Friday…
The Lab
Alex had quietly rented the small storage unit on Wednesday using a tiny portion of Lex’s massive investment.
It was a standard ten-by-fifteen climate-controlled unit at the Smallville Self-Storage facility out on Route 90…
a totally featureless, grim concrete building heavily surrounded by a rusty chain-link fence, easily accessible twenty-four hours a day with a simple keypad code.
He had carefully chosen it for three specific reasons.
First: it was completely off the grid.
Absolutely no one visited sketchy storage facilities without a very specific, usually private reason.
Second: it was strictly climate-controlled, which meant it would reliably keep his delicate biological specimens alive.
Third: it was incredibly cheap…
exactly eighty dollars a month, paid completely in untraceable cash, under the highly generic name “A. Carter.”
The bare unit was completely spartan.
A cheap folding table.
A canvas camping chair.
A bright, battery-powered lantern.
A highly eclectic set of basic laboratory supplies quietly purchased from the Smallville Hardware store and the dusty science section of the county library’s annual book sale…
thick glass beakers, clear rubber tubing, a large magnifying glass, a spiral notebook, and a fresh box of latex gloves.
Alex carefully set the six heavy mason jars firmly on the folding table and pulled up the squeaky camping chair.
The captured bugs glowed faintly behind the thick glass, their eerie green phosphorescence casting strange, shifting patterns across the cold concrete walls.
He smoothly opened his blank notebook and wrote:
Experiment Log…
Entry 1
Date: [Friday]
Subject: Meteor-irradiated insects (Coleoptera, unidentified species) recovered directly from the Simmons foundry following the Greg Arkin incident.
Hypothesis: Volatile meteor energy can be safely extracted from living, non-human hosts entirely in controlled conditions.
If successful, this would immediately provide a renewable, highly ethical source of mana that strictly does not require the tragic death of any sentient being.
Method: Direct, focused magical contact.
Carefully replicate the exact conditions of the Jeremy Creek absorption, but on a significantly smaller, highly controlled scale.
Alex slowly put down his pen.
He carefully picked up one of the glowing mason jars, unscrewed the lead-lined lid, and deftly used the metal tongs to extract a single, writhing bug.
He placed it gently on the center of the table.
The bizarre insect sat perfectly motionless, its tiny legs spread wide, its long antennae twitching erratically.
The eerie green glow pulsed very weakly…
a faint, tragic heartbeat of pure alien radiation.
Alex slowly extended his bare index finger and gently touched the bug’s hard carapace.
He felt it absolutely immediately…
the very faintest whisper of raw meteor energy, so incredibly small it was almost imperceptible.
Like a single, solitary drop of cold water resting on a deeply parched tongue.
His magical core stirred…
a tiny, involuntary contraction of deep interest, exactly like a hunting dog’s ear suddenly twitching at a distant, unfamiliar sound.
But it absolutely did not pull.
The available energy was just too small.
Far too diffuse.
His core had violently reached for Jeremy Creek simply because that energy had been incredibly massive…
a roaring torrent that his starving reserves simply could not ignore.
This was a mere trickle.
Less than a trickle.
A fine mist.
The tiny bug was still perfectly alive.
Still glowing weakly.
He picked up his pen and wrote in his notebook:
Result: Physical contact established.
Ambient energy detected, but totally insufficient to trigger any involuntary absorption.
Core response: minimal.
Subject: alive and completely unchanged.
Conclusion: Single-insect extraction is absolutely not viable through mere passive contact.
The minimum energy threshold for involuntary absorption is significantly higher than a single bug can ever provide.
Next steps: Test multiple simultaneous contacts.
Test active (highly deliberate) extraction versus passive (involuntary).
Test prolonged contact duration.
Alex looked thoughtfully at the sealed jars.
Six jars.
Roughly twelve hundred living bugs.
Each single one carrying a microscopic, highly potent fragment of volatile meteor energy.
If he could somehow find a reliable way to safely extract and perfectly aggregate that energy…
to actively draw it out deliberately, in carefully controlled increments, without the violent, involuntary surge that had tragically killed Jeremy…
he would instantly have a completely sustainable power source.
A perfect way to exponentially grow without ever killing again.
It would be incredibly slow.
Painfully, agonizingly slow.
Each tiny bug probably carried significantly less energy than a single drop of water carried volume.
He might honestly need to actively drain a thousand bugs just to equal exactly what he had taken from Jeremy in a single, violent moment.
But it would be totally clean.
Alex picked up the metal tongs and carefully extracted exactly five more bugs, meticulously arranging them in a tight circle on the folding table.
He slowly placed his bare palm perfectly flat over the glowing circle…
not physically touching them, just hovering closely…
and closed his eyes in deep concentration.
This time, he absolutely did not wait for his core to act on blind instinct.
He deliberately reached.
It was exactly like trying to aggressively sip thick water through a tiny coffee stirrer.
The raw energy was definitely there…
he could physically feel it, a bright constellation of tiny green sparks dancing wildly right beneath his palm…
but successfully drawing it directly through his delicate magical pathways required an intense precision that his current, limited skill level barely supported.
He had to completely open his core deliberately, create a very gentle, magical suction, and perfectly maintain it at a strict level low enough that it didn’t simply overwhelm and instantly kill the fragile bugs, but high enough that it actually drew usable energy.
Long minutes passed.
Cold sweat beaded heavily on Alex’s forehead.
His extended hand trembled visibly with the intense physical effort of maintaining the incredibly delicate balance.
Then…
slowly, impossibly slowly…
he genuinely felt it.
A tiny, pure thread of energy.
Significantly thinner than a human hair.
Winding its way cleanly from the five glowing bugs directly beneath his palm, straight up through his skin, flowing smoothly along the intricate pathways of his meridians, and directly into his hungry core.
The actual increase was totally negligible.
But it was undeniably there.
Alex slowly opened his tired eyes and looked down at the bugs.
Three were still weakly moving.
Two were completely motionless…
totally dead, their eerie green glow permanently extinguished.
The surviving three were significantly dimmer than before, their bright phosphorescence heavily faded from a vibrant, toxic green to a very dull, sickly olive.
Two dead out of five.
A massive forty percent mortality rate.
Not ideal.
But definitely better than a hundred percent.
Alex wiped his brow and wrote quickly in his notebook:
Result: Active extraction partially successful.
Raw energy safely drawn from five subjects simultaneously.
Two subjects tragically expired during the extraction process.
Three subjects miraculously survived with significantly diminished energy signatures.
Yield: Negligible (estimated <0.1% of the massive Jeremy Creek yield).
Mortality: 40%.
Conclusion: Active extraction is totally possible, but highly inefficient and still partially lethal.
The delicate technique requires significant, focused refinement to reduce the high mortality rate and vastly increase the overall yield.
Observation: The extraction was completely conscious and highly deliberate…
not wildly involuntary like the Creek incident.
This absolutely confirms that the deep absorption mechanism can be perfectly controlled.
With intense practice, it may be totally possible to extract significant energy without killing the host.
Priority: Rapidly refine extraction technique.
Reduce mortality to absolute zero if humanly possible.
Drastically increase energy yield per session.
Alex carefully closed the thick notebook and leaned back heavily in his squeaky camping chair.
It was a start.
A very small, highly imperfect, incredibly frustrating start.
But it was absolutely a start.
He finally had a secret lab.
He had living specimens.
He had massive funding.
And he had a technique…
incredibly crude and highly deadly and barely functional…
that definitively proved the underlying magical principle was totally sound.
Meteor energy absolutely could be extracted from living hosts without the violent, total drain that had brutally killed Jeremy Creek.
The complex process just deeply needed massive refinement.
It needed intense practice.
It needed significant time.
But time was something Alex possessed in abundance.
The absolute next dangerous meteor freak probably wouldn’t appear for weeks.
In the meantime, he would vigorously practice on the bugs.
He would deeply refine his magical technique.
He would painstakingly learn to completely control the delicate extraction process until he could smoothly draw energy as gently and precisely as a trained phlebotomist drew blood…
a perfectly precise, carefully measured quantity, absolutely no more than the helpless host could afford to lose.