***Busy yet again tomorrow***
Monday morning arrived with an almost insulting normalcy.
Ethan stood at the kitchen counter, chewing a piece of toast while his mother recited her new homeowner worries—utilities, trash pickup schedules, and whether Long Island water was safe to drink. His father sipped coffee while grumbling about the commute.
Ethan nodded at all the right moments. Smiled on cue. Packed his backpack.
Inside his chest, Forge's intuition still thrummed like a tuning fork struck once and left vibrating endlessly.
"Your dad will drop you off today," his mother said while fussing with his collar. "You'll need the extra time with the new distance. Please don't be late for your first day back."
Ethan didn't respond as he looked ahead. His father grew worried and gave him a light shake to see if he was okay. "Ethan, you okay?"
"Yeah, sorry dad, I was thinking about something. I won't be late," Ethan promised gently.
He meant it. Mostly, but something else worried his mind.
The drive was long—twenty extra minutes of morning radio static, his father's quiet humming, and the sleepy blur of half-awake students beginning to fill the sidewalks of Midtown. The school looked the same as always: beige walls, cracked concrete, and a cafeteria smell that seeped out even in winter.
As soon as Ethan stepped out of the car, he felt it—eyes on him. Not dangerous. Not unusual. Just… hormonal.
Teenagers.
He was halfway down the hallway when a hand shoved him hard from the side.
His shoulder hit the locker beside him.
His reflexes shifted automatically—lean back, brace weight, deflect impact—but he let himself stumble, because he wanted to know who thought they could do that.
A face loomed over him.
Freckled. Jaw tight. Eyes familiar.
Angry.
Ethan blinked once, then filtered through Sage's memory bank and the original Ethan's associations.
The match clicked.
Chris.
One of the previous Ethan's old friends.
Chris—who used to hang around Amy constantly.
Chris—whose pupils were dilated in that particular way that meant panic, jealousy, and too many late-night "why doesn't she talk to me anymore" spirals.
Ethan internally sighed.
A romantic misunderstanding.
The most inefficient form of conflict known to man.
"What," Ethan asked calmly, dusting off his sleeve, "are you doing?"
Chris shoved him again, less forceful this time—more desperate than violent, "Stay away from Amy."
Ethan stared up at him, 'That was it? No elaborate speech? Just jealousy and hostility? Just a boy drowning in feelings he doesn't know how to manage?'
He almost laughed.
But he didn't. He wasn't cruel for fun—only for purpose.
"And why," Ethan asked gently, "would you think there's anything between Amy and me?"
Chris's jaw tightened hard enough to hurt. "Because she barely talks to me anymore—she's changed, man. She's always with you. Or Paige. Or just… gone. And every time I see her smile, you're there or she's talking about you."
'Ah. There it is. Not just jealousy, but also fear.'
Chris wasn't angry at Ethan—he was terrified of losing the one stable emotional tether he had.
Unfortunately, he had chosen the wrong person to confront.
Ethan sighed quietly. "Chris, let go of me."
"I'm not kidding," Chris snapped, leaning closer. "Stay. Away. From—"
Ethan grabbed and twisted his wrist.
Not harshly. Not enough to break anything.
Just enough to remind Chris that Ethan was not prey.
Chris choked on a breath as his arm bent backward, his body pivoting helplessly with the torque Ethan applied in a single smooth motion. In less than a heartbeat, Chris was the one pinned—forearm locked, weight shifted, balance stolen.
"What the—how are you—?!"
"It doesn't matter," Ethan said softly. "Give me your phone."
Chris froze, "What?"
Ethan increased the pressure by a millimeter. Not painful—just persuasive, "Phone."
Swearing under his breath, Chris passed it over.
Ethan unlocked it with the half-smeared thumbprint still on the screen. Efficient. Then he scrolled to Amy's contact and pressed call before Chris could process his intent.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
"Hello?" Amy's voice crackled through the speaker.
Ethan held the phone out to Chris.
"Tell her how you feel," Ethan said simply.
Chris's eyes widened with horror. "Wait—what? No—"
Ethan twisted his arm another three degrees.
Not injuring.
Just encouraging.
Chris hissed through his teeth. "A-Amy? I… I needed to say something."
A pause on the other end. "Chris? Are you okay? Why do you sound like you're hurt?"
Chris squeezed his eyes shut. "I like you," he blurted out. "Like… like like you."
Silence.
Long silence.
Then finally, "Oh, Chris…" Amy's voice softened in the way people do when they're trying to cushion a blow with kindness. "I'm sorry. I don't see you that way. You're my friend. But that's… that's it."
Chris sagged—Ethan felt it through the tension of his pinned arm.
"Okay," Chris whispered. "Yeah. Okay. I get it. Sorry for being weird. I'll talk to you later."
Ethan took the phone, pressed end, then released Chris's arm with a gentle push backward.
Chris stumbled a step, rubbing his elbow with shaking hands.
"You should move on," Ethan said calmly. "There is nothing going on between Amy and me. And frankly, you probably see her far more often than I do. I assume the reason she talked about me was that I helped her out a while back."
Chris didn't respond. His face was flushed—not just from pain, but from humiliation, heartbreak, and the realization that he'd cornered the wrong guy.
Ethan handed him his phone back with a light toss. "And don't do something this stupid again. I don't have time for it."
He walked away before Chris found words.
By third period, the confrontation with Chris already felt like a footnote. Ethan settled back into his routine easily, answering questions at just the right level to maintain his B+/A-range persona. Teachers smiled approvingly and the illusion of normalcy stayed intact. Normal was useful—it was camouflage. But as he sat in his advanced physics lab, that camouflage began to fray from the inside out.
The teacher had written a series of equations on the whiteboard regarding electromagnetic induction. For a normal student, it was a formula to be memorized; for Ethan, it was a spark in a powder keg.
Because Forge's power was completely passive, it acted as a constant sensory input that Sage's super-computer mind couldn't help but process. The moment he looked at the copper coils on his lab desk, the feedback loop triggered. Forge's power identified the fundamental inefficiency of the wire's conductivity; his Sage empowered mind instantly calculated a polymer coating to fix it.
Then, the loop tightened. As soon as he "perfected" the polymer, Forge's intuition scanned the new design and immediately flagged a potential for improvement by swapping the copper base for a synthetic carbon-lattice. Then his mind was filled with ideas on how to go about creating and improving the synthetic carbon-lattice.
His mind didn't just accept the suggestion of the improvements—it began to optimize them, rearranging the molecular structure for zero resistance. But the moment that design was finalized, Forge saw the inefficiency of the power source itself, prompting Ethan's mind to design a cold-fusion battery to handle the new field. It was an endless, recursive nightmare of "What if?" and "Better." Every time Sage reached a peak, Forge moved the mountain higher.
He didn't even realize he had stopped blinking. Inside his mind, the design was evolving at a terrifying velocity. He wasn't just looking at a school experiment anymore; he was iterating a world-altering power source.
If it were to be explained in simple terms basically, the "iPhone 6" version of the project in front of him had reached an "iPhone 200" level of sophistication in moments. His pulse hammered in his ears as his brain strained under the weight of a thousand blueprints layered on top of one another, each one more perfect—and more impossible to build with Earth's current resources—than the last. It was an endless, exhausting climb toward a peak that didn't exist.
"Ethan? Ethan, are you with us?"
The voice was a distant echo. He was currently recalculating the nano-compatible solder requirements for a circuit board that wouldn't be invented for three centuries.
A hand gripped his shoulder and gave him a firm shake. The world rushed back in a violent blur of beige walls and the smell of the cafeteria. Ethan gasped, his lungs finally remembering to draw air, as he realized the classroom was nearly empty. His teacher was leaning over him, brow furrowed with genuine concern, while a few lingering students whispered near the door. The bell had rung five minutes ago. He hadn't moved; he hadn't even twitched. He had been a statue, a prisoner of his own runaway thoughts.
"I... sorry, Mr. Henderson," Ethan managed, his voice sounding thin even to his own ears. "I was just deep in thought about the... the induction variables."
"Are you okay? Your nose is bleeding," the teacher remarked, eyeing Ethan's notebook. "You probably didn't hear a word I said. Class is over, Ethan. Get some air or go see the nurse."
Ethan looked down at his desk. His notebook was filled with a design and drops of blood. Ethan reach up and wiped his nose.
His hand had moved reflexively during the trance, but instead of the equations on the board, he had started sketching. He saw the sharp, disciplined lines of a micro-processor and modular circuit plates. They were improved, but they were far from the current
The drawing had been of the copper base before he dived deep down the rabbit hole. It seemed in this state, this had his only anchor. He had somehow been able to choose the most efficient and cost-effective version and drawn it, albeit subconsciously.
'Damn, these powers work great together, but if I'm not careful, I'll think myself into a coma. Yesterday, when I drew and thought of it, I could somewhat control my thoughts, but now I couldn't stop twice in one day. The problem must be my lack of familiarity with Sage's powers. While a semi-passive it has some active abilities, the problem is that I rarely use them. It seems that another thing on my list is to master my own thoughts.'
Realizing then that if he used a physical medium like paper, he could "lock" his mind into a specific, buildable tier of technology. If he drew out a design and focused solely on what was on paper, he could see its flaws and keep upgrading it, but the moment he looked away, he'd be able to stop.
His mind could run simulations on problems without his conscious mind actively taking part, and those simulations ran endlessly, so this might be solved in the same way, but thinking with a limit or ending pre-built in.
At lunch, Paige waved him over, but Ethan excused himself with a promise to catch up tomorrow. His head was killing him so he to the library to take a nap.
After school, he walked the extra few blocks to a hardware and electronics shop tucked between a laundromat and a deli.
The door chimed when he entered.
His eyes moved immediately to what he needed:
– microprocessors
– modular circuit plates
– conductive polymer sheets
– custom casing material
– nano-compatible solder
His fingers twitched with anticipation.
A new phone would save him the trouble of carrying so many burner phones. The new phone he was going to create and program would be able to switch between the different numbers and mask his ping and mislead those looking for him.
He purchased everything with the allowance his mother gave him that morning—not dipping into his other accounts like those of Isaac Maddox. Layers mattered. Identities mattered.
By the time he stepped back onto the street, the sky was turning the color of cooling steel.
Ethan tightened his grip on the bag.
Routine was somewhat back, and he'd need to put more in place.
But under it, progress thrummed like electricity.