chapter 6

Meanwhile, the fluorescent lights of Redwood High flickered and died as the UFO's explosion tore through the evening sky at 5:07 PM. Emergency lights cast sickly amber shadows across the devastation, their weak illumination barely penetrating the thick clouds of concrete dust that hung in the air like a funeral shroud. The east wing, where late-night study sessions and club meetings had been in full swing, now lay in ruins beneath the star-studded October sky.

Through the settling dust, occasional whimpers and cries pierced the eerie silence which slowly died off with their sources. The drama club's evening rehearsal, the math team's competition prep, the basketball team's extra practice – all had been transformed in an instant from mundane high school activities into a nightmare of rubble and pain. One lone ambulance's red and white lights pulsed through the darkness as it screamed its way back and forth between the school and Redwood General, each journey a desperate race against time, each return a reminder of how many still waited for help.

In what had been an AP Physics classroom, a hand thrust up through a pile of broken ceiling tiles. Fingers splayed wide, reaching for the starlit sky, then clenched into a fist as their owner fought his way to the surface. Neil Stone emerged like a diver breaking through waves, his once-crisp suit now reduced to tatters, his face a mask of gray dust save for the tracks his sweat had carved through it.

He shouldn't have survived. The physics of the collapse suggested crushing force, yet here he stood, unmarked beneath the coating of debris. The same Neil Stone who had drawn the attention of those monitoring the cyborg gorilla incident – though in this moment, he thought nothing of being watched. His eyes, adjusting to the darkness broken only by emergency lights and distant fires, darted across the apocalyptic landscape of what had been a school hallway.

A weak cough caught his attention. Three yards away, partially hidden beneath a fallen bulletin board, a student stirred. Neil's muscles tensed, and then it began – the transformation he had experienced countless times but never quite got used to. It started as a tingling in his fingertips, like the static electricity before a storm. Then came the first changes, his skin hardening and taking on the texture of rough granite, starting at his hands and creeping up his arms like living stone ivy.

The transformation accelerated, spreading across his chest and down his torso. Neil felt the familiar pressure as his muscles expanded, reinforced by layers of metamorphic rock that grew not just around but through him. His bones crystallized, becoming harder than diamond, while his internal organs were encased in a flexible layer of minerals that somehow still allowed them to function. His height increased by three feet as his body restructured itself, shoulders broadening until they were twice their normal width, each limb thickening with layers of living stone.

The final stage of the transformation reached his face, and this was always the strangest sensation – feeling his features harden and reshape, his eyes transforming into gleaming crystals that could perceive heat signatures and structural weaknesses. His hair became spikes of obsidian, and his jaw squared off into chiseled angles that would have looked at home on a classical statue.

Where Neil Stone had stood now loomed Gol, nine feet of animated stone, his form radiating a faint phosphorescent glow in the darkness that cast strange shadows across the debris-strewn floor. In the dim emergency lighting, the crystalline patterns in his stone skin caught and reflected the amber glow, creating an almost ethereal effect. Despite his massive size, his movements remained fluid, each gesture accompanied by the soft sound of grinding stone, like distant thunder.

The golem's massive frame moved with surprising grace as he crossed to the injured student. A girl, he realized – probably a freshman, given her size. Despite hands now as large and seemingly unwieldy as cinder blocks, Gol lifted her with the gentleness of a parent cradling an infant. Through his transformed eyes, he could see her heat signature pulsing weakly – alive, but fading.

Through the gaping hole in the wall, the night sky was visible, stars obscured by smoke and dust. The parking lot where the ambulance had been loading victims lay empty now – at least ten minutes before it would return. Downtown Redwood's needs had stripped away emergency resources, leaving the school to fend for itself in the aftermath of this second attack. The girl in his arms didn't have ten minutes to wait.

Gol's legs tensed, and then he was running. Each footfall should have shaken the ground, but he had learned to distribute his weight, to move with a lightness that belied his massive form. In the darkness, his faintly glowing form cast moving shadows across the walls as he ran. The girl's head lolled against his chest, and he adjusted his grip to better stabilize her neck, the crystalline structures in his arms automatically reshaping to create a more secure cradle.

The hospital was 5 miles away. Gol wasn't a normal runner. His stone muscles didn't tire, didn't burn with lactic acid. His stone structure could absorb the impact of each stride, protecting his precious cargo from the jarring journey. In the darkness, he ran like a living statue come to life, his phosphorescent glow marking his path through the night.

As he ran, his mind raced faster than his feet. The UFO's appearance had seemed random at first, but now? Now it felt orchestrated, a calculated strike against Redwood's future. Someone wanted this chaos, wanted the emergency services overwhelmed and stretched thin, and had chosen the cover of night to maximize the confusion and fear.

But those were thoughts for later. Right now, there was only the rhythm of his stride, the weight of the injured girl in his arms, and the desperate race to reach help before it was too late. No system granting him powers, no reincarnated knowledge to draw upon – just the abilities he'd discovered within himself and the choice of how to use them.

Behind him, smoke continued to rise from Redwood High, silhouetted against the night sky, and somewhere in the distance, another siren wailed through the darkness.

The streets of Redwood had never felt so endless. Television light flickered through curtained windows, casting intermittent blue shadows across Scott's path as he stumbled homeward. Behind those windows, families huddled around news broadcasts, as if their walls could shield them from whatever catastrophe might come next. The irony wasn't lost on Scott, even in his dazed state – seeking shelter in the very structures that could become their tombs.

His breathing echoed in the empty street, each ragged inhale sounding foreign to his own ears. The sound seemed to bounce off the silent houses, a harsh reminder that he was still alive when so many others weren't. At six-foot-two, Scott had always stood out in a crowd, but now his height made him feel exposed, vulnerable – a walking target swaying beneath the streetlights.

Every step was a negotiation with gravity. His legs moved mechanically, as if operated by some distant puppeteer who had only a vague understanding of how humans walked. The dust coating his clothes had mixed with sweat and blood – his own? others'? – creating a grayish paste that seemed to weigh down every movement. His eyes, bloodshot and burning, stared ahead without really seeing, focused on some middle distance between where he was and where his mind had retreated.

When Scott finally reached his family's two-story bungalow, it took him three attempts to get the key into the lock. The metal was warped, its end melted into an abstract sculpture that somehow still turned in the mechanism. He practically fell through the doorway, his body having saved its last reserves of strength for this final threshold.

The familiar scent of home – his father's coffee, the lavender air freshener, yesterday's dinner – hit him like a physical force, jarring against the acrid smoke that clung to his clothes and hair. Dust cascaded from his clothes as he dragged himself upstairs, leaving a trail of gray footprints on the carpet his father had vacuumed just that morning.

Sitting on his bed, Scott watched as particles of debris drifted down onto his blue comforter like toxic snow. His gaze drifted to the neighbor's house across the street, and suddenly, like a key turning in his mind, one word crashed through his mental fog:

"Dad."

The whisper grew to a shout as awareness slammed back into him. "Dad!" His voice cracked as he lurched to his feet, adrenaline flooding his system anew. The fifteen steps to his father's bedroom felt like miles, each one carrying the weight of possible tragedy.

The empty room hit him like a physical blow. The bed was still made, his father's reading glasses still perched on the nightstand – everything untouched, undisturbed, hauntingly normal. Scott's hand flew to his pocket, finding only twisted metal where his phone should have been. The realization of his isolation struck him then – not just from his father, but from everyone. His friends... had anyone else made it out? The thought of their faces, the last time he'd seen them, threatened to overwhelm him.

Downstairs again, moving faster now, Scott's fingers wrapped around the emergency landline on the kitchen counter. The plastic felt strange against his dust-covered hands as he punched in his father's number. Each ring seemed to last an eternity.

Unknown to Scott, his father stood crushed among hundreds of other desperate parents outside the blast zone, straining to see past police barriers and emergency vehicles, hoping for any glimpse of his son. When the phone finally vibrated in his pocket, the caller ID displaying "HOME," his heart leaped.

In that moment of pure relief, Scott's grip tightened involuntarily, and the phone crumbled in his grasp, cutting off the connection before a single word could be spoken.

"What the..." muttered Scott as he stared at the crushed phone falling from his hand