First-person (Stephen)
Time kept moving.
I used to think that was supposed to be comforting. That time moving forward meant progress. Growth. Answers.
But lately, all it meant was… waiting.
Mark turned seventeen five months ago. Five months of silence. Five months of training in the backyard, eating protein bars like they held secrets, checking the mirror every morning for something—anything—that looked like power.
Nothing.
He didn't say it out loud, but I could feel it pressing in around him. It came out in small ways. The way he stopped doodling in his notebook. The way he tapped his pen three times before answering a question. The way he looked at our dad with a mixture of hope and dread every time they locked eyes.
And me?
I was changing. Quietly. In ways no one noticed.
It started with a buzz in my skin. Not a tingle — not static. It was deeper than that. Like something alive had curled beneath my flesh, humming low and steady like a heartbeat that didn't belong to me. It started small. I thought I imagined it.
But it didn't go away.
At night, I'd lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. Listening. Feeling. The house would settle, the air conditioner would hum, Mark would turn over in his sleep down the hall… and the hum beneath my skin would still be there.
Growing.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I tried to talk myself out of it. I mean — come on. A bio-electric field? It sounded like comic book science. Something made up to explain why Superman's cape didn't get torn off mid-flight.
But I could feel it.
And when I pressed my hand against the wall and focused, the wall pressed back.
Just barely. A shift. A flicker of resistance that wasn't physical. Not touch. Not pressure. Something else.
Something mine.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I started small.
I locked my bedroom door. Closed the blinds. Sat cross-legged on the floor with a penny between my fingers and a notebook open beside me.
Step one: Make it move.
I didn't want it to float. Just tilt. A nudge. A twitch. Something real.
I stared until my eyes hurt. My fingers trembled from how tightly I was gripping my focus.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then—
Wobble.
The penny shifted. Less than an inch. But I saw it. I felt it.
And I smiled.
_ _ ♛ _ _
It became a routine. I didn't talk about it, not even to Mark. Especially not to Mark. He was still waiting for his real powers to kick in — the flight, the strength, the speed. The Viltrumite gifts. If I told him I could make a coin shake with a ghost of an aura, he'd just nod politely and look away.
He didn't need my small victories.
Not when he was still stuck.
But me?
I had work to do.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The thing about tactile telekinesis is that it's not about mind-over-matter. It's about extension. Projection. Your body becomes a conductor. A field. You don't push with thoughts. You push with presence.
I started walking through the house barefoot. It helped me feel things more clearly. Every surface buzzed with a different tone. Carpet. Tile. Wood. Even the air had texture, once you stopped thinking of it as empty.
At first, I thought I was going crazy.
But when I pushed my hand toward my desk — didn't touch it, just hovered close — and felt the edge shift half a millimetre?
I knew.
_ _ ♛ _ _
"Stephen?" Mom called one night from the kitchen. "What are you doing in the dark?"
I was in the backyard. Knees bent, palms on the grass. Barefoot. Moonlight overhead. I looked up at her voice, blinking like I'd forgotten how to speak.
"Thinking," I said.
She gave me a weird look. "It's ten thirty."
"I'll come in soon."
She didn't press. Just nodded and slid the door shut.
I didn't move.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I was building something invisible.
That was how I thought of it. Not powers. Not energy. Just... structure.
I'd feel my aura swell outward — just a few millimetres, nothing dramatic — and hold. Like trying to keep a soap bubble from popping.
The longer I held it, the more real it felt.
Then I tried to shape it.
That's where things got complicated.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The night it finally worked, I was lying on my stomach in the grass. My hands were planted, fingers splayed like roots, and I was breathing slow. The way I'd seen Mark do when Dad made him meditate before sparring.
My hands weren't doing anything special. But the grass beneath them? It was flattening.
Not because of my weight.
Because I was pressing with something else.
Something unseen.
My bio-electric field.
It had a shape now. A form. And for the first time, it obeyed me.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I picked up a pencil and tried to break it — not with my hand, but with that same pressure.
It cracked in half.
No strain. No flex. Just a clean snap.
I exhaled sharply. My chest hurt from how fast my heart was pounding.
I wasn't just experimenting anymore.
I was able to easily snap it.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Mark noticed, eventually. Not the powers. Not the field.
Me.
"You okay?" he asked one night, as we sat on the roof together. "You've been quiet lately."
I shrugged. "I've always been quiet."
"Yeah, but this is like... even more than usual. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The 'I just built a doomsday device in my head and named it Kevin' look."
I laughed.
"I'm just thinking," I said.
Mark leaned back on his hands, looking up at the stars. "About what?"
I hesitated.
Then: "Stuff."
He didn't push. He just sat beside me and didn't say anything else for a long time.
That's the thing about Mark. For all the ways he feels like he's not enough, for all the ways he doubts himself, he's still the kind of brother who makes space for you.
Even when he feels like he's running out of space for himself.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I kept training. Quietly. Relentlessly.
I stopped sleeping. Not because I couldn't. Because I didn't need to.
I stopped eating lunch with the others sometimes, just so I could feel the field without distractions.
When it got too loud in my head, I went outside. The backyard became my lab. My sanctuary. My forge.
One night, I stood barefoot in the cold, snow piling at my feet, and I didn't feel it. My aura kept me warm. My breath fogged the air, but I didn't shiver.
Not even a twitch.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Dad watched me, sometimes. I'd feel it — the weight of his gaze through the upstairs window. He never said anything. But he knew.
He always knows.
Sometimes I wonder if he's waiting for me to become something else.
Or if he's afraid I already have.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I'm almost twelve.
Mark is seventeen and a half.
I can move objects without touching them. I can manipulate fields of pressure around my body. I can make a coin dance in my hand without my fingers ever closing.
And I know — I know — that this is just the beginning.
Mark's powers will come.
And when they do, the world will shift again.
But when that moment arrives… I won't be the little brother in the background anymore.
I'll be ready.
End of Chapter 21
(A/N: oooh this is the end of volume 1, next chapter is the start of volume 2!)