"They are definitely metahumans," Victor thought as he hugged his two little cousins tightly. He had noticed their unusual life energy since he arrived yesterday. If they had been ordinary, he would have seen only green.
Their altered biology only confirmed his suspicion. They had definitely been affected by the particle accelerator explosion. But their powers were still dormant, and that eased his mind. At least they had not awakened any unstable or uncontrollable abilities.
Victor tightened his arms around Chloe and Matt, lifting them slightly off the floor as they squealed in surprise. Their warmth, their laughter, the small thump of their hearts against his chest…family was underrated.
Chloe clung to his neck. "You better not disappear again," she mumbled.
"I won't," Victor said softly, kissing the top of her head. Matt hugged him from the side, pressing his face into Victor's shoulder with a stubborn grip that made Victor smile.
Jennifer stepped into the doorway, jingling her car keys. "Alright, you two. Time for school."
The kids groaned in unison but finally loosened their hold. Victor set them down gently, smoothing Matt's shirt and brushing Chloe's hair back into place.
"Go on," he said, crouching to their height. "I'll be here when you get back."
They nodded, still reluctant, then rushed to Jennifer's side. She gave Victor a reassuring look before shepherding them out the door, their backpacks bouncing as they hurried to the car.
"Bye, Victor!" they echoed, waving as the car pulled away down the street.
Victor waved back, a quiet chuckle slipping out before he closed the door behind him. "Alright… now it's time for some experiments."
Finally alone in the house, he could start putting some of his ideas about replicating superspeed into action. His overnight analysis had brought several problems to the surface.
He sat cross-legged in the spare room. The posture was unnecessary, but it felt right. It helped him settle.
He closed his eyes and focused, calling up everything he had learned about Barry's physiology, every detail about superspeed and the limits of what the human body could tolerate. Bit by bit, he organized the knowledge in his mind.
Superspeed was, at its core, the ability to move, react, and think at velocities far beyond anything a human body should be capable of. The very idea strained the limits of physics and biology alike.
The drawbacks were impossible to ignore. Rapid acceleration and sudden stops would expose the body to crushing G-forces. Traveling at extreme velocities meant slamming into air molecules with enough force to generate heat that could, under the right conditions, ignite the atmosphere itself.
The force generated from simply running at such speeds would be enough to crack the ground beneath him. Even worse, the energy needed to maintain that level of movement would be overwhelming, almost impossible for a normal body to supply.
From everything Victor understood, the dangers of superspeed could only be neutralized in a few specific ways, and the most reliable method involved a protective field that surrounded and stabilized the user.
Such a field prevented both the user and the world around them from suffering the destructive consequences of high-velocity movement.
This principle applied to all conventional forms of superspeed that did not involve accelerating a person's individual flow of time.
Even Kryptonians, who could withstand the physical strain of superspeed on their own bodies, possessed a natural biofield that shielded the environment from the force their movement produced. That biofield was exactly where Victor drew his inspiration.
But all of that only addressed the side effects. Achieving superspeed in the first place was the real challenge. Moving at extreme velocities required more than enhanced muscles. The mind had to keep pace, capable of processing, reacting to, and transmitting information at speeds far beyond normal human limits.
The only thing within the human body that carried the potential for such a template was bioelectricity. It was a fundamental force behind countless biological processes, including nerve impulses, muscle contraction, growth, cellular communication, and even regeneration.
In simple terms, bioelectricity is the tiny form of electricity your body produces to keep you alive and moving. Imagine the body as a city, and your nerves as small electric wires running through it.
These wires send tiny electric signals that tell your body to move your arm, blink your eyes, make your heart beat, or feel the touch of something against your skin.
The brain acted as the power station. It generated the signals, the nerves carried them, and the muscles and organs responded to them. Victor went over every detail, diving deep into his own body to understand the process as clearly as possible.
The electricity itself was tiny, barely noticeable. It was so insignificant that using it as the foundation for superspeed would demand immense changes.
Bioelectricity was simply the body's natural electrical system, the current that kept everything functioning and carried every message the body relied on.
It was produced through a series of complex processes that caused one side of a cell to become positively charged and the other negatively charged, creating a tiny spark of electricity.
If I could amplify it on a massive scale, Victor thought. The human body already generated a natural electrical field, though it was far too weak to matter.
Still, the important part was simple. Whenever electricity flowed, a magnetic field formed. Together, they created a natural bioelectromagnetic field, often referred to as a biofield.
"If it could be greatly amplified," it could potentially be shaped into a friction-reducing aura, a kinetic dampening layer, a shock-absorbing buffer, or even a protective barrier similar to a small electromagnetic shield. It was definitely a workable solution.
Victor tapped into his biokinesis and, for the first time, manipulated every part of his body without restraint.
He stripped away the natural neural inhibitors, erased the lag between signals, and massively increased the speed at which electrical impulses traveled through his nervous system. It was the first step toward mimicking what he had observed in Barry.
When Victor opened his eyes, the world had slowed to a crawl. Even he felt delayed, as if everything around him were submerged in syrup.
He raised his hands, and they drifted upward at an agonizing pace. From his perspective, several seconds passed before his fingertips finally reached his head.
"Perception and reaction, check," Victor said as he allowed his senses to return to normal.
"That was surprisingly easy," he muttered. The experience had been surreal, almost unsettling, yet it left him buzzing with anticipation for what came next. "Now for the body."
He pushed his biokinesis deeper. His vision shifted, allowing him to see every part of himself at once, every cell, every thread of energy.
No matter how many times he explored his body like this, the sight always filled him with a rush of excitement. Steadying his focus, he began making the changes he needed.
Using Barry as his initial template, Victor began adjusting his body. He enhanced organs capable of withstanding extreme velocity, reshaped his lungs to intake and distribute oxygen far more efficiently, and increased the density of his muscles and bones.
"Energy consumption won't be a problem," he thought. His ATP the primary energy-carrying molecule in all living organisms had already been altered. It now constantly carried dark matter, the same energy that fueled his biokinesis.
It had almost eliminated his need for food, his body able to run purely on the energy without issue.
Now, his body was primed to withstand the stresses of superspeed and the dangers of amplifying bioelectricity, risks that included accidentally short-circuiting his own heart and far worse.
Although he doubted the changes would harm him, he knew he couldn't rely on his biokinesis to sustain superspeed indefinitely. Without careful structure, any alterations he made would snap back like a rubber band, only far more violently.
Now came the true source of power. Just as speedsters drew from an extra-dimensional force as a battery, Victor wanted something similar. He needed a unique energy beyond mere bioelectricity, something that, on its own, could never achieve superspeed, lacking the very attribute of speed.
The only reason he had attempted this at all was the unstable dark matter flowing through him, an exotic, attributeless energy, similar to Speed Force energy but fundamentally different.
Victor raised his palm to his face, eyes locked onto it, seeing beyond ordinary sight. Dark matter surged chaotically as he partially lifted its suppression. He watched, fascinated, as bioelectricity and dark matter collided, merging into something entirely new.
Cells mutated and died in rapid succession, while anything harmful was instantly neutralized. He ignored and eliminated cells that failed to produce speed-force like energy.
He remembered the energy coursing through Barry, how it flowed and accelerated. Minutes passed, and then, suddenly, it clicked. The energy wasn't purely electric, but it was close enough. Victor locked onto it, amplifying the unique cells exponentially.
The rest was history. Victor clenched his fists, feeling the energy surge through him. When he opened his eyes, silver-blue light flickered within them.
His muscles tensed and in the next instant, Victor vanished from where he sat, leaving nothing behind but a silver-blue blur streaking through the room.