A metallic taste filled Tom's mouth. Rose's words, sharp as shrapnel, still ricocheted inside his skull. "Hiding isn't an option!" Her voice had cracked, a raw plea. His palms felt damp, cold. Becoming a weapon. That was the phrase that haunted him, a ghost from the Directorate's interrogations. He pushed away from the rough-hewn table, the wood splintering beneath his touch. Not with his hands, but with the subtle tremor of his mind. A tiny, uncontrolled burst of telekinetic energy. A stark reminder of the power he feared. Rose watched him, her eyes burning with a frustrated fire. Her shoulders slumped slightly. She understood his terror. But understanding didn't change the stakes. Days blurred into a tense waiting game. The rebellion base, a labyrinth of repurposed tunnels beneath the city, hummed with suppressed energy. Every face held a quiet determination, a steel he hadn't yet found within himself. He saw Mara often, her movements fluid and deadly, her gaze assessing. She never pressed him directly, but her presence was a constant, unspoken question. Was he in or out? One evening, a quiet descended over their small living quarters. Rose was out, likely training or on a reconnaissance mission. Tom sat alone, tracing patterns on the grimy floor, lost in thought. The faint hum of ventilation was his only companion. Footsteps approached. Heavy, deliberate. Commander Anya stood in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the dim hallway light. Her usual stern expression seemed etched even deeper tonight. Her gaze, direct and unwavering, met his. "Tom." Her voice was a low rumble, devoid of inflection. She stepped inside, the door swinging shut with a soft click. She carried something in her gloved hand. A small, metallic object, no larger than his thumb. It looked like a damaged data chip, scored with deep gouges, its edges frayed. "We recovered this," Anya stated, her voice flat, "from a Directorate raid. One of their less secure facilities, thankfully. It was partially corrupted." She extended her hand, offering it. Tom took the chip. It felt cold and inert in his palm, yet it hummed with a silent, unseen importance. A fragment of their enemy's secrets. "We managed to salvage some data," Anya continued, moving towards a small, portable terminal set up in the corner. Its screen flickered to life, casting a pale glow across her face. "Most of it is garbled. But some files… they're intact enough." She gestured for him to approach. He moved slowly, a strange premonition coiling in his gut. The air grew heavy, thick with unspoken truths. Anya's fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard. Lines of code scrolled down the screen, indecipherable to him. Then, a new window opened. It displayed a text log, fragmented and incomplete, but starkly clear in its implications. Tom leaned closer, his eyes scanning the words. His breath hitched. `LOG ENTRY: 11.23.XXXX` `PROJECT: M-CLASSIFIED` `PHASE: ACTIVATION EVENT ALPHA` `STATUS: GLOBAL SUCCESS. PARAMETERS MET. SUBJECT RESPONSE VARIED.` `NOTES: INITIAL POWER FLUCTUATIONS STABILIZING. MONITORING PROTOCOL ENGAGED.` `PRIORITY: CONTAINMENT & ASSESSMENT.` Activation Event Alpha. The words burned into his vision. Global success. Parameters met. Subject response varied. A cold dread seeped into his bones, colder than the metal chip he still clutched. "The blackout," he whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. His family's faces flashed through his mind – their fear, their helplessness, huddled together in the sudden, inexplicable darkness. It wasn't an accident. It was an event. He remembered the news reports, the desperate theories, the government's vague reassurances about overloaded grids and solar flares. Lies. All of it. "The Directorate called it 'Activation Event Alpha'," Anya confirmed, her voice devoid of triumph, only a grim certainty. "Not a natural disaster. Not a power grid failure. It was… deliberate." Tom's hands began to tremble. Not from fear of his own power, but from the chilling truth of this revelation. The world had been plunged into darkness, not by chance, but by design. His family’s terror, their vulnerability, had been part of a grand, terrifying scheme. "They knew," he murmured, his voice barely audible. "They knew it would happen. They caused it." Anya nodded, her expression unreadable. "For years, they were experimenting. Trying to replicate the original 'Blessed' mutation, but on a global scale. This chip… it suggests they finally found a way to trigger latent abilities in a massive population. Or, at least, to activate what was already there." He looked back at the flickering text on the screen. `SUBJECT RESPONSE VARIED.` He was a subject. Rose was a subject. All of them, across the globe, were subjects in some monstrous experiment. The cheerful facade he maintained, the attempts to downplay his telekinesis, felt like a pathetic charade now. His anger, usually a slow burn, ignited with a fierce, searing heat. Not just at the Directorate, but at the sheer audacity of it. The casual cruelty of treating an entire planet as a laboratory. His own power, the one he had tried to ignore, to hide, suddenly felt less like a curse and more like a brand. A mark of their manipulation. "My parents…" he started, his voice cracking. "They were so scared. Everyone was. They just… switched us on." "Or they used the blackout as a catalyst," Anya clarified. "The full extent of their research is still buried. But the intent is clear. They didn't just stumble upon us, Tom. They engineered the conditions for our emergence." He ran a hand through his hair, a wave of nausea washing over him. The world tilted on its axis. Everything he thought he knew, every explanation he'd clung to, shattered. The Directorate wasn't just containing threats; they were harvesting them. They weren't just afraid of the Blessed Ones; they had created them. This wasn't about control. This was about ownership. A deep, primal fear of powerlessness, the very wound he carried from witnessing his family's terror during that manufactured night, resurfaced with a vengeance. Only now, it was compounded by a righteous fury. "So we're… products?" He spat the word, the taste bitter on his tongue. "They just flipped a switch, and suddenly we're 'Blessed'?" Anya looked at him, her voice low, "They didn't just contain us, Tom. They made us."

Chapter 13: Echoes of the Blackout