The world wasn't unfamiliar with the concept of the extraordinary. Comic books, movies, and video games had saturated global culture with tales of superpowers, mutations, and abilities far beyond the norm. Yet, reality remained stubbornly mundane. Physics held firm, biology followed its predictable course, and the only flight achieved was through mechanics and combustion. Until the day the hum began. It wasn't a sound, not exactly. More a vibration felt deep within the bone, a note played on the strings of reality itself, perceived only by a select, scattered few.
[Tokyo, Japan - 14:32 JST]
Rain slicked the grey rooftop, reflecting the neon glow of distant advertisements even in the mid-afternoon gloom. Neon, whose actual name (Kaito Tanaki) felt as ill-fitting as a borrowed suit, was exactly where he wasn't supposed to be. Third-period Advanced Calculus droned on several floors below, a subject he could probably ace if he bothered, but where was the challenge in that?
Instead, he sat cross-legged on a discarded plastic crate, sheltered from the worst of the drizzle by a grimy ventilation unit, eyes glued to the cracked screen of his outdated smartphone. A digital shogi board glowed back at him, the pieces frozen mid-game against an anonymous online opponent.
Rook takes pawn... obvious. Knight advances... predictable. This guy's playing by the book. Boring.
Neon sighed, running a hand through his perpetually messy dark hair with neon tips. A stupid dye job from three years ago that somehow became permanent after a bizarre reaction, now a defiant flag against the drabness he felt life often presented. His parents certainly saw it that way when they'd used his plummeting grades and 'rebellious affectations' as the final excuse to ship him off to his Uncle Kenji's cramped apartment. Exile at ten. Fun times.
He tapped the screen, moving his Silver General into an unexpected defensive position, deliberately breaking the established flow. Let's see if you adapt, Book-kun, or just short-circuit.
He leaned back against the humming metal casing of the ventilation unit, the rhythmic thrum a familiar backdrop to his truancy. School was a game, just like shogi, just like chess. The goal wasn't necessarily to win by their rules (grades, attendance), but to achieve his own objectives (peace, quiet, mental stimulation) with maximum efficiency and minimum effort. Skipping class wasn't laziness; it was strategic resource allocation. Why endure boredom when he could be here, thinking?
That's when it happened.
It wasn't the ventilation unit. This was different. A deeper vibration, almost subsonic, resonated not through the metal, but through him. It felt like... like a tuning fork struck against his spine, a low, hum that seemed to make the very air shimmer. His vision blurred for a second, the raindrops momentarily freezing in their descent before continuing, leaving trails like fractured light.
Woah. What was that? Low blood sugar? Bad sushi from lunch?
He shook his head, blinking. The online shogi board flickered. His opponent's timer continued to tick down. Everything seemed normal again, except... not quite. There was a strange static clinging to the edge of his perception, like the world's audio gain had been turned up too high, revealing frequencies he shouldn't be hearing.
He looked down at his phone. His opponent still hadn't moved. Impatient, Neon mentally mapped out the next five potential move trees, calculating probabilities, visualizing the shifting dynamics of the board.
If he moves the Bishop here... check. If he sacrifices the Lance... interesting, but ultimately futile. If he pulls back the Knight...
As he focused on that third possibility, visualizing the Knight's L-shaped path, something flickered in his peripheral vision. He glanced up. A small, discarded plastic bottle cap, lying near the edge of the crate, wobbled. Then, impossibly, it lifted a millimeter off the surface, spun once, counterclockwise, and settled back down with a faint click.
Neon stared at it. He hadn't touched it. The wind wasn't strong enough up here, especially not for that precise, rotational movement. He focused on it again, intensely, picturing it lifting, turning the other way.
Nothing.
He frowned, the analytical part of his brain warring with the sheer absurdity of what he thought he'd seen. Okay. Definitely weird. Maybe I am sick. He pushed the thought away. Sickness was inconvenient. This... this felt different. Less like a malfunction, more like a... software update?
The hum faded, leaving behind only the rain, the city sounds, and a profound sense of unease. His phone buzzed. His opponent had moved. Rook takes pawn. Predictable.
Neon looked from the shogi board to the plastic bottle cap, then back again. A slow, calculating smile touched his lips, the first genuine expression he'd shown all day. Maybe things weren't so boring after all.
[Rome, Italy - 07:33 CET]
Darkness. A thick, muffled, absolute darkness that had been his world for... how long? Time had ceased to have meaning. There was only the void, occasionally punctuated by distant, distorted echoes – voices, beeps, the rush of liquid – none of it truly registering. He was adrift in an endless, silent ocean.
Then, pain. A sharp, stabbing agony behind the eyes, like ice picks driving into his skull. Light – blinding, searing white light – assaulted him through closed eyelids. Sound crashed in, a cacophony of rhythmic beeping, a low hum, muffled footsteps, a woman's voice speaking rapidly in Italian.
Wha... where...?
His eyelids felt glued shut, heavy as lead. He tried to move a finger, a hand. Nothing. Panic began to bubble, cold and sharp, beneath the crushing weight of disorientation.
Focus. Analyze. Data points.
The beeping was rhythmic, insistent. Heart monitor? The humming, low and electrical. Life support? Hospital. The voice was closer now, urgent. He forced his eyelids open a slit.
Blurry shapes swam into view. White ceiling tiles. Gleaming metal. A face hovering above him – female, masked, eyes wide with shock behind sterile glasses. She was shouting something, her voice joined by others.
Reyes... Dr. Reyes... can you hear me?
He tried to form words, but his throat felt like sandpaper, his tongue thick and unresponsive. A dry, croaking sound emerged.
String... Partial... Divergence... The thought surfaced, sharp and clear amidst the fog. His theorem. The breakthrough he was on the verge of proving. The reason for the late nights, the ignored calls, the simmering tension with the funding committee... the accident.
The accident. A sudden blowout on the Autostrada. Skidding metal. Blinding headlights. Then... nothing. Just this endless darkness.
That's when the other feeling hit, distinct from the pain and confusion. It overlaid the return of his senses like a layer of static on a radio signal. A deep, internal resonance. The same hum that Neon felt across the globe but perceived differently by Ikoo's scientifically-attuned mind. It felt like... like the fundamental constants of the universe were fluctuating, just for a microsecond. Like reality itself had stuttered.
Energy surged through him, a bizarre warmth that seemed to counteract the deep chill of his long inactivity. It wasn't strength, not yet, but a tingling awareness, a sense of potentiality thrumming beneath his skin. He felt... recalibrated.
More faces appeared above him. Doctors, nurses. Urgent consultations in Italian. He caught fragments. "Otto anni..." Eight years. "Incredibile..." Incredible. "Stato vegetativo..." Vegetative state.
Eight years?
The number slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. Eight years stolen. Wiped clean. His research, his life... gone. The government contact who had warned him, subtly, about "sensitive implications" of his theorem. The sudden withdrawal of funding. The convenient "accident."
They did this. The certainty settled cold and hard in his gut. They put me here.
He tried to lift his head, a surge of adrenaline momentarily overriding the atrophy. His neck muscles screamed in protest, but his head raised a bare centimeter off the pillow. His eyes, sharp and fiercely intelligent despite the ravaged body, locked onto the nearest doctor.
A gasp escaped his lips, barely audible. "Eight... years?"
The resonance faded, leaving behind the frantic activity of the hospital room and the crushing weight of lost time. But something else remained – that strange, energetic hum deep within, a latent power coiled in the ruins of his body. And a burning, consuming need for answers.
[Rome, Italy - Olympic Training Centre - 07:34 CET]
Control. Precision. Power.
Tyzi lived and breathed these principles. They were etched into her muscles, programmed into her reflexes. Right now, they translated into the explosive energy propelling her across the spring floor. Tumble sequence: round-off, back handspring, layout step-out, another back handspring, into a double pike.
Her body moved with practiced perfection, each rotation tight, each landing absorbed with minimal impact. The rhythmic squeak of her bare feet on the mat, the grunt of exertion forced past her lips, the distant instructions of her coach, Marco – these were the sounds of her world.
She ignored Marco, mostly. His technical corrections were usually sound, but his presence grated. Like most men, he was prone to unnecessary comments, fleeting touches disguised as adjustments, a casual possessiveness in his gaze she despised. Focus.
She launched into the second tumbling pass. Whip-back, back handspring, full-twisting double back. Air sense took over, her body knowing exactly where it was in space, spotting the mat for the landing. She was halfway through the second rotation when the hum hit her.
It wasn't a sound, not amidst the gym's ambient noise. It was a jolt, an internal lurch, like missing a step on a staircase that wasn't there. For a fraction of a second, her iron-clad spatial awareness vanished. The world tilted violently. Nausea surged.
No!
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced her concentration. Losing control mid-air was catastrophic. Instinct and years of training screamed at her to abort, tuck, minimize damage. But something else happened simultaneously. A bizarre surge of... something. It felt like an unseen force corrected her spin, adding an impossible burst of rotational energy while simultaneously steadying her.
Instead of crashing, she over-rotated slightly, landing the double back not perfectly, but safely, albeit with a deeper knee bend than usual and a stumble she barely controlled.
She stood there, breathing heavily, heart pounding not just from exertion but from the sheer wrongness of that moment. The floor felt unsteady beneath her feet. The air vibrated faintly.
"Tyzi! What was that? Sloppy landing! Keep the core tight!" Marco's voice boomed across the gym.
Tyzi glared in his general direction, her default reaction – blame him, blame him. Did he distract her? Did someone move? Was the floor uneven? But she knew, deep down, it wasn't external. It was internal. That jolt, that weird correction... it felt like her own body had betrayed her, then saved her, all in the same millisecond.
"Floor feels weird," she snapped back, buying time, running a hand over her already tight bun. Her skin felt... tingly. Like static electricity, but from the inside out.
She walked stiffly towards the chalk bucket, ignoring Marco's approaching footsteps. She needed a moment to process. What was that? Injury? Vertigo? Or something else? The memory of the sensation – the hum, the lurch, the inexplicable surge – lingered, unsettling and alien.
She dipped her hands into the white powder, the familiar powdery feel a small anchor in her suddenly unstable reality. Control. Precision. Power. Those were her pillars. But something new, something unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable, had just entered the equation. And Tyzi Rossi hated the unpredictable. Almost as much as she hated the feeling of not being in complete command of her own body orrrr Hated MEN.
The hum was gone. But the echo remained, a silent question mark hanging in the air of the vast gymnasium. And in Tokyo, a slacker smiled at a bottle cap. And in a Rome hospital room, a physicist woken from an eight-year slumber began to calculate the variables of his new, impossible reality.
Across the globe, unnoticed by the masses, the world had just irrevocably changed for ten individuals.