The car glided along the freeway, headlights from passing vehicles flashing across the tinted windows. I sat on my mother's lap, pressed against her arms, which circled me like a seatbelt she didn't trust to do its job. She hummed softly into my ear, something tuneless, and every few minutes pressed her lips against my cheek like I was a doll she'd just brought home from the store.
I didn't mind. Not really. I wasn't suffocated, just mildly irritated by the inconvenience. Her constant affection had been amusing at first, but repetition dulled the novelty. By now it was just background noise.
While she clung to me, I turned my attention inward.
The wish energy.
It glimmered inside me like liquid starlight—diffuse yet heavy. Not numbers, not precise measurements—that was too rigid. I didn't need digits to understand scale. And the scale was… impressive.
Tonight's haul was enough to twist reality across a tenth of a metropolis. If I wanted, I could rewrite a district, flatten a small city, heal or harm tens of thousands in a single invocation. From one song.
That was a satisfying return.
But it was only an appetizer.
Earlier, I overheard a stagehand joking with a producer. The show wasn't live. None of it. They taped everything, cut it, rearranged it to suit the story they wanted to tell. Which meant that what had happened tonight—the gasps, the tears, the applause—wasn't even the real performance. The real one would happen weeks later, when millions of televisions flickered to life and broadcast me into living rooms across the country. I hadn't known that before; I hadn't paid much attention to the details. I just wanted to get it over with.
The thought made something stir in me. A ripple of anticipation.
If I could collect this much wish energy from a few thousand strangers in an auditorium, then what would happen when millions wished for me simultaneously?
Would I be able to cover an entire state? A country?
The possibility made my lips curl upward. A smile.
It wasn't forced, and it wasn't the polite mask I wore for the cameras. It was genuine. And that was rare enough that I noticed it.
"Why are you smiling?" my mother asked, suspicious. Her arms tightened, pulling me against her chest. "What are you thinking about?"
I tilted my head toward the window, watching neon streaks blur into rivers of light. "Nothing."
She didn't believe me. She never did. Her grip firmed. "You're mine, Adam. Don't forget that. No matter how loud they clap for you, no matter how much they talk about you—you belong to me."
Her tone was syrupy, but her eyes, faintly reflected in the glass, had an edge. It wasn't love. It was ownership.
I let her words roll past me. They didn't touch anything.
She wasn't wrong, though—at least not yet. For now, I was hers. Her little prodigy. But later? Later she'd be something else. Not discarded—that would be wasteful. A puppet was more useful than a corpse. She'd still smile, still hug, still act the part, but her strings would no longer be in her hands. I could do that now, but she hadn't gone over the edge yet. And I wanted to extend the time I spent with her living self.
I leaned back into her arms, feigning comfort. She sighed in satisfaction, thinking she'd won something.
Meanwhile, I returned to my earlier thought.
The stage. The applause.
I had discovered something else about myself tonight, something almost more interesting than the energy. I liked showing off. Not the shallow thrill of applause—though that was fine too—but the act of bending others' emotions, pulling awe from their lungs, tears from their eyes. It was artful. Manipulation dressed as performance.
That was why I sang so earnestly. Why I allowed the song to drag whatever little sparks of feeling I had to the surface. Because when I showed them something real, they gave me something real in return.
And that exchange… was intoxicating.
Maybe I should make a hobby of it.
My emotions were scarce, so when I did feel something—excitement, anticipation—it was like lightning striking dry earth. Sudden. Bright. Worth cataloging.
Tonight, I felt excitement. That made it worth repeating.
The hotel rose in the distance, all glass and light against the Los Angeles night. It wasn't glamorous, but that didn't matter. It was another stage, another waiting room before the world saw me.
Beside me, my mother shifted, whispering about how proud she was, how she'd always known I was special. Lies she told herself, lies she thought I'd believe.
I smiled faintly.
Not for her.
But for the storm of wish energy still trickling into me, for the broadcast yet to come, for the world that would unknowingly lend me its strength.
The car turned off the freeway and the hotel's driveway lights washed over the windshield.
Tonight was over.
But the show had only just begun.
And I wasn't just performing anymore.
I was preparing the stage for miracles.