The morning after the Homecoming dance felt like a hangover from a dream. Smallville was buzzing with the news: Greg Arkin had been found unconscious and severely injured near the old cannery, by an anonymous shadow in the dark.
Jeremy didn't care about the gossip. He sat on the edge of his bed in the grey morning light, staring at his hands. The residual strength he'd leached from Greg was gone—vanished like steam. He felt hollow, brittle, and more "static" than ever.
He grabbed the green meteor rock from his dresser. The moment his skin touched the jagged surface, the chaotic buzzing in his nerves flattened into a smooth, powerful hum.
"It's a stabilizer," Jeremy whispered, his eyes narrowing. "But is it a reservoir?"
…
Jeremy skipped his first two classes, letting Dominic think he was sleeping off the "hungover" of the night before. Instead, he took a bus to the edge of the county and hiked back into the junkyard. The towering piles of rusted iron and shattered glass felt more like home than the apartment ever would.
He found his spot—a clearing surrounded by crushed flatbeds—and set the green rock on the hood of a rusted '68 Chevy.
"Okay," Jeremy muttered, his heart hammering. "Let's see if I can hold the lightning."
He didn't have a Greg Arkin to drain today, so he looked at the overhead power lines that cut across the corner of the yard—high-voltage cables feeding the nearby industrial park. He reached out, closing his eyes and visualizing the flow.
He didn't just tap the line this time. He hooked into it.
CRACK.
A visible arc of blue energy leapt from the line to Jeremy's outstretched hand. Normally, this much juice would have scorched his skin and sent him into a seizure. But he kept his other hand firmly planted on the green meteor rock.
The sensation changed instantly.
Instead of the energy tearing through his cells like a jagged saw, it felt like it was being filtered. The rock acted like a massive capacitor, soaking up the overflow and feeding a steady, purified stream back into Jeremy's nervous system.
His vision went white. For a moment, he wasn't a boy; he was a circuit. He could feel the entire power grid of the county—the pulsing heart of the substation, the flickering lights of the high school, the silent hum of the Kent farm.
He pulled away, gasping, but he didn't collapse.
He stood upright, his skin glowing with a faint, ethereal green-blue light. He felt… dense. He walked over to a stack of three crushed cars and placed a hand on the side. With a casual shove, he sent the two-ton mass of metal sliding five feet across the dirt.
"I kept it," he breathed, looking at the rock. "The rock isn't just a ground. It's a bridge."
Jeremy stared at the stone. It was vibrating now, warm to the touch. He realized that his body was a conductor, the "freaks" were batteries, and the rocks were the regulatory valves.
If he held the rock while he touched someone like Greg—or someone like Clark—he wouldn't just "vacuum" their energy until it exploded. He could siphon it. He could regulate the flow, store the essence of what they were inside himself, and keep the "Static" from burning out his own human shell.
He looked at his palms. The blisters from his first experiment were gone, replaced by skin that felt unnaturally smooth, almost metallic. He didn't have a guide. He didn't have a theory. He just had an appetite that was growing every time the sun went down.