Prologue
The light from the loft across the street strobed on. The opaque window glass was now a fuchsia, a silhouette inched itself toward the center of the room like it was walking into frame. The shape of a man, shoulders, arms, chest, hidden in the soft hue.
The scene joined similar scenes of the city. Scenes of people waking the polis with all that is neon. Scenes of people stretching, cascading, coming in and out of focus. Indiscernible sounds, reverb, shaking surfaces and the space around them. Towers erect with life scurrying around their insides.
The musicality of it all, a symphony of waves.
Scenes that grew old life times ago.
Time was slowing down again, at least it was for Adrian; who looked at the moving parts out the window of his high rise loft. Everyone else carried on as they did for their entire lives. Held down by gravity, interacting with the surfaces around them like they were intended, their behaviors and decisions made out of the promises made by precedent. Mundane actions of life. Adrian, however, stared at his wall of glass, watching the world slow down to a halt.
Adrian’s powers had reached a new milestone.
At this point, Adrian could see his present play out like memories and his past flash in the corner of his sight in the form of nightmarish figures. Shadows of his father, phantom rushes of what it was like to feel fear and pain, mirages of clear blue skies, rusting fences, swaying trees, and the feel of dirt underneath patches of snow. At this point in his life, the future wasn’t so vast, vague, far. The future stuck to his skin, aiding him in drifting between conversations. Time was never more of an illusion than it was at that moment. Living was nothing more than wading in thought.
A part of him was afraid that this was it. That the day had finally come where he could no longer tame his senses. Where he could no longer stay put in the now and interact with others. Where he was no longer just a superhero but beyond superhuman. Where he was finally no longer human. His final form.
Everything split to their subatomic level and with it his sight left. It was only for a split second, but like all things, it might as well have been forever.
This continued in waves until the day Adrian left the Rift for good.
In the meantime he is disoriented in his own strength and nostalgia.
