets.
"Sir," the pit boss said quietly, leaning close enough that Marcus could smell his cologne and desperation. "Perhaps you'd like to take a break? The house would be happy to comp you a meal, a room..."
"I'm good," Marcus replied, stacking his chips. "Though I think I'll cash out. This has been fun."
Fun was an understatement. With his enhanced brain still running on NZT's effects, card counting was child's play. He wasn't cheating—just using the superhuman calculation ability the drug provided. Every card that appeared updated probability matrices in his mind. Every shuffle pattern was analyzed and predicted.
The casino couldn't prove anything because there was nothing to prove. He was just very, very good at math.
As security escorted him to the cashier—politely, but firmly—Marcus noticed other gamblers trying to follow. A few had made thousands riding his coattails. The casino staff blocked them, professionally explaining that Mr. Reed was leaving and perhaps they should take a break as well.
Marcus took his hundred thousand in cash, ignoring the hungry looks from some of the shadier patrons. He could feel his telekinesis responding to his subconscious concern, ready to push away any threat. Still weak, but growing.
Residence Inn Downtown
Day 3
Money opened doors, even without proper ID. The hotel manager had been skeptical until Marcus laid ten thousand in cash on the counter for a month's stay, paid in advance. Suddenly, paperwork became optional.
The suite was perfect—private, spacious, with a living area he could use for training. Marcus had already purchased supplies: a high-end laptop, various weights from one gram to fifty pounds, and enough food to avoid leaving for days if necessary.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, a penny floating unsteadily six inches above his palm. The coin wobbled, dipped, but stayed airborne. Progress.
"Matter is mostly empty space," Marcus murmured, recalling quantum physics principles. "Telekinesis doesn't move objects—it manipulates the fundamental forces holding them together."
Understanding the science helped. Instead of trying to "push" objects with invisible hands, he visualized adjusting electromagnetic fields, tweaking gravitational constants on a localized scale. The penny's wobble smoothed out, hanging perfectly still in the air.
By the end of the first week, he could lift ten pounds and hold it steady for an hour.
By the second week, a hundred pounds.
By the third week, he bench-pressed a car in an abandoned warehouse, the vehicle floating ten feet overhead while he stood beneath it, arms spread like a conductor orchestrating invisible forces.
Day 28
Marcus stood on the roof of his hotel, Seattle spread out below him in the pre-dawn darkness. His telekinesis had grown exponentially, following a curve he'd calculated and modified through conscious effort.
Current capacity: approximately ten tons.
He could feel the power like a living thing now, coiled in his consciousness, ready to spring into action at a thought. But more than raw strength, he'd developed finesse.
Closing his eyes, Marcus wrapped himself in a telekinetic field and lifted off the roof. Not like flying in the Iron Man armor—this was pure will made manifest. He rose fifty feet, a hundred, two hundred, until the hotel was a toy below him.
The field around him compressed air, creating a bubble of normal pressure even at altitude. He could breathe normally, stay warm despite the wind chill. With concentration, he could even bend light around himself, becoming translucent, though not truly invisible.
Not yet.
Marcus accelerated, pushing harder. The city blurred below. His phone's GPS, protected in a ziplock bag, showed his speed climbing: 200 mph, 400, 600...
The sound barrier approached. Marcus reinforced his field, made it aerodynamic, arrow-shaped. He punched through Mach 1 with a boom that echoed across Puget Sound, but inside his telekinetic bubble, he felt nothing but exhilaration.
He was flying under his own power. No suit, no technology—just his mind reshaping reality.
Banking over the Pacific, Marcus tested his limits. The telekinetic field could be shaped into almost anything—a shield, a blade, multiple appendages for complex manipulation. He could theoretically operate a dozen objects simultaneously, though his concentration started to fragment beyond six or seven.
Landing back on the hotel roof as the sun rose, Marcus made calculations. His power growth was slowing—it would take another month to reach fifteen tons, maybe more to hit twenty. There seemed to be a soft cap around that level, at least for now.
But it was enough. More than enough.
In the Marvel universe, ten tons of telekinetic force, wielded with precision and intelligence, would make him formidable. He could stop bullets, throw cars, fly at supersonic speeds. Combined with the Mark III armor, he'd be nearly unstoppable.
Marcus spent the rest of the morning practicing fine control—simultaneously levitating hundreds of pennies in complex patterns, writing with ten pens at once, even successfully making himself 90% transparent by carefully bending light wavelengths.
He still couldn't achieve true invisibility across all spectrums. Thermal imaging would spot him, as would radar. But he was working on it, developing theoretical frameworks for telekinetic manipulation of infrared radiation and radio waves.
To be continued...
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