ShuraZero
patreon
Chapter 5: Accidental Intervention
🕑 Added 2025-09-10 19:29:25 +0000 UTCMetroville moved to a different rhythm. Two weeks had passed since the blackout, two weeks in which the name "Gamma Jack" had gone from a news headline to an urban legend whispered in cafes and at bus stops. The city felt calmer on the surface, but a current of nervousness ran underneath. People walked a little faster, but they also looked up at the sky more often, with a mix of fear and a strange, almost guilty, hope.
Yuls Sinclair felt that energy in the air. She had arrived from Arizona a week ago, under the pretext of postgraduate research that landed her a small apartment near the university campus. In a way, she wasn't entirely lying. Her field of study, however, wasn't in any library. It was on the streets, in the news reports, in the obsessive analysis of every grainy video that existed of the man who had defied the world.
She was here to understand him. And, if she was being completely honest with herself, to understand the power she felt vibrating inside her own body whenever the sun shone brightly.
The afternoon sun was generous, bathing the small park where she sat in a warm, golden light. It was her makeshift laboratory. To any observer, she was just a young woman on a bench with a quantum physics book, seemingly absorbed in her reading. But inside, she was fighting a silent battle.
Her phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. A glance at the screen showed her sister's name, Sarah. She sighed and answered.
"Hey, Sar. What's up?"
"Does something need to be up for me to call my long-lost sister?" Sarah's voice replied, tinged with a false cheerfulness that didn't hide her concern. "How's the big city? Found the God particle in a sewer yet?"
Yuls forced a laugh. "Something like that. It's… a lot of work. The university is demanding, you know. Reading, archives, the professor is a tough nut to crack."
"Yeah, right. Hey, are you eating okay? You sound tired, Yuls."
"I'm fine, really. Just a little distracted," she said, looking at the heavy textbook on her lap. "Listen, I'm in the middle of something right now. Can we talk later?"
There was a pause on the line. "You're always in the middle of something. Mom's worried. She says you barely answer. Just… be careful, will you? I don't know what you're researching so far from home, but don't forget you have a life here."
"I won't forget," Yuls said, softer than she intended. "I promise. We'll talk tonight. Love you."
"Love you too. Bye, brainiac."
The call ended, leaving a silence that felt heavier than before. The normal world, the one of worried sisters and mothers, felt a million miles away.
She refocused. She searched for that feeling, that strange lightness that sometimes came over her in the sun. She found it, a small spark in the center of her being. She pulled at it with meticulous concentration, trying to unravel its secrets. The heavy physics book resting on her lap grew lighter. It didn't float, but for an instant, it lost almost all its weight, becoming as light as a magazine.
A fleeting smile crossed her lips. Minimal progress, but it was hers.
She tried again, this time on herself. She closed her eyes, feeling the sun's warmth on her skin, imagining it not as heat, but as pure energy, as fuel. She pushed down with her feet and, at the same time, pulled that lightness upward. For a fraction of a second, the soles of her sneakers lifted off the ground. She floated, barely an inch off the grass, before falling back with a soft thud that rattled her teeth.
She opened her eyes, her heart racing with frustration. She knew, with the certainty of a scientist, that there was a system at play. There were rules, variables, an underlying physics to her abilities that she didn't yet understand. Was sunlight just an activator or the direct power source? Was her control over gravity a manipulation of particles or an alteration of her own mass at a subatomic level? The questions overwhelmed her, and without data, all she had was clumsy, exhausting experimentation.
"Dammit," she whispered to herself.
Giving up for the day, she put her book in her backpack and decided to walk. She headed into the hustle and bustle of downtown, letting the current of people carry her along. A lively street market had been set up near a construction zone, where a new skyscraper of glass and steel rose toward the sky.
"Hot dogs! Get your hot dogs! Best in Metroville!" a vendor shouted.
A little girl pulled on her mother's hand, pointing at a stand of animal-shaped balloons. Yuls watched them for a moment, a pang of nostalgia for a lost simplicity.
It was a sound that broke the normality. A prolonged groan of stressed metal, followed by a sharp, deafening crack that split the air.
Every head shot up in unison. Conversations died. Music from a nearby stall stopped.
About thirty stories up, a massive section of scaffolding, laden with steel pipes, tools, and metal sheets, had broken away from the building's facade. It tilted precariously for a second, a mass of metal suspended against the blue sky, and then it began to fall.
Panic erupted instantly. Screams followed a split second later, a cacophony of terror.
"Look out!"
"Oh my God, run!"
People scattered in every direction, stumbling over each other, seeking shelter from the death falling from the sky. The hot dog vendor abandoned his cart. The little girl's mother scooped her up and ran, leaving behind an elephant balloon that rose slowly toward the catastrophe.
Yuls froze. Her analytical mind calculated the trajectory, the terminal velocity, the impact area. Dozens of people wouldn't make it. Entire families, children, everyone in the heart of the market.
Fear, cold and paralyzing, seized her throat. "Run," a part of her brain screamed. But another voice, one she hadn't known she possessed, a voice full of furious idealism, roared: "Do something."
And so, she did. She acted.
She threw her arms open, palms to the sky, as if she could hold it up. The sun was at its zenith, a perfect spotlight. Yuls reached for that spark of power inside her, but this time she didn't pull gently. She seized it, tore it free, and threw it upward with all the force of her will.
She felt a connection, an ethereal but immense resistance. The scaffolding, falling at a terrifying speed, seemed to hit something invisible. Its descent slowed. It went from a free fall to a rapid, heavy plunge.
The fleeing crowd had an extra fraction of a second to escape.
"Look! It's floating!" someone shouted, pointing not at Yuls, but at the slowly falling mass of metal.
But the effort was monumental. Yuls felt the energy surging through her, hot and overwhelming. Blood dripped from her nose. Black spots danced in her vision. She couldn't hold it. The scaffolding, too heavy, too big, began to tilt. Steel pipes slid off the platform, becoming deadly projectiles that rained down on the street.
"I can't…!" she gasped, her knees buckling.
She focused on one pipe heading straight for a baby carriage abandoned in the panic. She tried to divert it but only managed to slightly change its angle. She was going to fail. She was going to watch people die because of her, because of her incompetence. She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look.
And then, everything stopped.
A wave of dry heat washed past her, so fast it was almost imperceptible. The groaning of metal ceased. The screams died. An unnatural silence fell over the street.
Yuls opened her eyes. She looked up. The scaffolding, the pipes, the tools… all the falling metal had simply… vanished. There was no explosion. No smoke. One moment they were there, and the next, only a flawless blue sky remained. The only trace was a faint metallic smell in the air and the sudden, absolute silence of the crowd.
Into that silence, a man landed softly on the asphalt a few feet away from her. He wore a dark leather jacket and jeans, and he moved with the grace of a predator. He completely ignored the gawking crowd, the phones now frantically recording him. His eyes, an intense and amused blue, were fixed only on her.
Gamma Jack smiled at her.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" he said, his charismatic voice rising above the stunned silence. "You certainly know how to be the center of attention, huh? A little messy, perhaps, but the effect is undeniable."
He walked toward her, his stride calm, confident. Yuls stood motionless, blood still dripping from her nose, exhaustion and adrenaline warring for control of her body.
"You…" was all she could manage.
"Me," he confirmed with a nod. "I saw what you did," Jack continued, his smile widening. "You slowed it down. Gave them time. That's not easy. Most people would've just run and screamed. Much more sensible, if you ask me, but far less entertaining."
He reached her side and, with a gentleness that surprised her, pulled a silk handkerchief from his jacket's inner pocket and offered it to her.
"But I think you could use this. The red from the blood doesn't go with your hair."
Yuls took it, her fingers trembling as she pressed the soft fabric to her face. The material was incredibly fine. "How…?"
"How'd I make it disappear? Magic," he said with a wink. "Or molecular disintegration via gamma radiation overload. The second option sounds less fun."
"I… I couldn't hold it," she whispered, shame mixing with shock.
"Of course you couldn't. That thing weighed about twenty tons," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Trying to stop it with whatever you do was an immense effort. But you tried. That's what matters. You've got guts. I like that."
The man's charisma was overwhelming, a force of nature in itself. He was even more magnetic in person than in the pixelated videos. There was no trace of the calculating monster the news talked about. There was only an incredibly self-assured man with a smile that could disarm armies.
"I'm Jack, by the way. Though I guess the press already ruined the surprise," he said, extending a hand.
Yuls shook it. His was warm and firm. "Yuls."
"Yuls," he repeated, savoring the name. "I like it. It's different. Where do you get a power like that, Yuls? Not something you see every day."
"I… I don't know. It's… complicated," she stammered, her scientific mind struggling to find words in the whirlwind of emotions. "I think it's a localized manipulation of gravitational fields, possibly related to the absorption and conversion of high-energy photons…"
Jack laughed, a genuine, charming sound that made several people around them jump. "I love it. You're smart. Smart and powerful. A dangerous combination. And you talk like one of my old textbooks."
Police sirens began to wail in the distance, their shrill cry growing closer. The crowd, snapping out of its trance, began to mill around them, a tide of faces and phones.
"Well, it looks like our party's about to be over," Jack said, his gaze never leaving Yuls. "And as much as I love signing autographs and posing for pictures, this place is about to be crawling with people in uniforms and lots of boring questions. Questions they'll probably ask you, too, and I don't think you want to explain 'photon absorption' to them."
He glanced around, then back at her, a playful glint in his eye. "What do you say we go somewhere with a slightly better view? The conversation will get more interesting without a thousand phones pointed at us."
Before Yuls could process the question, he gently took her by the arm. His touch was light, yet firm. "Hold on tight. And try not to scream, you'll scare the birds."
The ground disappeared. Yuls let out a choked gasp as they ascended, a feeling of weightlessness that made her own attempts at floating seem like child's play. They rose above the crowd, above the rooftops, the wind whipping her hair and clothes. The city shrank beneath them at a dizzying speed. Jack held her effortlessly, his smile never faltering. They landed as softly as they had taken off on the roof of a nearby skyscraper, far from the chaos on the street.
The city spread out at their feet, a carpet of concrete and light under the afternoon sun. The sound of sirens was now a distant murmur.
"See?" Jack said, letting her go and walking to the edge. "Much better. Quieter. And the cell service up here is excellent."
Yuls leaned against the parapet, her legs still trembling. She forced herself to take a deep breath; the air was cooler and cleaner at this height. "How… how did you do that? The levitation… the reports said your power was radiation manipulation. Flying doesn't seem like part of that skill set."
"When you can control energy at a fundamental level, Yuls, the rules start to bend," he answered, leaning next to her and looking at the horizon. "Thermodynamics, electromagnetism, gravity… they're just different facets of the same story: the story of energy. I just understand it completely."
He looked at her, his expression more serious now, but still warm. "But you… you're different. You're a specialist. I could feel it the moment you acted. Your power has a nature tied to sunlight and… mathematics. It's elegant and precise."
"It's weak," Yuls said, the frustration returning in full force. "Uncontrollable. I almost got those people killed."
"It's not weak. It's new," Jack corrected her with absolute calm. "It's untrained. You've got the engine of an F-22, but you don't even know where the cockpit is. You're trying to fly a jet fighter with a bicycle manual. You lack technique. You lack confidence."
He moved a little closer. "You're trying to apply Newtonian physics to a quantum mechanics problem. It doesn't work that way. Power doesn't respond to calculations, it responds to intent. To will."
"But there have to be rules," she insisted, clinging to logic like a life raft. "Principles that govern it."
"There are. But you're not going to find them in a book," he said. "You have a gift, Yuls. A real gift. The universe pointed at you and said, 'You're not like the others. You're more.' And what are you going to do with it? Keep hopping in the park and almost get yourself killed by scaffolding?"
The accuracy of his comment left her cold. "How do you know about the park?"
He smiled. "I've been watching you. Don't be creeped out, not in a weird way. Since the blackout, I've been… paying attention. Looking for fallout. And you're the strongest piece of fallout I've found. I saw a girl trying to levitate a textbook like it was the hardest homework in the world, and then, a few days later, I see her trying to stop twenty tons of falling steel. The learning curve is impressive, but you're going to get yourself killed."
"I'm learning," she repeated, defensively.
"Of course you are. But you could learn so much faster. You could be magnificent," his voice lowered, becoming more persuasive. "You need someone who understands the process. Someone who can show you not just how to use your power, but why you have it. Someone who won't treat you like an experiment or a weapon, but like what you are."
The intensity in his eyes was hypnotic. Yuls, who had always relied on her intellect, on her ability to analyze and deconstruct any problem, felt completely disarmed. This man wasn't a problem to be solved. He was a force of nature. A force that, for some reason, was offering her a hand.
She knew his reputation. They called him a terrorist, a villain, an uncontrollable threat. She had seen the fear in the eyes of politicians and the anger in the eyes of the police. But she had also seen him erase a deadly threat from existence as easily as one might swat a fly. He had saved her. And he was looking at her not like a freak, but like an equal. Or, at least, a potential equal.
"Why?" she asked, her voice a whisper. "Why help me? What's in it for you?"
Jack smiled, and in that smile was an honesty so blatant it was impossible not to believe him. "First, because the world has enough ordinary people already. It's deathly boring. Second, because it's a cosmic crime for a power like yours to be wasted on failed attempts and nosebleeds." He paused, his gaze sweeping over her face with genuine appreciation. "And, to be perfectly honest… because it's been a long time since I met anyone this interesting."
A silence fell, broken only by the wind whistling between the buildings. Yuls looked at the darkening city, the lights beginning to twinkle like artificial stars. Then she looked at Jack. The fear was still there, a small note of warning in the back of her mind, her sister's voice telling her to be careful. But rising above it was something else. A surge of excitement, of possibility. The promise of finally understanding the strangest, most wonderful part of herself. To stop hiding. To stop being afraid of what she was.
"What do you want me to do?" she finally asked.
"For now, nothing," he replied. "I just want you to learn. To understand what you're capable of. The rest… we'll figure it out as we go. Think of me as a very unconventional tutor."
Yuls took one last breath. The decision settled inside her, not as a logical conclusion, but as an inevitable leap.
"Okay," she said, her voice firm for the first time since the scaffolding broke. "Okay, Jack. Teach me."
