Rebirth {Book One}

Chapter 4

"Dude, wake the fuck up!" A voice yelled in my ear while a hand aggressively shook my shoulder.

I raised my head from the table where it was resting as I slept. I looked around dazedly until my eyes focused on Thomas, a triumphant expression on his face. "What?"

"Look at this." He held up a gray brick of something and put a lighter's flame under it.

"You discovered how to melt plastic, congrats." I muttered angrily, slightly annoyed from being woken up for something stupid.

"No, look." He flicked off the lighter and showed me the place where the fire had touched it. Where I expected to see molten plastic, there was nothing. Not even scorch marks.

"Nice concrete brick, then." I said, not completely sure what I was supposed to be seeing.

"Dude, it's not even hot." He threw the brick at me. I tried to scramble away from the hot fucking object he chucked at me, but it landed on my lap. I was ready to screech from pain, but there was nothing.

I looked up at him. "How?"

"I accidentally created it in lab." He answered. "Some dick tripped me and I dropped all my stuff into the burner, but when I looked inside, this material was sitting untouched in the middle of the flames."

"No way." I sat up, no longer sleepy.

"I ran it over with my car to test its durability, and it fucking popped my wheel." He continued. "Once combined with other materials, it's easily malleable with a little heat. We can make unbreakable armor and tanks out of this shit!"

"No way." I repeated, dumbstruck.

"Yes way." He corrected, laughing with glee. "I call it Element."

Shaking my head in admiration, I raised my hands to rub sleep gunk out of my eyes but when I put my hands down, the scene was different. I was looking down at a drawing board filled with schematics, a sketch of a tower with a U-shaped top that supported a grey and green diamond. A name for it was scribbled hastily in the top left corner of the paper; The Catalyst.

"Whatcha working on?" Came Thomas' voice from behind me.

"The Catalyst." I answered, not taking my eyes off the paper as I groped around my table for a pencil.

My phone dinged and I picked it up, reading the notification on the lock screen;

V.7:
Today's report: Russian military operations are... 'Please open your device to read more'

"You've been redrawing the plans for a year now." He said. "It's simply impossible to channel that much energy through one source, you've said it yourself."

"It is now." I threw the Element brick at him. "Because of your magic whateverthisis, I can build it, and we'll both have so much clout we'll-"

As I was speaking, I looked to his face, expecting that my exhilaration would be reflected on it, but I saw that his expression was completely neutral, even slightly annoyed, but before I could study it further he turned around.

"Cool." He made to march out of the room. "I'll be in the kitchen."

"Aight." I returned to my sketches and notes, reading the report an undercover agent we had in Russia but somewhere around the third sentence, I nodded off.

—<>—

"Leo, wake up." Another voice said.

I turned over. "Come on. I just got to sleep..."