Chapter 2: Prologue
A little before, in another world, in a country similar to the rest…
He felt the class was boring, and it wasn’t entirely his fault, that’s what you get when you flunk and have to do it again, first few classes turn out to be even more boring the second time over, teachers’ presenting themselves, going over the schedule for the class along the months, tests, projects, groups, etc…
He could only sigh once more and stop with the scribbles at the edge of the page, it was just the first class, and on the page was the name of the new teacher, a few important dates and a few books he would have to look into.
‘why the fuck they insist with a different book each year, this cost a fortune.’ he though while checking the prices online and quickly moved to a site where they could be freely downloaded ‘thanks to technology they won’t get a cent out of this man…’ he kept a couple cells on his brain to pay attention to class as he watched the file download.
No bells rang, but the clock marked the end of the hour and the teacher still took a few more minutes to talk about the future classes while he had already started to pack things into his bag, not much to move around, without physical books he could carry a few pens, a couple notebooks and maybe something to eat, no need to tire himself with heavy papers.
The young man had already stand up for the moment the teacher declared the class as finished, walking out of the classroom through one of the back doors, sitting near the last rows of seats made it conspicuous enough to let him do that without drawing too many stares, after all, most people on the last rows were deep asleep for who knows how long.
He walked silently through the hallways, having rushed out of the classroom made it much more comfortable as less people were now filling them. Reaching the Cafe and sitting with some other people who were already talking between each other before he sat.
“Look who the cat brought in, Julio, was the class that boring?” An ash blonde, short haired man asked the young one who had just sat down.
“Not like you would know, you didn’t even come” Julio stretched after dropping the backpack on the ground, a few popping sounds came from his articulations, making one of the girls sitting close shudder.
She smacked his arm “Come on, don’t do that next to me, your joints will be like an old man’s” Julio chuckled at the brown haired girl’s words.
“Come on Sandra, you know it’s one of the few pleasures I have, sitting on a class for so long only makes it better” he proceeded to slowly crack his fingers noisily. The rest laughed as Sandra smacked his arm a few more times, the group soon chatting peacefully as the rest of the people came out from the classrooms and filled the large College’s Cafe.
Didn’t took more than an hour before something caught their attention, it wasn’t something impressive, it was just one of the waitresses turning on the television, the large screen showing the news where it showed that the list of strange accidents had increased.
By now Julio was aware of at least a dozen in the city, and it wasn’t something local, all over the world strange things had been happening. It had started with some small things that everyone attributed to bad luck, a truck exploding on the highway: a malfunction on the gasoline tank, a building falling over: faulty construction, multiple boats capsizing on the coast: a strange water current.
Of course things had slowly turned more and more weirder, harder to explain with mere coincidences, planes touching down on the wrong airports, people waking up at strange places, bed and all, and a global down-time of the internet, all types of digital connection had fallen for thirteen minutes and twenty-six seconds exactly, the strangest thing is that all systems marked 3 minutes earlier than the start of the down-time after recovering.
He hadn’t payed much attention to the current news, but most of the place was now silent, making it harder to just ignore. The latest news marked that in the latest mysterious incident a some-what known woman had perished as her car had lost control and ran straight into a wall. The rescue groups were astonished as no body had been recovered, even when the traffic cameras caught her in the car during the incident.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Julio excused himself after noticing the time and left the building, taking the first bus empty enough to not make it a nightmare. As the vehicle neared his destination a strange tingling sensation made Julio’s scalp grow itchy, the sensation only increasing and making it awkward to just stand there, he decided to step down a stop prior and walk the rest.
Just stepping down from the bus was like a breath of fresh air for Julio, both metaphorically and literally, taking the bus on winter had that added pleasure of sharing body heat in an enclosed space. The tingling sensation passed and he soon was already back on the way home.
He didn’t had a problem with walking three or four blocks more, it was a nice day, not too hot, not too cold, slightly cloudy, people were on the street but it wasn’t too crowded. Good day to walk and look around, it wasn’t exactly everyday he walked this few blocks instead of waiting inside the bus to get to his destination.
Block after block, nothing different in them than any other, beside the different kinds of shops, a school here or there, maybe a restaurant or cafe. He just let this time wind his mind down, relaxing and just emptying silly thoughts and worries. But against all odds, something came into his mind, those strange incidents, they kept happening, and no one was sure what was behind them.
Even the crazy guys weren’t sure, or unified on the reason. Lizard People, Aliens, the government, the FBI, mutants, etc… A few of the things that Julio had read about and given enough of a good chuckle. But one didn’t make him laugh, for what he managed to piece together, an ex-physics teacher had stated that this were all connected, he had even shown the relation between time and position of all events. Julio hadn’t laughed when a few of the most recent incidents had been prophesied by this person.
And the thought that really filled his mind is that there should another incident on his way back home from college, maybe that small paranoia was that made him step down from the bus.
As he mulled on that, his perception seemed to slow down, he moved his head to see how a couple workers accidentally dropped a live cable while they were working on the street. His eyes followed the sparkling trail that left the cable, the question of why wasn’t the cable secured before working filled his brain.
Then the cable hit the ground, touching a large puddle on the street a few meter or so from him. Whatever the liquid was, it was obviously not water as it exploded with an unexpected might, the ball of fire rising and expanding, hitting him straight on the chest and front of his body. He felt the extreme heat wrap around his body, his clothes scorched as the shock-wave hit him next, his body flying back and crashing through the large window of an empty store.
His world went from normal, into a raging inferno and then full black, his back hit the ground, but there’re no glass shards, now large window, no fire, he laid on the cold, dark marble floor, white walls and ceiling surrounded him.
It took a few moments before his brain caught up to the situation.
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Author Note: Just making a small note here, will try to update once a week, I have more or less planned 5 arcs, each one composed of 7 chapters, hopefully I will manage to keep the rate of release, also working on a Bios for the characters, but won't release them anytime soon, the idea is start once the info in it is not spoiler-ish on any way and more in a way to keep track of characters.