Chapter 3: Unwanted Attention
The woman was gone when I looked back.
I scanned the cafeteria, but she'd vanished like smoke. Students chatted and laughed at their tables, completely oblivious to the predator that had been watching from among them. Maybe I'd imagined her. Maybe the stress of everything was getting to me.
But the feeling of being watched didn't go away.
I spent the rest of the school day looking over my shoulder, jumping at shadows. Every teacher seemed suspicious, every janitor potentially dangerous. By the time the final bell rang, my nerves were stretched thinner than piano wire.
The parking lot was mostly empty when I stepped outside. Most kids had already left for home or after-school activities. I preferred it this way—fewer people meant fewer chances for confrontation.
"Alex Chen?"
I spun around, my heart hammering. The woman from the cafeteria stood about ten feet away, hands clasped behind her back. Up close, she looked even more dangerous. Her suit was expensive, her posture military-straight, and her smile had all the warmth of a shark's.
"Do I know you?" I asked, taking a step back.
"Not yet. But I know you." She pulled out a badge, flashing it briefly before tucking it away. "Agent Sarah Reyes, Department of Mutant Affairs. We need to talk."
My blood turned to ice. Department of Mutant Affairs. I'd heard whispers about them—government agents who hunted down people like me. People who were different.
"I think you have the wrong person," I said, continuing to back away.
"Do I?" She tilted her head, studying me like a specimen under a microscope. "Yesterday you drowned in the Millbrook River. Witnesses saw you go under and not come back up. A search and rescue team spent hours looking for your body."
I bumped into something solid—a parked car. Trapped.
"Yet here you are," Agent Reyes continued, "without so much as a scratch. That's very interesting, don't you think?"
"I'm a good swimmer."
"In flood conditions? With a current moving at twelve miles per hour? In water cold enough to cause hypothermia in minutes?" She shook her head. "I don't think so."
My mouth went dry. She knew. Somehow, this government agent knew exactly what had happened to me.
"What do you want?" I whispered.
"Just to talk. To offer you some options." She reached into her jacket, and I tensed, ready to run. But she only pulled out a business card. "You're not in trouble, Alex. Not yet. But you will be if you don't learn to control what's happening to you."
"Nothing's happening to me."
"Really?" Her smile widened. "Then you won't mind if I do this."
She moved faster than I thought possible, pulling something from her belt—a taser. The electrodes hit my chest before I could react, sending fifty thousand volts coursing through my body.
I screamed and collapsed, my muscles seizing uncontrollably. The pain was incredible, like being struck by lightning. My vision went white, then black, then—
Nothing.
---
I woke up in a concrete room with no windows.
The air smelled like disinfectant and fear. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in harsh white light. I was lying on a narrow cot with a thin mattress that felt like it was stuffed with rocks.
"You're awake," Agent Reyes said from a chair near the door. "Good. We have a lot to discuss."
I sat up slowly, my head spinning. The last thing I remembered was the taser hitting me in the school parking lot. But I felt fine now—better than fine, actually. The chronic tension I usually carried in my shoulders was gone, and my breathing felt easier.
"Where am I?"
"A secure facility about two hours outside Millbrook. Don't worry—your mother thinks you're staying at a friend's house for the weekend. I had one of my people call her."
"You kidnapped me."
"I recruited you. There's a difference." She stood up, smoothing down her suit. "Though I admit our methods are a bit unorthodox."
I looked around the room. Concrete walls, steel door, no obvious way out. "This doesn't feel like recruitment."
"The taser killed you, Alex. Fifty thousand volts straight to the heart. You were clinically dead for four minutes and thirty-seven seconds." She consulted a tablet in her hands. "Then you just... came back. Heart started beating on its own, brain activity resumed, no lasting damage. Care to explain how that's possible?"
My throat felt like sandpaper. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't lie to me. We've been watching you for weeks. The chemical explosion at school where you should have died from toxic exposure but walked away fine. The car accident where you should have had internal bleeding but showed no injuries. The fall from the gymnasium roof that should have shattered every bone in your body."
She pulled up footage on her tablet, showing me security camera videos I'd never known existed. Me walking away from accidents that should have killed me. Me healing from injuries that should have left permanent damage.
"You're a mutant, Alex. A very special kind of mutant. And we want to help you."
"Help me do what?"
"Control your abilities. Understand what you're becoming. Because right now, you're a ticking time bomb. Each time you die and come back, you get stronger. Each time you survive something that should kill you, you adapt." She leaned forward, her eyes intense. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that makes you?"
I thought about the anger I'd felt in the cafeteria, the way Derek had backed down from me. The strange confidence that had been growing since my resurrection.
"What do you want from me?"
"Service. To your country. To humanity." She set the tablet aside. "You have the potential to become one of the most powerful mutants alive. We want to make sure you use that power responsibly."
"And if I refuse?"
Her smile returned, cold and sharp. "Then you'll spend the rest of your very long life in a cell like this one. For everyone's safety, including your own."
The threat hung in the air between us like a blade. I was trapped, and we both knew it. Even if I could somehow escape this room, where would I go? Back to Millbrook, where everyone now knew something was wrong with me? Back to a mother who barely noticed when I was gone?
"What kind of service?" I asked quietly.
"Field operations. Dealing with dangerous mutants who threaten civilian populations. Think of it as... pest control."
The casual way she said it made my skin crawl. "You want me to kill other mutants."
"I want you to neutralize threats. Sometimes that means capture. Sometimes it means elimination. But always, it means protecting innocent people from monsters."
"What makes you think I'm not a monster too?"
"Because monsters don't ask that question." She stood up and walked to the door. "You have twenty-four hours to decide, Alex. Join us willingly, and you'll have training, resources, purpose. Refuse, and..."
She let the sentence hang unfinished as she left the room. The heavy steel door slammed shut behind her, followed by the sound of multiple locks engaging.
I was alone in my concrete box, with a choice that wasn't really a choice at all.
Serve the government as their pet killer, or spend eternity in a cage.
As I lay back on the uncomfortable cot, staring at the fluorescent lights, I couldn't help but wonder if drowning in the river would have been preferable to this. At least then, I would have stayed dead.
But even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew it wasn't true. Whatever was happening to me, whatever I was becoming, I wanted to live. I wanted to grow stronger.
And maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to turn their own weapon against them.
The first step was surviving long enough to learn how.