The library was my sanctuary. It smelled of old paper, dust, and the faint, sterile hum of the climate control system—a Baseline environment where the only superpower required was focus. Here, the chaotic energy of the hallways faded into a predictable, manageable order.
Benji had already claimed our usual table, buried behind a stack of data-slates. "I pulled the Accord transcripts," he said, not looking up. "You were right. Sub-clause 7-B. 'Mandatory aptitude screening and subsequent national service registration for all citizens manifesting a Metagene classified E-Class or higher.' That's… kinda terrifying."
"It's pragmatic," I corrected, sliding into the chair opposite him. I pulled my own tablet out, the screen flickering to life. "From a state security perspective, an unregistered E-Class—someone who can, say, generate uncontrolled electrical fields or manipulate significant mass—is a walking hazard. Registration isn't just about conscription; it's about damage mitigation."
Benji finally looked up, his brow furrowed. "You always do that."
"Do what?"
"Take the scariest thing imaginable and call it 'pragmatic.'"
I considered this. "Facts aren't scary. The consequences of ignoring them are." I tapped my screen, pulling up a digital copy of the Accords. "The language is deliberately vague, though. It doesn't specify the nature of the 'service.' It could be the MRA. It could be paving roads for the Department of Transportation. That vagueness is the real weapon. It creates uncertainty, which fosters compliance."
Benji shook his head, a small smile on his face. "See? Terrifying."
We worked in comfortable silence for a while, the only sounds the soft tap of fingers on screens and the distant rustle of pages. This was the rhythm of my life. Study, analyze, understand. It was a way to exert control in a world where I fundamentally lacked it.
The peace was shattered by the library's heavy doors swinging open. A wave of laughter and loud conversation washed in, preceded by the confident click of boots on polished linoleum. I didn't need to look to know who it was. The air itself seemed to change, charged with a casual, unearned authority.
Elara and her entourage descended on a study pod near the back, their voices barely contained to a theatrical whisper. They weren't here to study. They were here to be seen.
I kept my eyes fixed on my tablet, on a particularly dense paragraph about energy output limitations for industrial-grade Metagenes. I willed myself to be a rock in their stream, unnoticed and uninteresting.
It never worked.
"Well, look who it is. The Baseline brain trust."
The voice was smooth, laced with a mocking amusement. It belonged to Marcus, one of Elara's hangers-on. His Metagene was Thermal Vision. Useful for seeing through walls, useless for developing a personality.
I didn't look up. "Marcus. Shouldn't you be using your gift to find a personality instead of bothering people who are working?"
Benji choked on a sip of water next to me. Marcus's smirk faltered.
Elara sighed, a sound of profound exasperation. She detached herself from her group and drifted over to our table. She leaned over, placing her hands on the surface, her presence imposing. The scent of jasmine and ozone washed over me.
"Do you have to be so relentlessly confrontational, Arthur?" she asked, her voice low. There was no real anger in it. Just a weary kind of performance.
I finally met her gaze. Her eyes were the same stormy grey they'd always been, but now they held a glint of hardened crystal. "I believe stating a factual observation is only confrontational if the recipient lacks the capacity for self-reflection. I was merely engaging in discourse."
She rolled her eyes. "You see? That. Right there. 'Merely engaging in discourse.' You talk like a textbook trying to sound human." She straightened up, looking down at our research. "Still trying to prove you're smarter than everyone to make up for what you lack?"
The words were meant to sting. A few months ago, they would have. Now, they just felt… practiced. A line she'd used before.
"Knowledge isn't a consolation prize, Elara," I said, my voice flat. "It's a tool. Some of us have to work with the tools we're given."
Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. I'd struck a nerve. I'd reminded her that her power was a gift, not an achievement. A flicker of the old Elara—the one who valued hard work—shone through her polished exterior before it was snuffed out.
"Whatever," she said, the mask slipping back into place. "Just keep your 'discourse' to yourself. Some of us are trying to have a social life." She turned on her heel and walked back to her friends, who laughed at some quiet joke she made.
The tension she brought with her slowly dissipated.
Benji let out a long breath he seemed to have been holding. "I hate it when she does that."
"She doesn't know any other way to interact with me now," I said, returning to my text. The words on the screen blurred slightly. "It's easier for her to be the popular Gifted girl who occasionally mocks the smart Baseline than it is to be the friend who left someone behind. The guilt requires a target."
Benji stared at me. "You're doing it again."
"What?"
"Taking the most emotionally devastating thing imaginable and calling it 'pragmatic.'"
I didn't have an answer for that. Because he was right. It was a defense mechanism, a way to intellectualize a hurt that was too simple and too deep to dwell on. I could deconstruct Elara's motivations, the social dynamics at play, the psychological underpinnings of her behavior. But understanding the blueprint of a storm doesn't stop you from getting wet.
The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. We finished our work, and I walked Benji to the bus stop.
"See you tomorrow," he said, climbing aboard. "Try not to deconstruct any more human emotions into clinical data. It's creepy."
"I'll take it under advisement," I said, offering a rare, small smile.
The walk to my apartment was a twenty-minute journey through the layered reality of Pacifica. I passed storefronts where merchants used minor telekinesis to arrange displays, and construction sites where crews with enhanced strength lifted girders without cranes. I watched it all with a detached analytical eye, as always.
My apartment building was a testament to the "before" times—a squat, brick structure that had stubbornly refused to be upgraded or replaced. It was a Baseline building in a slowly transforming city.
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, the familiar creak of the fifth step a comforting constant. The door to 3B was unlocked.
"Dad? I'm home," I called out, dropping my bag by the door.
The living room was small, shabby, but meticulously clean. From the kitchen doorway, my father emerged, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He was a big man, starting to go soft around the middle, with kind eyes and hair the same dark shade as mine, though without the ember-like streaks. A man who looked like he carried a constant, gentle weight on his shoulders.
"Arthur. How was school?" he asked, his voice a warm rumble.
"It was adequate," I said, heading to the fridge for a glass of water. "We covered the Post-Singularity Accords in history."
A shadow passed over his face. It always did when the topic of Metagenes came up. My father was a proud man, a skilled electrician whose trade had been devalued by Gifted who could manipulate circuits with a thought. He was also a man who had waited, year after year, for his only son to manifest something, anything, that would make life in this new world easier. That wait had ended in quiet, resigned disappointment.
"Right. Those," he said, turning back to the kitchen. "Well, dinner's almost ready. Meatloaf."
"Sounds good," I said.
I looked at my father's back, at the slight slump of his shoulders. I thought of Elara's dismissive smirk, of Benji's nervous energy, of the countless small reminders every day that I was a passenger in a world where everyone else was learning to drive.
This was my normal. A life of quiet observation, of intellectual compensation, of carefully managed expectations. It was a weight I had learned to carry.
But as I stood there in our small, outdated apartment, a strange, restless heat flickered in my core for a second—a sensation so brief and foreign I dismissed it as indigestion.
I had no way of knowing it was the first ember of a coming inferno. And that very soon, the weight of being normal would be utterly incinerated.