Morning in Queens was quiet.
Sunlight angled through the gaps between buildings, casting bright streaks across the ground.
Ryan Quinn strolled down the sidewalk, passing a donut shop that was still open.
He paused for two seconds—looking like he wanted to go in, then looking like he was too lazy to bother—before shoving his hands back into his pockets and continuing on.
Ryan Quinn didn’t walk fast.
To be precise, he walked at a pace that made people want to push him.
His steps were sluggish, his shoulders slightly slumped, and his eyes half-lidded, looking as if he could sit down on a curb and fall asleep at any moment.
But he was listening.
Smelling.
Feeling.
The Blacklight virus’s perception spread out in all directions: sirens wailing three blocks away, a bakery two streets over baking croissants, the speed and temperature of the water in the sewers ten meters below his feet—it all flooded in.
Ryan Quinn yawned.
He was used to it; the information was like background noise.
He couldn’t be bothered to turn it off, nor did he care to.
Ryan Quinn ducked through a narrow alley and hopped over a low wall.
His movements while climbing were sharp, but his landing was sloppy; he didn’t even bother to bend his knees, standing stiffly on the weed-choked vacant lot.
This place used to be a machine shop.
It had gone under after the financial crisis and no one had been here since.
Ryan Quinn had stumbled upon it a month ago.
It was a good spot—mainly because there were no people.
People were a hassle.
He squeezed through a loose window on the side.
Halfway through, his pant leg caught on a nail on the window frame.
Ryan Quinn looked down and remained silent for two seconds.
“…Forget it.” He didn’t bother unhooking it; he just lunged forward.
The fabric tore.
Ryan Quinn landed on a pile of wooden crates, dust flying into his face.
He coughed twice, waved the dust away, and jumped down.
His foot slipped upon landing, nearly stepping on the torn strip of his own pants.
He glanced down but still didn’t care.
The interior of the factory was much cleaner than before.
A while back, when he was bored out of his mind, he’d swept up the broken glass and iron shavings and pushed a few old machine tools against the wall to clear a space.
In the corner sat a pile of old tires and planks, along with some rope and a bucket of paint.
He’d originally thought about making some targets to practice with, but then decided that hanging them up was too much work, so he just left them there.
Today was his second day off from school.
Ryan Quinn stood in the middle of the clearing, thinking for a long time about what to do today.
Training, obviously.
The plan was already laid out.
Ava Starr’s quantum phasing—phase-throughs and Partial phasing, plus moving through walls.
The basics of the basics.
He’d had Ghost’s abilities stored in the Blacklight virus for a while now but hadn’t practiced them.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, it was just…
well.
He was lazy.
Ryan Quinn took off his jacket and tossed it aside.
The jacket hit a crate, slid off, and fell to the floor.
Ryan Quinn glanced at it.
“Whatever.” Underneath, he wore a dark gray T-shirt.
The collar was a bit loose and the cuffs were starting to pill—the kind of shirt that had been washed many times.
He wasn’t sure which crate he’d dug it out of, or if the original owner had left it.
He couldn’t be bothered to buy new ones.
Ryan Quinn stretched his neck.
The left side cracked, the right side didn’t.
He rolled it again; still nothing.
Forget it.
Then he closed his eyes.
Images of Ava Starr surfaced in his mind.
The girl whose normal life had been stripped away by a quantum experiment, whose body was forever collapsing and recombining at a molecular level.
Her abilities and the pain she endured, out of sync with the world every second—all of it had been extracted from her genes by the Blacklight virus and stored deep within his cells.
Having them in the gene pool didn’t mean he knew how to use them.
Ryan Quinn opened his eyes and looked down at his right hand.
Quantum phasing was unstable.
It allowed the body to pass through any matter—walls, people, bullets.
But it also meant enduring the sensation of one’s internal organs being torn apart every second.
He didn’t have to suffer that; the Blacklight virus’s regenerative capabilities neutralized the damage.
What he needed to learn were the fundamentals: passing his hand through the air before passing it through an object.
Ryan Quinn walked toward an old machine tool pushed against the wall.
The metal surface was covered in rust; the gears and bearings had long since seized up.
Ryan Quinn raised his right hand, palm facing the machine, and closed his eyes.
One breath in, one breath out.
He took a step forward and pushed his right hand toward the cast-iron base.
His palm slammed into the metal.
A dull thud.
A slight ache in his knuckles.
Ryan Quinn withdrew his hand and looked at it.
His fingers were slightly red and were rapidly recovering.
He frowned; he’d known it wouldn’t be this easy.
“Fine.” Ryan Quinn walked back to the center of the clearing and sat down on the spot.
He sat naturally, as if he’d intended to all along.
He started leafing through Ava’s memories: in the isolation chamber, she held her head in her hands, her body convulsing, flickering between solid and ethereal.
The ability was controlling her.
She couldn’t stabilize, so the world rejected her, pushing her into that unstable state.
To her, it was a curse.
To Ryan Quinn— He stood up and walked back to the machine.
Deep breath.
He changed his approach, imagining the edges of the metal becoming blurred.
He was getting a little sleepy.
Every heartbeat was an anchor.
He just needed to let his right hand heat up locally, change its density, and simulate that molecular vibration frequency—match the frequency, blend in— His right hand fell.
His fingertips touched the cast iron.
Cold.
Hard.
Then, slowly, his fingertips sank into the metal surface.
His vision split into two layers.
One was the clear factory, the rusty iron, the sunlight; the other was a milky, blurred skeletal outline—he was perceiving through both his naked eyes and the gaps between molecules simultaneously.
His hand was still there, visually intact, but his fingertips were passing through something denser than air, iron atoms sliding past the inner walls of his skin.
The back of his hand submerged into the iron.
His wrist rested against the panel, cold and hard.
Ryan Quinn blinked.
“…Interesting.” Ryan Quinn pulled his hand out.
Five fingers, completely unharmed.
He looked at his palm, then at the machine.
It had worked.
Ryan Quinn stood there as if waiting for something.
After a moment, nothing happened.
He just stood there, then shifted his weight to his other leg and leaned back in a more comfortable stance.
“Right.
Standing still doesn’t count.
I need to move.” Ryan Quinn began passing through larger objects.
First, the cast-iron base of the machine; his elbow submerged and he pulled it out intact.
That took about three minutes.
Then the solid steel gears.
That took some effort, taking fifteen minutes to get his entire arm from one side to the other.
Progress was faster than expected.
The Blacklight virus was learning, absorbing rapidly; every successful pass deepened the cellular memory.
By noon, Ryan Quinn could steadily pass half his body through the machine.
He should have been happy.
But he just walked to the corner, sat down, and pulled a power bar out of his bag.
He unwrapped it slowly, dawdling.
He took two bites.
He stopped chewing halfway through, staring at the wall as his mind wandered.
Then he chewed twice more.
After lunch came the real challenge.
Ryan Quinn stood in the middle of the factory, holding the half-eaten power bar, looking at the opposite wall.
A concrete brick wall, thirty centimeters thick, with the weed-choked lot on the other side.
“Whole body through the wall,” Ryan Quinn told himself.
His tone was flat.
He stood five meters from the wall.
He set the power bar down.
He rolled his shoulders.
If he could instantaneously phase through walls during a fight, it would be much more effective than martial arts—he could attack from any angle, cover wouldn’t matter, and he could disappear behind any wall he chose.
He understood the logic.
But— Ryan Quinn took a deep breath and charged at the wall.
Step one: right hand goes transparent.
A hand of bone emerging from mist.
Step two: right shoulder blurs into the boundary of the wall.
Step three: face slams into solid concrete.
*Thud.* Ryan Quinn bounced back and landed on his backside, his nose throbbing with a dull ache and a metallic taste of blood rising in his throat.
He sat there, unmoving.
Blood leaked from his nose, dripping onto his T-shirt.
He looked down at it, then looked back up at the wall.
“…” Ryan Quinn wiped the blood with his sleeve.
Seeing that the shirt was already dirty, he wiped it a second time.
Then he just sat there, head tilted back, leaning against a crate while waiting for the bleeding to stop.
He waited for about a minute.
His nose stopped.
“…Face-planted into a wall.
Great.
Just great.” Ryan Quinn stood up slowly, as if he’d just woken up.
He walked to the wall and touched the concrete surface with a finger.
Rough and cold.
At the last second, his body had recoiled on its own.
Instinct had tightened the phasing fluctuations—his brain still thought it was a solid wall, so his body automatically pulled itself back into a physical state.
He’d panicked, and so he’d turned solid.
Ryan Quinn closed his eyes and ran the image through his mind: there is a wall standing there.
He passes through it.
It’s just a patch of air that’s slightly darker in color.
Back up.
Eyes closed.
Throw away the recognition of physical laws—tune himself to the same frequency as the wall.
Molecules ignoring molecules; no one touches anyone.
Then he moved.
Left foot touched the wall—no, it didn’t.
His left knee sank into the concrete, feeling chilly.
Left hip, left shoulder, half his head—for a split second, he was standing inside the factory and in the weeds at the same time.
The light and smells from both sides flooded in simultaneously.
Then he was through.
Sunlight.
Weeds.
Wind.
Ryan Quinn stood outside the factory, turned back to look at the concrete wall, and panted heavily.
After about ten seconds, he nodded.
“…Not bad.” Then he sighed.
Because he knew that according to the training plan, he had to go back through.
Then back again.
Then back again.
Many times.
“…What a pain.” But he did it anyway.
A second time, a third, a fourth.
Each time was faster and smoother.
By the third time, he didn’t need to stop for a deep breath; he only needed to trigger the phasing fluctuation in the split second before contact.
By the fifth time, Ryan Quinn began trying to change directions while passing through—going in from the front and coming out the side.
This required higher control, but the Blacklight virus’s adaptability allowed him to master it within an hour.
After practicing directional shifts, Ryan Quinn glanced at the tires in the corner.
He’d also planned to practice partial phasing today—simulating passing a fist through his body when attacked in combat.
“…Whatever, since I’m already here.” Ryan Quinn stood up and used burlap sacks commonly found on construction sites to hold bricks, stones, and other fillers.
He hung them from the factory’s rafters, creating several makeshift sandbags.
He punched them to get them moving, then stood among the swinging bags to practice phasing through them.
“…Oh.” Ryan Quinn rubbed his shoulder.
Amidst the shifting between solid and ethereal, he still made mistakes due to lack of familiarity.
He had to keep practicing.
At 3:00 PM, the sun angled through the gaps in the broken roof, casting beams of light onto the floor.
Ryan Quinn walked to the corner and sat back down on the crate.
He took a sip from his water bottle—the water had been filled in the morning and was now lukewarm.
He unwrapped another power bar.
The taste was mediocre.
Better than a face-plant, though.
As he chewed the power bar, Ryan Quinn reviewed today’s training: phase-throughs practiced, partial phasing practiced, moving through walls mostly mastered.
The three basic categories were essentially under control.
They needed polishing, but they were there.
As for more advanced stuff—could he carry items while phased?
Could he apply the phasing to other objects?
Those could wait.
Ryan Quinn stuffed the last bite of the power bar into his mouth.
He crumpled the wrapper into a ball and tossed it toward a nearby trash can.
It missed.
He was too lazy to pick it up.
He stood up and brushed the dust off his pants.
There was one last thing.
The gift Karl King had left him.
Ryan Quinn walked to the center of the clearing and held out his right hand, palm up.
Dark red energy surged in his palm—tiny fragments, constantly moving.
Under his will, they slowly condensed, tightening until a shape was molded.
A moment later, a small black spider appeared in his palm.
It was the size of a grain of rice.
Its black body was marked with dark red patterns, its eight legs paddled gently, and a pair of tiny red eyes on its head glowed faintly.
Ryan Quinn looked down at it.
The spider looked back at him.
“Go take a look.” The little spider jumped from his palm, landed on the floor, and scurried quickly toward the factory entrance.
Ryan Quinn closed his eyes and switched his consciousness to the spider’s perspective.
It was another world—the texture of the floor became massive at this scale, dust particles piled up like boulders, and the sunlight hitting the cracks was blinding and hot.
A breeze was flowing, car engines hummed in the distance, and he could sense the body heat of a stray cat outside the factory.
Ryan Quinn opened his eyes.
The little spider crawled out from the corner, ran up his leg, and returned to his palm.
It turned back into biomass and retracted under his skin.
Ryan Quinn let out a breath and walked to the window.
The sun was dipping west, and the buildings in Queens were bathed in an orange-red glow.
A few boats moved slowly along the East River.
The city had returned to a semblance of peace after Karl King.
But how long would that peace last?
Forget it, he didn’t want to think about that today.
Ryan Quinn picked up his jacket.
It was still on the floor where it had fallen.
He leaned over slowly to pick it up, barely bending his knees, nearly missing it.
Finally, he got it, slung it over his shoulder, and walked toward the factory door.
As he pushed the door open, he looked back—at the wood shavings he’d dragged out while passing through walls, a concrete wall bearing the faint imprint of his face-plant, and an old, dusty mirror smudged by his handprints.
“I’ll continue tomorrow.
If I remember.” Ryan Quinn walked into the sunset.
After a few steps, he looked down at the pant leg torn by the nail, then kept walking.
“…Whatever.
It’s breezier this way.”