Aaron woke up with a start, drenched in sweat, his body still vibrating with the residual energy from the previous night. His mind replayed every second of the encounter with Crux—the distorted figure, the cryptic warnings, the fight.
He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands. The golden shimmer beneath his skin had dimmed but was still faintly visible in the early morning light.
“This isn’t going away,” he muttered to himself. “I need answers.”
His thoughts immediately went to Dr. Kael. She was the only person he trusted with something like this. If anyone could help him make sense of what was happening, it was her.
---
The university lab felt colder than usual as Aaron entered, the hum of the destroyed collider still lingering in his mind. Dr. Kael was seated at her desk, flipping through a stack of notes. When she saw Aaron, her sharp eyes immediately narrowed.
“You’re lucky I didn’t report this to the administration,” she said, gesturing toward the scorched remains of the collider. “Do you have any idea how much damage you caused?”
Aaron hesitated. “I—”
“Spare me the excuses,” she interrupted, standing and crossing her arms. “You’re a brilliant student, Aaron, but this was reckless. The entire lab could’ve been destroyed—or worse, someone could’ve died. What happened?”
Aaron swallowed hard, his instincts screaming at him to lie. But he couldn’t—not this time. Not when everything around him felt like it was unraveling.
“It wasn’t just an accident,” he said finally. “Something happened during the experiment. Something… impossible.”
Dr. Kael raised an eyebrow but didn’t interrupt.
Aaron took a deep breath. “The collider overloaded, but instead of just exploding, it… did something to me. I don’t know how to explain it, but I was pulled into some kind of void, and when I came back, I was… different.”
“Different how?” she asked, her tone skeptical but laced with curiosity.
Aaron hesitated, then glanced around the room. He focused on the far corner, where a pencil lay on a desk.
“Watch,” he said.
Before Dr. Kael could respond, Aaron moved. The world blurred around him as he crossed the lab in an instant, grabbing the pencil and returning to his original spot. He held it out to her, his chest rising and falling as he tried to gauge her reaction.
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Dr. Kael’s eyes widened. For a moment, she was speechless, staring at him as if he’d just defied the laws of reality—because he had.
“How…” she began, but stopped herself. “That’s not possible. You were—”
“I know,” Aaron interrupted. “But it’s real. Whatever happened during the experiment, it gave me… speed. Not just speed. I can feel things moving, shifting, like the world is running on a clock, and I’m the only one who can step outside of it.”
Dr. Kael took a cautious step back, her mind visibly racing. “You’re telling me the tachyon burst altered your physiology? Gave you some kind of… connection to time itself?”
Aaron nodded. “I didn’t believe it either, but last night… I wasn’t alone.”
Dr. Kael frowned. “What do you mean?”
“There was someone—or something—waiting for me,” Aaron said. “It called itself Crux. It said I’m ‘destabilizing the stream’ and that if I don’t learn control, I’ll destroy the universe.”
Dr. Kael stared at him for a long moment, then gestured for him to sit down. “Alright, let’s assume what you’re saying is true. If this ‘Crux’ is right, you’re dealing with forces far beyond anything we understand. We need to figure out exactly what happened during the experiment.”
She turned to her computer and began typing rapidly. “The collider’s data logs might still have something useful. If we can pinpoint the exact moment the burst occurred—”
“Wait,” Aaron interrupted. “Won’t that data be corrupted? The whole system was fried.”
“Not necessarily,” Dr. Kael said. “The collider’s backup server is stored off-site. It should have recorded everything up until the moment of the overload. If we can access it, we might be able to reconstruct what went wrong.”
Aaron nodded, a flicker of hope sparking in his chest. “Let’s do it.”
---
Hours later, Aaron and Dr. Kael sat in front of her computer, analyzing the recovered data. The screen displayed a detailed timeline of the experiment, showing energy levels rising steadily—until the burst.
“There,” Dr. Kael said, pointing to a sharp spike in the graph. “That’s when the tachyon particles reached critical mass. But look at this.”
She zoomed in on the data, revealing a second, smaller spike just before the burst.
“What is that?” Aaron asked.
Dr. Kael frowned. “It’s… an anomaly. The collider detected an external energy signature—something that wasn’t part of the experiment.”
Aaron’s stomach dropped. “You mean something interfered with it?”
Dr. Kael nodded slowly. “But what? Tachyons don’t behave like this. They’re supposed to exist in a closed system, but this…” She trailed off, staring at the screen.
Aaron felt a chill run down his spine. The memory of Tachyra’s voice echoed in his mind: You are the Chosen Nexus.
“Dr. Kael,” he said cautiously, “what if this wasn’t an accident? What if this was supposed to happen?”
Dr. Kael turned to him, her expression unreadable. “What are you saying?”
Aaron hesitated, then said the words that had been gnawing at him since the experiment: “What if I was meant to have this power? What if it’s part of something bigger?”
Before Dr. Kael could respond, the room’s lights flickered, and a low hum filled the air.
Aaron froze. He recognized the sound—it was the same hum he’d heard on the bridge.
“They’re here,” he whispered.
Dr. Kael looked at him in confusion. “Who’s—”
The air in the lab shimmered, and a portal of swirling black energy appeared in the center of the room. Two figures stepped through, their forms distorted and flickering, like broken images trying to stabilize.
Aaron clenched his fists, his body tensing as he felt the familiar ripple of their presence.
“Crux was right,” one of the figures said, their voice dripping with malice. “You’re a threat, Nexus. And we’ve come to eliminate you.”
---