Chương 2: Chapter 2: The Accident

Chapter 2: The Accident

**Location**: University of California

**Date**: October 17, 2023

It had been a few days since the uncomfortable breakfast with his parents—a meal filled with tension and questions that Mark wasn't ready to answer.

That particular morning had started innocuously enough, but conversations had drifted toward uncomfortable topics, such as his future and his apparent lack of direction.

A heavy silence had lingered, which he had quickly fled by returning to the familiar environment of the university.

Now, as late October began to settle in with its shorter days and colder nights, Mark's life was about to change forever—though not in any way he could have anticipated.

The hours had slipped away in the computer lab, as they often did. Mark had been working on a project about neural networks, a topic that consumed most of his free time. He was fascinated by the concept of machines learning and evolving, mimicking the intricate complexity of the human brain.

For Mark, neural networks represented not just a technological advancement but a leap toward the future of human evolution. The idea of machines thinking for themselves, developing intuition, and perhaps one day even consciousness, was both thrilling and terrifying. Of course, he understood they were still lightyears away from achieving such feats, but it didn't stop him from obsessing over every incremental step.

That night, the computer lab was nearly deserted. The other students had long since left, abandoning their workstations in favour of sleep or late-night socializing. But Mark had stayed, as he always did, driven by the quiet focus that came only when everyone else was gone. The dull hum of the lab's fluorescent lights and the rhythmic clicking of his keyboard had created a soothing atmosphere. Outside, however, the weather had taken a sudden, violent turn.

It was stormy in a way that felt unusual for Southern California. Mark noticed the heavy rain and strong winds as they lashed against the lab's glass windows, but he was far too engrossed in his project to pay it much attention. It wasn't until a flash of lightning illuminated the sky, casting strange shadows across the walls of the lab, that he glanced up from his screen. The clock read 11:32 PM.

"Damn, I've stayed later than I thought," he muttered to himself. It was time to go home.

Reluctantly, Mark saved his work, shut down his laptop, and slipped it into his backpack. He pulled on his well-worn grey hoodie, the one with the university's logo emblazoned on the front, and zipped it up against the biting wind he could hear howling outside. As he stepped into the night, the storm seemed to intensify, as if it had been waiting for him.

The campus was eerily quiet at that hour, the storm amplifying the sense of isolation. Buildings loomed like dark monoliths, their windows black and uninviting, while the streetlights cast flickering halos of dim light. Mark pulled his hood tighter over his head, bracing against the cold gusts that whipped through the empty walkways. He had taken this path a hundred times before, but tonight something felt different.

The air was thick—oppressively so. It felt heavy against his skin, almost as if it were charged with something more than just moisture from the storm. It crackled faintly with static electricity, causing the hair on his arms to stand on end. Mark quickened his pace, feeling an inexplicable sense of unease.

As he neared the engineering complex, something caught his eye. Off to the side, a section of the campus that was typically gated off glowed faintly. It was the site of an experimental energy field—a project some of the university's top researchers had been working on for months. Mark had heard rumours about the work being done there, about how they were attempting to create a new type of sustainable power grid. He had been fascinated by the theoretical aspects of the project, though it was far outside his usual area of study.

But tonight, the energy field looked different. It pulsed faintly, as if alive, casting an eerie glow that was almost mesmerizing. Mark paused, staring at the strange phenomenon. Was it supposed to do that? He had never seen it behave this way before.

And then it happened.

A flash of lightning streaked across the sky, striking the heart of the energy field with a deafening crack. For a split second, the world lit up with blinding white light. Mark instinctively shielded his eyes, but it was too late. When he opened them again, what he saw defied all logic.

The energy field had exploded into a chaotic maelstrom of light and electricity. Pulses of raw energy arced wildly from its center, spiralling out of control. Mark's heart raced as he took a step back, his mind struggling to process what was happening. The ground beneath his feet seemed to hum with an unnatural vibration, and the air around him crackled with intensity.

Without warning, a surge of energy erupted from the field, expanding outward in a wave that tore through the campus. Mark barely had time to react. One moment, he was standing there, frozen in disbelief, and the next, the wave of energy hit him like a tidal wave.

The force was unlike anything he had ever felt. His body convulsed violently as the surge overwhelmed him. Every nerve in his body felt as though it were being set on fire. His vision blurred, turning the world into a smear of distorted light and shadow. He tried to scream, but the sound caught in his throat, strangled by the sheer intensity of the pain.

His mind scrambled for coherent thought, but there was only chaos. It was as if reality itself had been ripped apart, leaving nothing but fragments of sensation. Time seemed to stretch and distort. Seconds felt like hours, and the world flickered in and out of existence like a dying light bulb.

And then—darkness.

The pain stopped. The world went silent. Mark's body went limp, crumpling to the ground as the energy dissipated around him. For a moment, everything was still, as though the storm, the campus, and the very universe had paused to take a breath.

---

When Mark awoke, the storm had passed. His head pounded, and his body felt strangely numb, as though he had been submerged in ice water for hours. Groggily, he tried to sit up, but his muscles refused to cooperate at first. His vision was still blurry, and his thoughts were sluggish, disjointed.

"What the hell happened…?" he mumbled to himself.

As his eyes began to focus, he noticed that he was no longer near the engineering complex. He was lying in the middle of a grassy field, the stars twinkling overhead in a cloudless sky. The storm had completely vanished, as though it had never been there at all.

Mark blinked, trying to make sense of it. His mind was still struggling to catch up with the events that had just unfolded. The energy field. The lightning struck. The surge of power. Had it all been a dream? A hallucination brought on by exhaustion?

He slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing as a sharp pain shot through his chest. Looking down, he saw that his clothes were singed, blackened in places as though he had been struck by lightning. His heart skipped a beat. He felt the ground beneath him, half-expecting to feel the softness of grass, but instead, the earth buzzed faintly beneath his fingers—still alive with the residual energy that had coursed through him.

A sense of dread settled over him as the reality of what had happened began to sink in. He had been caught in the middle of something far beyond his understanding. Something dangerous. Something that should never have happened.

Mark slowly got to his feet, his legs shaky and unsteady. He looked around, but the campus was eerily silent, as if the world had been abandoned. There were no flashing lights, no alarms, no signs of life. It was as if no one had seen or heard the catastrophic event that had just taken place.

His thoughts raced. Should he call for help? Should he report what had happened? But how could he explain any of it? Who would believe him? As far as he could tell, there was no physical damage—at least none that was visible. But something inside him had changed. He could feel it, a strange sensation coursing through his veins like an electric current.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, startling him out of his thoughts. He fumbled to pull it out, his hands still trembling. It was a message from his lab partner, Jessica.

**"Hey, you okay? Heard the storm was wild on campus. Hit the energy field?"**

Mark stared at the message, his heart pounding in his chest. How could he even begin to explain what had just happened? And more importantly—what had it done to him?

With a shaky breath, he typed a reply.

**"Yeah... something like that."**

---

Mark's hands trembled as he slipped his phone back into his pocket, the weight of the event pressing down on him like a leaden blanket. His breath came in short, shallow bursts, as if his body couldn't quite keep up with the demands his mind was placing on it. The grass beneath him crackled faintly with each movement, as though the air itself still carried traces of the bizarre energy that had surged through him.

For a moment, he just stood there, looking around at the eerily silent campus. His pulse throbbed in his ears, and his legs threatened to give way beneath him again. The storm was gone—vanished as abruptly as it had come—but everything else felt… wrong. The world seemed subtly altered in a way that was hard to define, as though reality had shifted just slightly on its axis. The campus was familiar, but in the aftermath of what had just happened, it felt foreign, as if he were looking at it through a distorted lens.

Mark glanced down at his hands. They looked normal enough—except for the faintest trace of light, almost imperceptible, flickering beneath his skin. He blinked and shook his head, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. The light vanished, and his hands were just hands again. Normal. Except they didn't feel normal.

The buzzing in his veins—the same sensation that had started the moment the energy surge engulfed him—was still there, subtle but persistent. It wasn't pain exactly, more like a low hum of electricity that made his skin tingle and his muscles twitch involuntarily. His mind raced, cycling through explanations, trying to apply logic to what had happened.

"Could it be some kind of aftershock from the energy field?" he muttered, the sound of his own voice somehow grounding him, if only a little. "Residual effects from the surge?"

He started walking again, albeit slowly and cautiously. Each step felt foreign, as if he were no longer entirely in control of his own body. His legs moved, but there was a disconnect—a slight delay between intention and action. Even the muscles in his face felt sluggish, as if he had to consciously tell himself to blink, to breathe.

Mark made his way past the still-sparking remains of the experimental energy field, its components now a twisted mess of metal and circuitry. The research team had been working on the project for months, hoping to create a self-sustaining power grid that could revolutionise energy consumption. But no one had anticipated this. The thought struck him suddenly: *What if I wasn't supposed to survive that?*

The idea was unsettling, to say the least. He should have been dead. That much was clear to him now. The force of the energy blast—combined with the lightning strike—should have been lethal. Yet, here he was. Alive. But not unchanged.

His phone buzzed again, pulling him out of his thoughts. This time, it wasn't just a message from Jessica. His screen was flooded with notifications—dozens of them—tweets, emails, news alerts. The world was waking up to the disaster that had occurred on campus. He swiped through the notifications, barely able to comprehend the flood of information.

**"Power outage across Southern California…"**

**"Campus-wide lockdown due to safety concerns…"**

**"Authorities investigating an unusual energy surge…"**

Mark swallowed hard, his mouth dry as sandpaper. The campus was on high alert, but it didn't seem like anyone truly understood what had happened—or, more importantly, what it had done to him. He turned off his phone and stuffed it back in his pocket, unwilling to deal with the outside world just yet. Whatever answers he needed, they weren't going to come from the news or his friends. He had to figure this out on his own.

---

The walk back to his dorm felt like an eternity. The campus, which was usually vibrant even late at night, felt completely deserted, as though the surge had wiped out more than just the power grid. Every shadow seemed to loom larger, and every gust of wind felt like a warning. The faint buzzing in his body had grown more intense the closer he got to his apartment, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. By the time he reached the front steps, his vision was starting to blur again.

The key shook in his hand as he unlocked the door. His apartment was a tiny studio, a chaotic mix of textbooks, coding manuals, and discarded takeout containers. It had always felt cramped, but now it seemed suffocating. He dropped his backpack to the floor, its weight pulling at his sore muscles, and collapsed onto his bed without bothering to take off his shoes.

His body felt like it was shutting down. The numbness in his limbs grew stronger, the tingling turning into something deeper, like a vibration that resonated within his bones. Mark's thoughts became fragmented, his mind frantically trying to piece together the events of the night.

For a moment, he considered calling 911, or at least going to the university hospital, but then what? What could he tell them? That he'd been caught in a freak energy surge that had apparently rewired his body? They'd probably think he was crazy—or worse, they'd study him like a lab rat. He shuddered at the thought. No, he couldn't go to a hospital. Not yet.

He sat up abruptly, the movement causing a wave of dizziness to wash over him. Grabbing his laptop from his backpack, he booted it up, feeling an urgent need to find out more about what had happened. Maybe the research team had published something recently about the energy field. Maybe there were clues he hadn't noticed before.

As the familiar glow of the screen lit up his face, his fingers flew across the keyboard, typing "UCLA experimental energy grid" into the search engine. Dozens of articles and papers popped up, most of them highly technical. He skimmed through the jargon, hoping to find something—anything—that could explain the disaster.

But there was nothing about a potential failure. No warnings of danger. Only optimistic reports about breakthroughs and new possibilities for energy sustainability. It was as if no one had anticipated that the energy grid could malfunction at all.

"Of course they didn't," he muttered, frustration gnawing at him. "No one ever thinks about what could go wrong."

He clicked on an old article, an interview with Dr. Andrew Knox, the lead researcher on the project. Mark had met him once in passing, a tall, stern-faced man with a brilliant mind and a reputation for taking risks. The interview was mostly about the potential benefits of the energy grid, how it could revolutionize the way the world consumed power. But one quote stood out to Mark, sending a chill down his spine.

**"Energy is not just a resource,"** Dr. Knox had said. **"It's a force. A force that, when harnessed correctly, can unlock unimaginable possibilities. But when mishandled, it can lead to… unintended consequences."**

Mark read the words over and over again, his heart racing. **Unintended consequences.** That was putting it lightly. He shut the laptop and leaned back against the wall, his mind spinning. What had happened wasn't just an accident. Something had gone wrong—terribly wrong—and now he was caught in the middle of it.

---

Hours passed in a blur. Mark lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling as the strange sensations in his body ebbed and flowed like tides. His thoughts grew darker as the night wore on. What if this energy wasn't just in him, but was changing him? What if he was becoming something else?

It was around 4 AM when the buzzing in his body surged violently. Mark shot up in bed, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. The lights in his apartment flickered erratically, and he felt a strange pull—almost like gravity shifting—inside him. He reached out instinctively, and to his horror, the lamp on his nightstand lifted off the table, floating in midair.

Mark's breath caught in his throat. He didn't know how it was happening, but he could feel the energy—feel it moving through him, through the air around him. His hands trembled as he stared at the floating object, panic rising like a wave.

"No, no, no… This isn't real. This can't be real."

But it was real. The lamp hovered there, weightless, held up by an invisible force. A force that Mark somehow knew was coming from him. He clenched his fists, and the lamp dropped to the floor with a loud crash, the bulb shattering on impact.

Mark stumbled backward, his body shaking uncontrollably. He fell to the ground, his knees hitting the hardwood floor with a painful thud. The buzzing in his veins had reached a fever pitch, and the air around him crackled with static electricity. His mind raced, spiralling out of control.

What had he become?

Mark didn't know how long he sat there, his back pressed against the wall, his breath ragged and uneven. Hours? Minutes? Time had lost all meaning. All he knew was that whatever had happened to him wasn't over. It was only the beginning.

And whatever he had become—whatever was happening to him—was something far beyond his understanding.