Alex, 15, woke up with a jolt. Not from a nightmare, but from a strange tingling sensation in his fingertips. He looked around his messy room, the posters of superheroes staring back at him. "Too much late-night comic reading," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. But then, his alarm clock, usually a jarring sentinel of morning, began to float. Not just a little wiggle, but a full-on, defying-gravity hover a foot above his nightstand. Alex stared, wide-eyed, his heart hammering against his ribs. He instinctively reached out, and as his hand got closer, a faint, almost invisible, shimmer of energy crackled around the clock. He pulled his hand back as if burned.
"What in the...?" he whispered, his voice cracking. He tried again, more cautiously this time. He focused, not really knowing what he was focusing on, but a warmth spread through his palm, and the clock responded, tilting slightly to the left. He giggled, a nervous, disbelieving sound. He made it spin, then descend gently back to the table. This was impossible. This was... awesome. And terrifying.
He spent the next hour in a bewildered trance, experimenting. He found he could move small objects, make his desk lamp flicker with a thought, and even, to his absolute astonishment, make his spilled glass of water re-form into a perfect, shimmering sphere before gently lowering it back into the glass. He was careful, though. A part of him, the logical part that still believed in physics and boring reality, screamed that this had to be a dream. But the floating pen in front of him argued otherwise.
The real panic set in when the sun started to rise, painting his room in hues of orange and pink. His parents would be up soon. What was he going to do? He had superpowers. Actual, honest-to-goodness, comic-book-level superpowers. He could barely handle remembering his homework, let alone wielding unknown cosmic forces. He imagined trying to explain this to his mom. "Yeah, so, my alarm clock was floating, and I think I can move stuff with my mind now. Pass the cereal?" He could almost hear her sigh.
He tried to suppress the tingling, to make it go away, but it was like trying to hold back a sneeze. The power was there, humming beneath his skin, a constant, low thrum. He felt more alive than he ever had, but also more exposed, more vulnerable. This wasn't a game. This was real. And he had absolutely no idea what to do next. He looked at his reflection in the window, a perfectly ordinary 15-year-old staring back, but he knew, irrevocably, that everything had changed. The world was still the same, but Alex wasn't. Not anymore.