The Torch Office…
Next Day
The Wall of Weird had miraculously survived.
This was exactly the impossible thing that Chloe kept returning to as she slowly, quietly surveyed the massive damage.
The heavy metal filing cabinet was completely totaled.
The cork pinboard on the left wall was totally destroyed…
every single clipping violently burned, the thick backing board totally charred right through.
Two of the hard desk chairs were violently warped by the intense heat.
The desktop computer sitting heavily on her main editor’s desk actually had a partially melted keyboard.
But the Wall of Weird was entirely intact.
Not completely perfectly…
the fragile edges of several old clippings were slightly singed, two of the glossy photographs had severely curled directly from the ambient heat.
But the absolute core of it…
the massive map, the long articles, the intricate web of careful connections she had painstakingly built over three long years…
was completely alive.
Simply because the roaring fire had been violently snuffed totally out exactly when it would have absolutely consumed the wall entirely.
Chloe stood silently directly in front of the wall for five full minutes.
Then, she went slowly to her computer and quietly opened a fresh, new document.
She carefully titled it: THE INVISIBLE GUARDIAN: A Working Theory.
She began to rapidly type.
Incident 1: Anonymous email tip…
Greg Arkin / Simmons Foundry.
Routing complexity: military-grade.
Purpose: strictly ensured the highly dangerous information reached the Torch entirely securely.
Incident 2: Torch fire…
Coach Walt Arnold.
Hostile metahuman instantly neutralized by an invisible concussive shockwave directly originating from the outer corridor.
Massive fire simultaneously extinguished via instant, total oxygen starvation.
Fire alarm violently triggered remotely.
No visible physical agent.
Method: Totally Unknown.
Result: Lethal threat completely eliminated.
The Wall of Weird survived.
I survived.
Pattern: Someone with highly significant technical and non-technical capabilities is actively monitoring Freak-of-the-Week incidents here in Smallville.
They are aggressively intervening to heavily protect the investigative apparatus (this specific office, me).
They have absolutely not identified themselves.
They have deliberately taken incredibly active, highly sophisticated steps to remain totally invisible.
Questions:
1.
Who exactly has the massive technical sophistication to expertly route an email directly through seventeen secure servers entirely from Smallville, Kansas? Read this novel at novelping dot com for the best experience.
2.
Who, or what, can somehow easily generate a highly localized shockwave powerful enough to instantly stop a raging metahuman and a massive fire instantly?
3.
Why route their powerful assistance specifically through me?
Chloe abruptly stopped typing.
She sat back and thought deeply.
Then, she slowly typed:
4.
How exactly does ALEX CARTER somehow know so much?
First incident I can clearly identify: the bridge accident.
Clark specifically described Alex Carter as effortlessly getting the totally stuck Porsche door open completely underwater.
Clark explicitly described it as a ‘lucky break.’
She stared hard at that for a very long time.
Alex Carter had absolutely zero digital footprint right before the sudden county group home placement.
Absolutely no school records from anytime before last year.
Absolutely no social media presence whatsoever.
He casually arrived right in Smallville exactly three short weeks before the Freak incidents suddenly began aggressively escalating.
He was a fifteen-year-old orphan.
He had absolutely no parents.
He had absolutely no explanation for exactly how he already knew so much about highly theoretical meteor biology exactly when he calmly suggested the toxic sauna hypothesis to her.
He had definitely been inside the school building right when the Torch office violently caught fire.
He was standing on the bridge.
She carefully saved the sensitive document with a highly complex password and a boring filename that looked exactly like a standard trigonometry homework assignment.
She definitely didn’t have enough solid proof.
She absolutely would not confront him.
Not yet.
Maybe actually not ever…
if exactly what she deeply suspected was totally true, then aggressively confronting Alex Carter directly about his massive secrets was a bit exactly like carelessly confronting Clark Kent about his.
And she had firmly made a highly tacit, unbreakable decision, long years ago, never to actively do that.
But she was completely, constantly watching.
The Lab…
Friday Night
Mana level: significantly increased.
Bugs: still alive (twelve survivors from original capture).
Alex sat quietly in the cold storage unit and methodically updated his private experiment log.
The long week had moved incredibly fast.
The highly tragic Walt Arnold incident had rapidly rippled straight through Smallville exactly in the highly predictable way that small-town tragedies always do…
expansively, repetitively, aggressively through absolutely every coffee shop and busy church and quiet PTA meeting.
The official, sanitized story was a terrible training accident, a tragic gas leak deeply in the old sauna, a deeply tragic death that the entire school was currently aggressively grieving.
The football program was indefinitely suspended pending a massive formal investigation. This story is hosted at g.com.
The completely unofficial story…
the dangerous one that the Torch would eventually proudly publish, exactly once the tense political situation finally settled and Chloe had fully recovered her iron nerve…
was significantly more complicated.
Clark had sadly come right through the messy week significantly quieter than usual.
The terrible witness to Walt’s tragic death…
whatever specific, horrifying version of it Clark had actually seen…
had deeply shaken him entirely in a way that he was stubbornly working through completely privately.
That was exactly Clark’s established pattern.
He painfully processed trauma simply by going totally silent, and then slowly coming directly out the other side with his deep, unshakeable conviction about actually being a hero slightly stronger, and his total tolerance for innocent collateral damage significantly lower.
Alex was absolutely not going to ever casually interfere with that vital process.
It was completely necessary.
It was exactly how Clark Kent slowly became Superman.
He carefully closed his experiment log and smoothly opened his private notebook.
Fire affinity actively confirmed.
Mechanism: pure pyrokinesis meteor-energy successfully integrated directly with existing mana strictly to effortlessly produce fire-aspected magical output.
Current capability: highly minor.
A single, small magical flame, safely sustained for approximately ninety total seconds right before current reserves are entirely depleted.
The massive meteor energy from Walt Arnold definitely did not actually give me pyrokinesis.
It smoothly gave my existing, growing magic a strict fire signature.
Exactly what I actively do with that specific signature is entirely determined strictly by my heavy training and my raw reserves.
Implication: Each individual meteor freak’s highly unique energy may directly contribute a totally different aspect strictly to my growing magical core.
Jeremy Creek: massive raw mana with heavy electrical undertones.
Greg Arkin’s irradiated bugs: highly foundational ambient energy, totally broad-spectrum.
Walt Arnold: deep fire affinity.
If this specific pattern firmly holds…
and it is definitely far too early to fully conclude that it actually does…
then the Smallville meteor freaks are absolutely not just disposable power sources.
They are an entire curriculum.
Alex quietly set down his pen.
He calmly held up his right hand.
Deeply concentrated.
The magical flame instantly appeared…
a little larger than it had actually been on the dark loading dock.
Significantly steadier.
He could comfortably hold it entirely without his hand shaking now.
He slowly, carefully rotated it, intensely examining the exact shape of it, the highly fluid way it flawlessly responded to his strict intent.
He thought purely about heat and it instantly brightened.
He thought strictly about tight containment and it instantly shrank directly to a highly sharp, white-hot point.
Control.
It was absolutely always exactly about perfect control.
He quietly extinguished the tiny flame.