The sun was setting as they spotted a motel, its neon sign dark and dead against the darkening sky. SUNRISE MOTOR LODGE, the letters read, though several were missing entirely, leaving only “SUN--SE M--OR LO-GE” as faded outlines.

  The parking lot was empty except for a single pickup truck, its rust-spotted frame suggesting it hadn’t moved in weeks. Yellow quarantine notices fluttered in the evening breeze, taped to the office door and several room windows.

  “Well, this isn’t creepy at all,” Diego muttered as they approached the office. The door was unlocked, bell jingling cheerfully as they entered.

  The office was a time capsule of pre-NARS life. A half-empty coffee cup sat on the counter, lid still in place. A newspaper dated December 3rd lay open to the crossword puzzle, several clues filled in with blue ink. The logbook’s last entry, written in the same blue ink, simply read “12/3 - Room 14B.”

  Lance ran his finger along the dusty counter. “Twenty-seven days.”

  “Since NARS hit,” Diego finished, examining the quarantine notices. “Looks like they evacuated pretty quick.”

  They found several unlocked rooms, all showing signs of hasty departure—unmade beds, personal items left behind, TV remotes still perched on nightstands. Room 14B’s door was closed, the key still hanging in the office key box.

  “Should we check inside?”

  “I’d rather not.” Lance wrinkled his nose. “At least there’s no smell coming from under the door.”

  “Good point.”

  “We should probably eat something,” Lance said, turning away from the room. Some doors were better left unopened.

  The diner across the street, however, was still open, a yellow glow spilling into the desolate parking lot. And by parking lot, they meant more of a patch of hard-packed dirt where weeds poked through decades of tire tracks.

  They walked into a cloud of grilled onions and butter. The handful of customers—just three of them—looked up from their plates. A few truckers occupied the counter seats, and in a corner booth, a young woman sat alone, absently stirring a cup of coffee.

  Something about her caught Lance’s attention—a subtle shimmer to her skin, barely noticeable in the fluorescent lighting. As if sensing his gaze, she looked up, amber eyes catching the glow of the overhead bulbs like a cat’s.

  [Human Biokinetic (1st Evolution)]

  Lance had never encountered a Biokinetic before—his HUD had shown him Enhancers, Shifters, or the occasional Elementalist. He’d spent hours watching Dr. Zoe’s videos and scrolling through forum discussions, but Biokinetics never came up. Not once.

  If his memory served him well: Enhancers used energy to amplify what was already there, while Shifters could remake their bodies entirely. Elementalists bridged the gap between themselves and natural forces. But Biokinetics—the name itself suggested… What the fuck did it suggest?

  Bio meant life, and kinetic meant movement. Someone who could move living matter? The forums would have exploded if they’d known these existed. If his theory was right, she wasn’t using arma to enhance or transform—she would direct life itself. The coffee in her cup swirled without her touching it. What else could someone do with that kind of power?

  Turned out he’d get his chance to ask.

  “You’re heading to Cherry Point,” she said with what sounded like an old-fashioned southern accent. Not a question.

  Diego tensed beside him, but Lance nodded. “That obvious?”

  She gestured for them to join her. “I’m Briella. And yeah, it kind of is. Not many people out running the highways these days. Plus you’ve got the smell.”

  “The smell?” Diego asked.

  “Arma, what they call it.”

  They slid into the booth, Diego ordering enough food for four people when the waitress came by. Briella watched them with those strange amber eyes, her smile crooked and knowing.

  The first two burgers arrived way too fast. Crazy fast. Suspiciously fast.

  Lance stared at his, trying to figure out if it was old. He leaned in for a careful sniff, which made him pause. Something was off. Really off.

  Could it be, Lance grunted in his head. Oh no…

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  The more he focused his senses, the more certain he became that the kitchen’s deep fryer oil hadn’t been changed in weeks, maybe months. He didn’t even want to imagine what it looked like back there. But if he had to guess… that oil was pure black sludge.

  “So what’s your story?” Diego asked between bites of his second burger, which arrived sometime during Lance’s internal crisis. “Why join the Enhanced Corps?”

  “Our family business went under.” The condensation on Briella’s water glass swirled in tiny circles, like a miniature whirlpool. “Non-essential, they said. Can’t reopen until the pandemic’s over. Then I found out I had access to arma and figured—well, the Corps pays well.”

  “Which vaccine did you get?” Lance asked.

  After getting his own treatment, Lance had become something of an expert on gene therapies. He knew the stats by heart now: only GlobeMed and Nexus recipients showed signs of enhancement, and even then, just a small percentage of them. Most people got stuck with Vital or Synergy—cheap, mass-produced vaccines that worked fine against NARS but didn’t give access to arma. The real kicker was that identical treatments could have completely different effects. The doctors still couldn’t explain why.

  And then there was BioNova’s experimental treatment—the only one with a built-in HUD for tracking arma interaction. Lance figured the trial group had to be tiny, maybe a dozen people tops.

  “VitaShield. Same as my brother. He didn’t get powers though.” She shrugged, but her fingers tightened around the glass. “Weird how that works.”

  Lance knew VitaShield hadn’t gotten FDA approval, but so far nobody had grown a third arm or anything. The side effects seemed pretty normal.

  Normal, Lance thought with a roll of his eyes. What the fuck am I thinking?

  “Oh man, you gotta tell us what you can do!” Diego said. “I bet it’s something cool—like, the way you’ve been messing with that glass, I was thinking maybe—”

  “Fluids,” she corrected. “Blood, lymph, anything that flows. Could be useful for search and rescue, which is what I really want to do. If they’ll let me—sorry, I’m rambling again.”

  “No, keep going,” Lance said. “Search and rescue sounds interesting.”

  They talked late into the night, sharing stories of their abilities, their fears, their hopes for what the Enhanced Corps might offer.

  “Sooo, we’ll see you there tomorrow?” Diego asked.

  “Different testing group. They’re processing candidates in waves. But yes, maybe I’ll see you guys there. If we all make it in.”

  The diner’s coffee kept coming until the pot ran dry. Diego ordered a third plate of fries, telling stories about his physical therapy mishaps that had Briella covering her mouth to keep from spraying water across the table. Lance found himself relaxing despite the questionable burger, drawn into their easy banter.

  “Time to head back,” Lance said when he noticed the waitress’s pointed glances at the clock.

  When they finally returned to the motel, they discovered the laundry room door wasn’t locked. The hinges creaked as Diego pushed it open, releasing a blast of sour, moist air.

  “Score.” Diego pulled some sheets from a wire basket. “At least we won’t have to sleep on bare mattresses.”

  But Lance’s nose told him a different story. “I wouldn’t call those clean.”

  “Better than nothing.” Diego tossed him a bundle. “Besides, after that burger you ate, this is probably the least of your worries.”

  Pain Nullification remained active. Not that he had much choice anymore—after what he’d endured, after everything, turning it off felt like trying to unlearn how to breathe. At least it was earning its keep tonight. His body might not be able to feel the burger wreaking havoc in his stomach, but judging by the sounds coming from Diego’s core, his friend wasn’t quite so lucky.

  Back in their room, Lance lay awake on the suspicious sheets, replaying fragments of conversation.

  He stared at the ceiling, cataloging the day’s improvements. His muscles worked better, his energy flowed smoother, and his control had jumped significantly. The last message recorded announced:

  [Adaptive Limbs: Saltatorial (56%)]

  Sure, he had more raw power and abilities than Diego, but Diego’s legs alone operated at a higher level. The last nine hours proved it. Lance had to maintain precise control over multiple systems—Morphoplasm compressed perfectly against his muscle fibers, Energy Cycling running at optimal frequency through his meridians, and Saltatorial Mode engaged at a consistent output. One wrong calculation and the whole system would cascade into failure.

  Like a CPU running multiple threads at maximum capacity, his mind constantly adjusted variables, balanced power ratios, monitored feedback loops. Meanwhile, Diego’s arma flowed like instinct—pure, unfiltered power that responded to emotion rather than logic. Energy Classification showed him everything—wild bursts of enhancement that should have been inefficient but somehow worked better than his carefully calibrated approach.

  He would have studied the phenomenon more closely if he wasn’t busy juggling a dozen technical parameters while maintaining nine hours of casual conversation to appear normal. The whole thing felt like taking a calculus exam while trying to look relaxed.

  The motel ceiling had a water stain that looked like messy ink. Lance tracked the diagrams, converting them into energy flow circuits in his head. Numbers were good. Calculations were safe. They didn’t include Diego’s wheelchair or Sarah’s scream when she saw him at the gym. They didn’t include those women in the hotel basement, their eyes vacant and afraid.

  Every calculation made Lance feel more alone. The system didn’t care about the people hurt by his actions. His system messages never showed stats for collateral damage or a metric for how many good people he’d hurt while someone else pulled his strings.

  Am I becoming the enemy? Lance wondered, feeling the pressure of his choices.

  The Enhanced Corps offered structure, maybe even redemption. But his mind kept circling back to one question: with powers growing stronger every day, how long until stopping the bad guys meant becoming one—

  A new message materialized and everything else vanished.

  Lance sat bolt upright in bed, sleep forgotten:

  [Energy Circulation (Adaptive) stabilized]

  └─Energy pathways permanently enhanced

  His favorite ability had become something new.

  One hundred and sixty miles was a challenge when they started. Now it would make a decent warmup. And he couldn’t wait until morning to test it out…