ACCIDENTALLY HIS LAB EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 6: CHANNEL

The training pit wasn’t a field. It was a bowl carved 200 meters into the mountain, open to the sky but ringed with alloy walls that curved inward like teeth. Wind screamed through the gap above. The floor was scarred concrete — burn marks, frost blooms, cracks sealed with metal stitching.

Selene stood at the edge with the others. No Helm yet. No chair. Just her, still human, ears aching one minute, normal the next. Her sensitive hearing came and went like weather. Right now the wind was normal. She prayed it stayed that way.

Professor Rowan Kade wasn’t here.

*Instructor Virek* waited in the center.

7ft tall, skin like wet slate with faint light tracing his forearms — not decoration. Bone. He’d been Subject Zero at Starfall. The first failed attempt to make a “stabilizer.” The procedure fused synthetic strontium alloy into his skeleton. Now his bones were denser than steel.

“Graviton Anchoring,” he said, voice like gravel. “I increase my mass and gravity field on contact. I can pin a rampaging subject to the floor with one hand. I _am_ the restraint.” He held up a black band on his wrist. It split open to reveal three floating rings of dull metal. “Null-Collars. They lock onto your nervous system. If anyone loses control, I put one on. You don’t move until I say.” He wasn’t human anymore. He was the cage.

He gestured. Training began.

Luma stepped forward beside Selene, paint still under her nails. She spoke low, like she was reciting files she wasn’t supposed to know.

*Reyl* went first. Lean, pale, black hair over one eye. He pulled his silent disc from his pocket. “He’s a Kinetic Anchor,” Luma whispered. “Not telekinesis. He locks objects in space. That disc is a focus he built when he was 14. Backstory: His little brother fell off a roof in the slums. Reyl caught him mid-air by ‘freezing’ him. Locked his brother’s molecules for 8 seconds until medics arrived. The recoil shattered every bone in Reyl’s left arm. He rebuilt the disc from the hospital bed frame. Every time he anchors something big, he feels that break again.” The disc split into six, orbited him, then one punched through a steel target. No sound. No mercy.

Mira Kade* stepped up next. Red hair, freckles, small but vibrating with energy. “Thermal Conversion,” Luma said. “She turns movement into heat. But it’s not fire. It’s friction at a molecular level.” Backstory: “She grew up in a cold-weather colony where the heaters failed one winter. She was 9. She ran in circles for 6 hours straight to keep her baby brother warm. Her shoes melted to her feet. When they found her, the floor was glass. She doesn’t use full power because she still dreams of that glass.” Mira exhaled and the concrete under her feet glowed orange. Heat rolled off her in waves.

*Torven* unwrapped his scarred hands. Ash-gray scars lit blue along his jaw. “Seismic Resonance,” Luma said. “He doesn’t control earth. He talks to vibration. Everything vibrates. He just asks it to change frequency.” Backstory: “He was a demolition tech on orbital rigs. One miscalculation and a whole deck collapsed. He was buried 40 meters under metal. For 3 days he survived by ‘listening’ to the groan of the structure and shifting it millimeter by millimeter to make air pockets. When they dug him out, his vocal cords were shredded. He talks low now because his throat remembers screaming.” He slammed his palm down. A ripple shot out and a 2-ton block lifted, then slammed down hard enough to crack the floor.

*Oris* rolled up his sleeve. Geometric tattoos glowed white. “Molecular Sculpting,” Luma said. “He only works with alloys he’s bonded to. He has to touch metal for months to ‘learn’ it.” Backstory: “He was born in a scrap yard. His mom melted metal for a living. When he was 12, a vat of molten alloy tipped. He reached out and the metal _stopped_ mid-air. Cooled in his hands. He sculpted it into a shield that saved his mom’s life. But the metal bonded to his blood. Now if he loses concentration, the alloy in his skin tries to harden. He has to keep moving or he’ll turn to statue.” He touched the wall and it flowed into a spear in his hand.

Cael* didn’t move. He just became still. Then sound died. The wind, breathing, heartbeats — all gone. A perfect pocket of silence around him. “Auditory Null Field,” Luma said softly, glancing at Selene. “He doesn’t erase sound. He builds a sphere where sound can’t exist. It’s a safe space.” She smiled a little. “When he was 15, his sister had seizures triggered by noise. He trained for 4 years to make a 2-meter bubble where she could sleep. He failed 200 times. The 201st time, she slept through a thunderstorm for the first time in her life.” Cael looked at Selene and winked. No words. But she understood. He could give her quiet when her ears went wrong. Maybe. Safe? Definitely. She blushes.

Jaren* — the youngest, 19, timid, curly hair, tapping his thigh. Everyone thought he’d have something small. He was wrong. “Sensory Echo,” Luma said. “He copies senses. But that’s the harmless part.” She hesitated. “The backstory nobody talks about: When he was 13, his foster family locked him in a basement for ‘acting out.’ He copied the rats’ senses to survive. Smell, touch, fear. He copied too much. The fear _stuck_. Now when he panics, he doesn’t just copy senses. He transforms.”

Jaren closed his eyes. His bones cracked. Not loud. Wet. His skin split along the spine and _unfolded_. Not wings. Ribs. Too many ribs, peeling outward like a flower made of bone and black chitin. His jaw unhinged, too wide, filled with needle teeth. He went from 5’6 timid boy to 8ft of nightmare in 4 seconds. The thing that stood there wasn’t Jaren. It was what Jaren saw when he copied fear.

“Primal Mimic,” Virek said, stepping forward. “He becomes the thing that scared him most. Right now it’s the memory of the basement. He can’t control it yet. If I don’t stop him, he’ll shred the pit.” Virek’s bones glowed. He slammed one hand down and gravity doubled. Jaren collapsed to his knees, then slowly, painfully, folded back into a boy, sobbing on the concrete.

Luma*She hesitated, then stepped out, Selene could sense her fear. Paint under her nails caught the light. She pressed her palm to the concrete and color bled out. Not paint. Light. It formed shapes, like a face before dissolving.

She was 16,” Mira said, voice low. “Her little sister asked her to ‘paint her a butterfly’ for her birthday. Luma was excited. She’d just manifested. She reached out and her Psycho-Luminescence came out as color. But she couldn’t control intensity yet. The color hit her sister’s retina and _burned_. Not light. Solid emotion made physical. Her sister lost vision in one eye. Luma hasn’t tried to paint something living since. She says her colors can kill if she’s not careful. She’s terrified of hurting someone again. That’s why she paints shapes, not people.”

" You did good my dear, keep on practicing on your control." Virex encouraged her with a smile. Luma shrugged embarrassed. But Selene saw the way her light had almost looked like her face for a second.

Selene’s stomach turned. No one’s power was “useless in combat” here.

Serath* was last. Golden hair, waist-long braid, pale eyes. She didn’t step forward. She didn’t have to. She just looked at a target dummy 50 meters away. Her eyes flashed white. The dummy didn’t burn. It didn’t explode. It _aged_. Rust bloomed across it in seconds. Metal corroded. Plastic crumbled to dust. In 3 seconds it was a pile of oxidation and rot.

“Entropy Pulse,” Virek said. “She accelerates decay. Anything she focuses on breaks down to dust.” He didn’t ask for backstory. No one did. Serath never offered. But her smile at Selene was sharp. “Awesome enough for you, new girl?” she said, quiet. Not nice.

Then Virek turned to Selene. “Dr Thorn. Channel.”

She tried. Nothing. No power. Just human lungs and intermittent ears that chose the worst moment to go hypersensitive. The wind spiked. She heard Vant’s pulse from the upper walkway. She heard Serath’s breath. She heard 8 heartbeats at once. Overload. She stumbled.

“Stop,” Virek said. “Again tomorrow.”

Helpless. Human. Useless.

Dr Vant’s voice came from above, low enough only she heard: “You’re not broken. You’re resisting. That DNA wasn’t meant for you. Your body’s fighting it. That’s strength, not failure.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

---

*The Helmet Room.*

White walls. One chair. Restraints. The Helm on a pedestal — black alloy, blue circuits like veins. It looked like a crown and a cage.

“This regulates input,” Kade said. “Without it, hypersensitivity will cripple you. With it, you function.”

Selene sat. Cold metal. Straps tight. The Helm lowered.

Blue dots on her ears flared. Not transformation. Reaction. For a second her hearing went normal. Then it spiked. She heard everything at once.

“Sync at 20%,” Kade said.

Pain. Skull splitting.

“40%,” Vant ordered from control.

The Helm cracked down the center. Feedback screamed through her. She lurched forward. If she hit the wall, she’d break it.

Vant caught her. Held her against his chest, one hand crushing the Helm to stop the vibration. “Shut it down!” Kade yelled.

When it stopped, Selene was shaking, ears ringing, blue dots still glowing faintly. She hadn’t transformed. But she’d almost died.

Kade checked the Helm. “Calibration fault. Who filed this unit request?”

“Maya,” a tech said.

Vant glanced at Selene. Then told Kade: “Leave the crack. She needs control under pressure.” When Kade turned, Vant twisted the frequency dial down 3%. Deliberate.

He didn't look at Selene when he did it. But she saw it in the reflection of the glass.

Across the room, Serath watched Vant’s hands on Selene’s Helm. She didn’t speak.

Selene looked at her own hands. Still human. Still no power. Still dangerous to everyone just by existing.

Selene closed her eyes. The doubt stayed. The fear stayed. But now she knew: everyone here was broken in their own way.