The Evolution Trigger (Evolution Trigger Trilogy Book 1)

by C. S. Won

  He reached over and took a sip of his coffee, now cooled down to room temperature, and grabbed the remote on a table next to the window. He turned the television on and made himself comfortable, sitting back down in his chair and stretching his legs out. The TV sizzled on, and color and form took shape after a brief moment, materializing into the afternoon news. A female reporter was documenting live footage of what appeared to be a murder investigation. Growing bored already, Gabe tried exploring his viewing options and turned the channel, but his venture was met with static. He flipped to another channel, but more static greeted him. Grainy whiteand-black pixels screamed their displeasure. It appeared his options were limited, much to his chagrin.

  “They don’t even have ESPN? What kind of hospital is this?” Sighing, he flipped back to the news, then put the remote back on the table.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Minutes felt like hours. Every glance at his watch begat another glance, and then another, and each time he looked it only seemed to encourage time to move even slower. He wondered aloud why the day was so slow. Compulsion urged him to leave the hospital, to find a more suitable use of his time, but he couldn’t—or rather—he wouldn’t. He promised Jae that he would check up on Adam, and he intended to keep that promise, even if every cell and fiber in his body compelled him otherwise. A man who doesn’t keep his word is no man at all, his father once told him, and the lesson stuck with him. Even in this particular moment, much to his displeasure. Such was the call of duty. Even so, his vigil could have been made more enjoyable if the man he kept his eye on was a friend or family, but Adam was neither. Gabe felt a frown set on his face. He had tried to reach out to Adam before, doing his best to turn what amounted to animosity into some form of geniality, but every attempt was rebuffed and thrown back in his face. Adam was a malcontent, the likes of which Gabe had never seen before, and any attempt at friendship was met with an angry declaration that Gabe was no friend of his, amongst other choice and unsavory words.

  “Why are you like this? Why do you hate us so much?”

  The hiss of Adam’s breathing sang in the air.

  “I hope this accident serves as a wake-up call, because you need it. All this . . . ,” Gabe waved his hands around the room, “. . . is because of you. You did this. You caused all this. It’s your fault that you’re like this. Jae would kill me if he found out I was telling you all this, but you need to hear it. Unless you change, all this will only repeat itself.”

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, the current of his thoughts going back to the incident in the truck when fists went flying and angry words were exchanged. An ugly moment for all involved. He was grateful the chief wasn’t there to witness it, or his wrath would have been felt by all those involved. Gabe couldn’t even begin to imagine how Jae must have felt, whose vengeful fists caused the most damage. To witness the fury boiling behind his eyes and the rage that powered his assault was a surprise to all. Gabe had never seen him act like that before. The swiftness of the attack and the sheer, sudden viciousness of it made it appear as though it was something Jae had always wanted to do. It was as if he was biding his time until the perfect opportunity presented itself, and when it finally did, whatever anger he had built up came pouring out. Did he always have this rage building up inside of him? Was it something Adam had always suspected and tried to expose? Was that why he continued to push buttons, even as he risked injury, just so he could show the whole world that the Boy Scout wasn’t so perfect after all?

  “Were you lying when you said you slept with Mad?” Gabe shook his head. “I think it was a lie. She’s too sweet of a girl to mess around, and she’s too dedicated to her man. Plus, no disrespect, but you’re not really her type.”

  A cheery jingle drew him away from his thoughts. He looked at the TV, and saw a man kneeling in the snow, prostrating himself before his girlfriend, a diamond ring sparkling in the creases of his outstretched hands. Diamonds are forever, so make her yours forever, the commercial commanded, doing its best to convince the men watching to drain their wallets for a glistening, shiny rock.

  “Well, even if you did sleep with her, it doesn’t really matter anyway.” He picked up the remote and muted the TV. “Jae is going to marry Mad. They’re going to have tons of kids, a nice big house, a white picket fence, and all that America Dream shit, and whatever brief fling you had with her will be in the distant past, forgotten and discarded. In fact . . . ,” He glanced at his watch, “Jae should be proposing to her as we speak. So now they—”

  Thunder exploded around him. Gabe fell to the ground, a yelp whooping from his lips. The lights went out, as did the TV, drowning the room in a mantle of ink. The windows juddered violently behind him, shaking from the thunder’s snarl, so much so that Gabe thought they would crack and break and spray a shower of shattered glass into the room. “What the fuck?” He shook his head and dug a finger into his ear, trying to root out the din echoing in his head. Outside, car alarms blared incessantly, howling over one another in an orchestra of panicked sounds.

  Gabe pulled himself up and looked out the window. The tranquil arrival of dusk was nowhere in sight. The dim traces of the sun were no more. In their stead was an expanse of storm clouds. All-encompassing and formless, it stretched over the skyscrapers and trees, lording over everything and all, capping the earth in a dense, charcoal shade. Thunder hummed, soft and subdued, but these trembling whispers were a mere precursor to the angry flash that would scream out not so far away. That lightning strike would ring against the earth and remind the world of the power lightning held, of the terror it could unleash in one prominent second.

  A hard wind picked up pace, spurred on by the onslaught of thunder, eager to contribute whatever it could to the torment that was beginning to take shape. The gale rattled the window, bringing with it an unseasonal chill that seeped through the open frame. With the wind came the rain. It was light at first, but a moment later, it fell much harder. Heavy sheets smacked against the glass, diluting what was once ominous, grey earth into a smear of runny water. The open window allowed the wind to carry this storm into the room, rendering it bitter and wet. Gabe was ill-equipped to deal with these new in his t-shirt and shorts. He turned inward to protect himself against the cold, but that did him no good. He leaned across the windowsill to latch it shut—cursing at the storm through clenched teeth, shivering arms and grimacing face assaulted by prickling drops of rain—but the moment his hand touched the window a bone-crunching shrill of thunder threw him back. It was like the storm wouldn’t allow him to shut away the world. He fell to the ground, ears ringing, and for a moment he wondered if he had gone deaf. The sound of his own voice was mute against his ears.

  He scrambled to his hands and knees, his uncoordinated effort marred by a treacherous bout of fear and anxiety. When he finally found his footing, he threw himself against the window and latched it shut with wet, ungraceful fingers. Another belch of thunder prompted him to move to the wall on the opposite end, as if the storm was angry at what he had done. Gabe stood staring wide-eyed. He wondered if a hurricane had been dropped into the middle of the city. Another clap of thunder echoed, closer, louder, and more powerful than the ones that came before it.

  A lightning bolt flashed outside the window, striking so close that Gabe felt its tremendous heat and the impact of its power. The blinding light it emitted burned his vision milk white. He turned away from the window, crouching low to the ground, a gasp stuck in his throat. Fearing that his sight was taken away from him, he rubbed at his eyes. Outside in the hallway, a woman screamed. This was followed by a mad scramble of footsteps, and people shouting over one another in concerned, fearful voices. Many called for peace and calm.

  Gabe slowly opened his eyes, but everything came to him unfocused, unclear. Nothing made sense, but he could still see things, ambiguous as they were. Experience told him the effects he was suffering from were temporary, and so he blew out a breath, thankful that his vision remained intact, if d
iluted. He shook his head and dug the remaining traces of blindness out of his eyes with his finger. Clarity crept back in, little by little. As he blinked through the blur, his eyes shifted toward Adam, whose presence he had nearly forgotten during the arrival of the storm. He wandered next to the bed, steadying himself against the metal railing, and looked over his colleague’s mutilated body. To Gabe’s profound relief, Adam continued to live and breathe, his progress unimpeded by the storm. Even more surprising was that the machines hooked into his body continued to operate despite the apparent power outage, beeping and blinking away.

  “You’re a lucky man. If those machines had stopped working, I wouldn’t know what to do with—”

  It surged without warning. Like a great white serpent, a coil of lightning sprung toward the earth with gleaming fangs. Rather than touching down on the wet, clumpy dirt outside, it did the improbable and broke through the window, sending shattered glass screaming through the air, knocking over Gabe’s cup and spilling cold coffee all over the floor. It bolted across the room in a web of blinding light, tendrils of electricity scorching the walls and floors, and like a great hammer it came down and struck Adam. A blistering array of sparks danced off his flesh. The impact was so great that it sent Gabe flying into the wall. He tried to push himself up, choking for breath.

  The room exploded in a brilliant flash. Gabe shouted something incomprehensible, lifting an arm to shield his face and closing his eyes to protect them from the light that burned so bright. Over the chaos, he could feel and hear hard rain and savage winds rushing in through the breach. He dared to open his eyes, slowly, and through vision that burned ivory white, he saw Adam suspended in the air, wrapped in a pulsating bubble of light, electricity surging through him in crackling, hissing ribbons. Inside this strange cocoon of energy, Adam shook and convulsed, arms and legs shuddering with violent tremors, his head whipping back and forth with such forcefulness that it appeared as though he was trying to snap his own neck. The electricity flayed his bandages and hospital gown into shreds, exposing the scarred and blackened flesh underneath. His eyelids were open, revealing bloodshot eyes quivering erratically.

  There was no comprehending the scene. Gabe had never witnessed anything like it before, and it frightened him. The lightning should have disintegrated Adam, turned him into a pile of ash right on top of his bed. Instead, it encased him in this strange bubble of raw energy, doing something that Gabe couldn’t fathom or even believe, despite witnessing it right then and there. What the hell was going on?

  Adam’s eyes halted in place. After a few moments, they began to move again, but this time they shifted with purpose, with precision. His eyes traced the outline of his environment, probing with concentrated effort, pausing when something seemed to catch his interest. When those eyes found Gabe, they locked onto his presence, never wavering. Glowing like jewels, they stared at Gabe and right through him all at once. Gabe shifted uncomfortably, the fear building up even more. He didn’t know if he was the intended target of their search, but Adam’s eyes remained where they were, staring at him with focused intensity. It was a familiar look, a dismissive and crude look full of hate, the same kind of look Adam used to regard everyone around him. Even with his flesh burned off, even with half an arm missing, even as the lightning bolt shredded away at him, he still had time to give his hateful stares. Some things never change. And then they closed, as if he was satisfied—or perhaps disgusted—by what he saw.

  The lightning bolt vanished, fizzling away into a shower of sparks that danced off the floor. Adam dropped back into his bed with a loud thud, the cushion and springs coughing underneath his falling weight. Thunder no longer rumbled overhead, the atmosphere settling into a silent calm. The rain weakened into a light spray before stopping altogether. The wind’s strength waned. Its howling lowered into a whisper, until it too disappeared. That grey army of clouds, once so large and far-reaching, departed just as quickly as it had arrived. At last, the sky opened up into a clear, oil-black night, bright stars dusted across the cosmos.

  Just like that, it was over.

  Gabe was unsure of what had just happened, if what he saw was even real. He stood up but quickly lost his balance, legs trembling and arms flailing as he tried to find his center. His heart thumped painfully, and it took a concentrated effort to calm it down, slow breaths to allay its fears. His ears buzzed, and his vision still burned from the lightning’s flash bang.

  A rumbling started around him, not of thunder but of machinery and generators springing back to life. The lights flickered on, throwing back the darkness once more. The TV regained consciousness, jarred from its slumber. Laughter from an unseen studio audience echoed from its screen, as if all was right with the world. All across the length of the room shattered glass littered the floor, blanketing the ground in a sea of serrated wreckage, glittering like crystals in small puddles of rain water. Gabe looked for the window but saw only a hole where it once was, the wall around it blackened and charred by the lightning that had broken through.

  The lightning. Gabe shot up to his feet and ran over to Adam’s bedside, glass crunching underneath his shoes. He looked Adam over, slowly, and the result of his search made him shake his head. Adam seemed okay, or rather, he seemed the same. His skin didn’t look any worse, and none of his wounds had reopened. He still drew breath, chest moving at a steady pace.

  How was he not dead?

  “Wow,” Gabe said. He wasn’t sure what was more amazing: lightning entering their room, lightning striking a man inside that room, or the man who was struck living through it. Maybe all three. Gabe sat on the floor, running a hand through his hair. How did lightning even enter the room in the first place? Why did it enter the room? It should have struck the lightning rod installed at the roof of the hospital, but somehow it was circumvented, raiding their room instead. What the hell is going on here?

  The door swung open and a panicked nurse stumbled in. Gabe looked up at her.

  “Is everything okay in here?” She asked.

  Part Two

  Evolution

  Memories

  “It’s no use, honey. Leave me here. Go, before it’s too late.”

  “Don’t say that, mom. I said that I would save you, didn’t I?” Tears slid down Jae’s cheeks. His mother reached out and placed warm, nurturing hands on his face, using her fingers to brush away the falling tears.

  “Jae, listen to me. We don’t have much time.” Pain marred the strength of her voice, but she pressed on, unyielding. “I’ll need you to take care of your father and brother for me. Han, especially. He may be older than you, but he’ll need you more than ever.”

  “We’ll look after them together, okay? Just . . . wait until I get you out.” He cupped his mother’s hands in his and pulled, grunting with effort as he tried to muster up all the strength his nine-year-old body could generate. But the fiery wreckage that pinned her down wouldn’t allow it, trapping her to a fate Jae couldn’t comprehend.

  “They’re going to need you now more than ever. You have to be there for them when I’m gone. Promise me that, Jae. Can you do that for me?”

  “Mom, please . . .”

  “You don’t have to say it. I know you’ll look after them.” She choked back tears. “I’m so proud of you. My little man. My little hero. You’re going to grow up to be such a strong, good person. I know you will.” She coughed and blood shot out from her lips, splattering on the ground like spilt milk. “I’m sorry I won’t be there to see you become a man, but I will be watching. I promise. I will always be there to help guide and lead you. Just search your feelings and you will always find me.”

  “Mom . . . I . . .” The words stuck in his throat. He didn’t know what else to say. Or do. He could only listen.

  “That’s my boy.” The fire began to creep up her body, dancing on her skin. There were no screams, no pained expressions—only a smile, wide and beautiful. She freed her hands from Jae’s grip and placed them on his cheeks again, strong
, protective, assuring. “I love you.”

  No! He wanted to cry out. I’m going to save you, mom. I’m going to save you, and when I do, we’re all going to look back on this and have a good laugh. You, me, Han, dad. We’ll be known as the family that beat a fire. We’ll be legends. We’ll tell it to everyone and anyone until our throats go dry. That’s why you can’t die yet. It’s too soon. Don’t ruin the plan, mom. Please!

  “I love you too,” was all he managed.

  Tears fell from her eyes. “Go,” she said in an urgent whisper.

  Jae rose and ran for the front door, ignoring the fire that lashed out at his skin, the smoke that filled his nostrils, the house that died around him. Fear filled his heart, urging him not to look at his mother, her body burning beneath the fallen wreckage of their home. He yielded to its command, not even daring a quick look back.

  The front door loomed before him, somehow unscathed by the fire. He threw his entire weight against it, a raspy grunt riding his breath. The door flew open with a loud crash, and the cold night air swallowed him whole, purging the heat from his body and kissing the ashes away from his face. He stumbled and rolled forward onto the wet grass, spinning and spinning until he finally came to a stop on his hands and knees. There he remained, coughing out bitter grass and dirt and smoke, lungs burning, fresh tears falling down his cheeks. He yearned for his mother, her last words singing in his head.

  I love you.

  I love you.

  I love you.

  “Jae!” Strong hands reached out and grabbed him, rearing him up into the air. Jae found himself face-to-face with his father. Ash clung to his beard, black dust smeared across the length of his face, and dried blood left a paint of red cupping his forehead. Behind him, Han emerged, face caked in a powdered black. He approached with a slight limp in his step.