CHAPTER 1: THE ECHO OF TWO LIVES
"Another left, Mom! Seriously, if we miss the start of the 'Crimson Comet Marathon' because you're too busy admiring the scenery, I'm holding you personally responsible for my future lack of a social life. Think of the societal implications!" I chirped, my voice a familiar mix of exaggerated drama and genuine affection. The rain was drumming a furious rhythm against the windshield of our old, but trusty, sedan. It was the kind of rain that made you question the architectural integrity of the sky, the sort that seemed to actively hate visibility.
My mom, bless her eternally patient soul, just chuckled, a warm, resonant sound that always felt like coming home. "Relax, Adam. We've got plenty of time. Besides, I think the societal implications of you actually having to talk to people without a screen in front of your face are far more terrifying. And for the record, I was admiring the sheer… dedication… of that squirrel trying to cross the road in this downpour. A true hero, that one."
"Oh, come on! I'm a social butterfly, Mom! A digital one, perhaps, but a butterfly nonetheless. And anyway, that squirrel is clearly an amateur. Any self-respecting rodent knows to wait for a break in the deluge. This guy's just showing off for the lady squirrels. Probably has a tiny, rain-soaked little sports car waiting on the other side."
She snorted, a laugh bubbling up from deep within her. "You and your theories. Honestly, sometimes I think your brain is just a giant, highly inefficient meme generator."
"And proud of it! It's a coping mechanism for the existential dread of modern existence. You should try it sometime. Might loosen you up, make you less… responsible." I leaned my head back against the headrest, a comfortable silence settling between us, punctuated only by the relentless drumming of the rain. The windshield wipers, working overtime, were doing their best, but it felt like we were driving through a waterfall. The world outside was a blurry watercolor of gray and green, streaked with the occasional flash of yellow from distant streetlights. The air inside the car, however, was warm, cozy, and filled with the faint, comforting scent of her lavender air freshener and the lingering aroma of the terrible coffee she insisted on making.
I was twenty years old, an engineering student. My life, while not exactly a Hollywood blockbuster, was pretty good. I had a loving mom, a decent group of friends, and an unhealthy obsession with superhero shows and obscure comic book lore. The Arrowverse, specifically, was my jam. I could recite the entire timeline of Flashpoint paradoxes, argue the merits of different Green Arrow costumes for hours, and probably win a trivia contest on the various ways Cisco Ramon could name a villain. Life was predictable, comfortable, and frankly, a little mundane. And I loved it.
"Seriously though, you sure you don't mind dropping me off? I could have taken the bus, you know," I offered, not for the first time. It was a half-hearted offer, though. Spending time with her, even on a rainy night, was always better than navigating public transport.
"Nonsense," she replied, her voice firm. "It's on my way. Besides, someone has to make sure you don't wander off and try to explain the intricacies of quantum entanglement to the bus driver. You know how you get when you're excited."
"Hey! That was one time! And he asked! Kind of. He grunted in my general direction, which, in bus driver speak, is practically an open invitation for a scientific discourse." I grinned, picturing the poor, bewildered driver. My brain, a giant, highly inefficient meme generator. She wasn't wrong.
Suddenly, a blinding flash of headlights erupted through the blurry curtain of rain ahead of us. My breath hitched. It was too fast, too close. Time seemed to stretch and warp, each raindrop on the windshield becoming a crystal-clear, ominous orb. My mom's calm demeanor vanished, replaced by a sharp, terrified gasp. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles white. The tires of our car seemed to lose all traction, a sickening lurch as we hydroplaned.
"Mom, look out!" I yelled, but the words were drowned out by a deafening shriek of metal, a horrifying symphony of screeching tires and shattering glass. The world spun, a dizzying kaleidoscope of dark forms and flashing lights. My body was thrown forward, then back, the seatbelt biting harshly into my shoulder. The air filled with the acrid smell of burning rubber and something metallic, something like fear. The impact was an indescribable force, a punch to the gut that rattled every bone in my body.
This isn't happening. This can't be happening.
My vision blurred, the kaleidoscope fracturing into jagged shards of pain. I could hear my own ragged breathing, sharp and shallow. Through the chaos, one image seared itself into my mind, perfect and horrifying: my mother's face, contorted in fear, her eyes wide, looking at me. And then, everything went black.
Mom. That was my last conscious thought. Her name, a desperate plea, an echo in the encroaching darkness.
[PART 2: THE VOID AND THE OFFER]
Silence. Absolute, profound silence. It was the kind of quiet that didn't just lack sound, but actively consumed it. I wasn't cold, I wasn't hot. I wasn't breathing, but I wasn't suffocating. I simply… was. Floating. In a place devoid of stars, of light, of any discernible form. A canvas of infinite, terrifying black.
Am I dead? Is this it? Just… nothing? The thought was surprisingly calm, devoid of panic. It was as if my emotions had been neatly packed away, perhaps for a long-term storage unit in the afterlife.
Then, a ripple. Not of water, or air, but of perception. The void itself seemed to hum, a low, resonant frequency that vibrated not in my ears, but directly in my consciousness. And from that ripple, a form began to coalesce. It wasn't a person, or an animal, or anything I could easily categorize. It was a being of pure, incomprehensible geometry. Lines shifted and reformed, angles defied Euclidean logic, and light—a calm, resonant light that seemed to pulse with understanding—emanated from its ever-changing surface. It was beautiful, terrifying, and utterly alien.
It didn't speak with a voice, not in the way I understood it. Instead, thoughts, complete and fully formed, flowed directly into my mind. Not words, but pure, undeniable understanding.
My "existence"? An anomaly? Well, that's just peachy. I always knew I was a little weird, but "cosmic anomaly" feels like a bit much. What, was I supposed to become a supervillain and conquer the tri-state area? Missed opportunity, I guess.
"Realignment?" I thought, my own thoughts feeling like clumsy, dull thuds against the elegant flow of its silent communication. "What, like a chiropractic adjustment for my soul?"
There was no discernible reaction from the geometric being, but the flow of understanding continued.
A new world. My mind, bless its perpetually nerdy heart, immediately went to all the fanfiction I'd ever consumed. Reincarnation. Transmigration. The whole shebang. This was either the most elaborate dream ever, or I'd somehow hit the cosmic jackpot, despite the whole "early termination" thing.
Grief. The sudden, sharp pang of it was a physical blow, surprising in its intensity. My mom. The car. The rain. It all crashed back, a fresh wave of raw, aching loss. She's gone. I'm gone. The void suddenly felt less mysterious and more like a vast, empty tomb.
One wish. The implications of that phrase hit me like a cosmic ton of bricks. My fanboy brain, despite the profound grief, whirred into overdrive. My life as an engineering student, practical and grounded, had taught me to assess parameters, to optimize. And my life as a fan of the Arrowverse had given me a wealth of data points.
"The Arrowverse," I thought, the words forming in my mind with surprising clarity. "Beings like Mr. Mxyzptlk… the Fifth Dimension. Absolute power. Reality manipulation. If I'm getting a do-over, I'm not doing it with a starter pistol."
This is it. This is my shot. To not be powerless. To make a difference. To… not be an anomaly that just vanishes.
My grief was still a dull ache, but it was overshadowed by a sudden, exhilarating surge of, well, nerd energy.
"I wish for… the power of a 5th Dimension being," I thought, trying to infuse every ounce of my being into the mental transmission. "But, and this is crucial, with no inherent biological weaknesses. None of that 'say my name backward to send me away' nonsense. Just… raw power."
The geometric being pulsed, its light momentarily flaring brighter, then settling back into its calm glow. The feeling of understanding intensified, almost like a silent, cosmic nod.
As it "spoke," a shimmering screen of pure light, minimalist and impossibly sleek, flickered into existence before me in the void. On it, a single line of text glowed:
Reality Warping [Lvl 1 - Infinite]
Infinite? Oh, hell yes. This was going to be fun. Or terrifying. Probably both.
The void began to dissolve around me, the silence gradually replaced by a low hum, then a distant, insistent beeping. The calm, resonant light of the being faded, replaced by something harsher, brighter. The sensation of floating vanished, replaced by the distinct, unpleasant feeling of being tethered to something solid.
[PART 3: THE ECHO]
I woke with a gasp, my lungs burning, sucking in air as if I'd been underwater for an hour. The smell hit me first: acrid, sterile antiseptic, burning my nostrils, chasing away the faint lavender scent of my mother's car. My eyes flew open, blinking rapidly against the harsh, fluorescent lights overhead. I was in a hospital bed. White sheets, white walls, the insistent, rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor beside me.
A hospital. Okay. So, I survived the crash. But… what about Mom?
Before I could even fully formulate the thought, a tidal wave of memories, alien yet undeniably my own, crashed over me. It wasn't a trickle, or a slow awakening. It was a deluge, a flash flood of an entire life that wasn't mine, yet instantly was.
I saw a different childhood. Not my cozy suburban home, but a sprawling, somewhat neglected mansion, filled with the scent of old books and something faintly metallic, like ozone. A loving human mother, brilliant, beautiful, with sharp, inquisitive eyes. And the ghost of a powerful, otherworldly father. Not a physical presence, but a vibrant, chaotic force that permeated the early years of this life, a constant, unspoken presence. He was an enigma, a whirlwind of impossible tricks and laughter, always just out of reach, a secret shared only between mother and son.
I saw the "other" me, this Adam. Growing up, feeling different. Not just weird, but fundamentally other. The memories of visiting a place beyond human comprehension, a dimension of pure thought and energy, where beings of shifting light and sound regarded him with disdain. A dud. Blank. Powerless. The mocking laughter, the casual cruelty of beings who considered themselves gods, casting him and his mother out onto Earth, a planet they deemed beneath them. Contemptuous, they cast him and his mother out. The sting of those words, the humiliation, the profound sense of cosmic injustice.
Twenty years of quiet desperation. Of being bullied for being "weird," for seeing things others couldn't, for always feeling a profound disconnect from the world around him. A life filled with resentment, a bitter sense of cosmic unfairness. A life of quiet desperation, bullied for being "weird."
And then, the car crash.
It wasn't my perspective, the passenger seat. It was the driver's. I—no, he—was driving. My mother, his mother, in the passenger seat. The lighthearted banter. The rain. The blinding headlights. The screech of tires. The shattering glass.
And then, her face. His mother's face. Terror. And then, the abrupt, final silence.
The memories culminated in the same horrific instant. But this time, I was behind the wheel. I watched her die.
[EMOTIONAL OVERLOAD. POWER OUTPUT UNSTABLE.]
The words flashed, jarring and insistent, across a shimmering interface that flickered erratically at the edge of my vision.
I screamed. It wasn't a shout of anger, or a cry of pain. It was a primal, gut-wrenching roar of grief, doubled, amplified beyond comprehension. I had lost two mothers in the same instant. The pragmatic engineering student's mother, warm and real, gone in a flash of light. The traumatized, half-alien boy's mother, a beacon in a lonely world, ripped away from him by the same cruel twist of fate. The grief was a living thing, tearing at my insides, a physical agony that dwarfed any injury.
A nurse, a kind-faced woman with tired eyes, rushed into the room, her footsteps muffled against the linoleum. "Mr. Stiels? Are you alright? What's happening?"
Her voice, filled with concern, barely registered. My eyes were fixed on the bedside table. A glass of water, half-full, sat precariously. As I watched, consumed by the agonizing wave of grief, a spiderweb of cracks spread across its surface. Then, with a faint pop, it crumbled into a fine dust, shimmering momentarily before dissolving completely.
The lightbulb in the ceiling above me flickered wildly, the harsh hospital light pulsing like a dying star, then with another sharp pop, it shattered, plunging a portion of the room into relative darkness. Sparks rained down, narrowly missing the nurse, who gasped and took a hesitant step back.
[EMOTIONAL OVERLOAD. POWER OUTPUT UNSTABLE.]
The System interface flashed more violently now, the words burning into my vision. My hands, the hands of this body, trembled. I looked at them, then back at the fragmented memory of the geometric being, then at the lingering image of two dying mothers.
This body was mine. These memories, both distinct and yet inextricably linked, were mine. The grief, a twin-headed beast, was undeniably mine. I was alone. Reborn from two tragedies, fused into one.
My gaze drifted to the corner of the room, where a small, wall-mounted television played silently. The news. A local broadcast. A woman with a perfectly coiffed blonde bob was reporting, her voice a low murmur I couldn't quite discern. But the image on the screen… it was a hazy, pixelated shot of a bustling metropolis, and a blur of red and blue, impossibly fast, impossibly strong, moving through the sky. A news ticker scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
NATIONAL CITY ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE. REPORTS OF NEW "ALIEN" PHENOMENON.
And then, the date, stark and clear: October 2015.
National City. October 2015.
A cold, analytical part of my brain, the part that had cataloged every minute detail of the Arrowverse, clicked into place. This wasn't just any October 2015. This was the October 2015. The precise start of the Supergirl TV show. The very first episode.
The image on the screen, that blur of red and blue, coalesced in my mind.
Kara Danvers. Supergirl.
A new notification, small and almost imperceptible, flickered at the very edge of my system interface, a tiny, almost invisible marker appearing on my HUD, pointing towards the blurry image of the city on the screen.
[Proximity Alert: Primary Anchor Detected.]
Oh, hell no.
A whisper escaped my lips, laced with a mix of dread and a bizarre, almost giddy anticipation. My voice, rough from screaming, sounded different. Deeper, perhaps. Or maybe it was just the echo of two lives, two tragedies, converging into one profoundly messed-up reality.
This is going to be fun.
The sarcasm was already kicking in. It was a shield, a coping mechanism, a tiny flicker of my true personality fighting its way through the overwhelming grief. And, perhaps, a very small, very sick hint of the playful mischief to come.