The Empowered

Chapter 4

Then, I shook my head. No, that might cause serious damage and not prove anything. The only thing I could do now was to keep an eye  on him for the next few weeks and see if anything changed.

Around five he headed to leave. "Alright see you soon," as he stepped off the porch and walked across the lawn. "Yeah, I'
-" his words cut off as his eyes widened and his whole body jolted. I could feel my heart skip a beat. "Uh.... you alright there?" | said to the silent figure in front of me that was staring intensely down at the lawn. For a few moments, I didn't think he had heard me. 503
Then, he turned around to look at me, shock and confusion across his face. "I can see it. I can see it underneath," he started babbling to me in a rush. "The ants, the worms, the water pipes, all of the minerals and rocks...oh my god." He looked down at his hands as though he was just seeing them for the first time. "Have I had this the whole time and just never knew about it?"

A group of little kids riding on their scooter:
was staring at us from across the street.

F@#k, he was causing a scene. "Uh, Abrian," I said nervously, my eyes darting around. "Can we talk inside?"

Right right, of course he said, stumbling
back indoors, his eyes dazed. I locked the
front door and helped Abrian over to the couch. It took a while for him to calm down from the shock of realizing that he had super powers. Once he did recover though, he immediately wanted to rush back outside to see the extent of his powers. After I made sure the coast was clear of any witnesses,
we walked around the neighborhood, seeing what he could detect.

We learned that he could detect everything up to ten feet below the ground with no effort at all. And that if he really focused on searching for a certain substance like water or copper, he could go all the way down to around a hundred feet deep.

After we were all done with our experiments, we walked back to my house, where Abrian sank back down into the couch.

"I can't believe it," he kept saying. "I mean,
there are millions of 16 year olds across the world, and only around 6 or 8 of them are lucky enough to get superpowers in a decade. Never thought something crazy like that would happen to me."

I nodded sympathetically while biting my lip. I had to approach this next issue carefully.
"Are you going to go public with it?" I asked.

Brennan stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds before answering. "Honestly, I'm sti' coming to grips with the whole thing. I haven't even thought about that yet. But, honestly, I don't think so. It's not like I could ever be a hero and l'm not interested in being famous. And we both know that the government watches superpowered people like a hawk."

nod as I feel myself getting more relaxed.
We had often discussed what we would do if we ever hypothetically got superpowers, so I had already been pretty sure that Abrian
wouldn't go public. But, I had to make sure.
"Yeah, that's probably for the best. Let's just keep this between the two of us." My eyes glanced at the clock. "Your parents are going to get upset if you don't hurry back."

"Yeah, yeah. My god, I just completely lost track of time," he said, getting up from my couch. "I'll uhh...l'Il let you know if anything
changes."

I watched him staring at the ground while he left and as soon as he was out of sight, I
went over to my desk and pulled out the cookbook from the bottom drawer. I couldn keep my hands from shaking. It was real, it had actually worked! A world of possibilities rested between my hands. I knew then what I was going to do. I was going to complete every single recipe in this cookbook. I wouldn't be able to complete them all in one go, of course. I would have to start off with the easy recipes, the ones with ingredients that were easy to get, and then, with the powers that I got from those recipes, I would chase after the ingredients of the harder ones. No matter how long it took though, I was determined to gain every last superpower this book had to offer me. And then, I would be the most powerful person in
the world.

   Meanwhile... (C.I.A Headquarters, Canada ) 

Lamar @&$!% (Classified)  blinked in shock. He had just felt it, a new person had developed superpowers. But that wasn't right. Ten people had just gotten superpowers yesterday. It had always been only ten people every decade. Until now, it seemed. He walked over to a map of America. He couldn't tell exactly where the superpowered individual was, but he could feel it had happened somewhere in the northeastern portion of the United States. Which just so happened to be where another superpowered person had appeared yesterday... Lamar tapped his map.
Something new was happening in the world.