Anomaly

Chapter 3 -The Alley

The world hadn’t ended when he hit the ground.

That was the first shock. The second was realizing he hadn’t hit the ground at all. One moment he had been falling, the next he was standing, barefoot on cracked pavement, lungs burning with air he didn’t remember pulling in.

His body felt wrong. Not broken, not hurt — but wrong, like it wasn’t entirely his. His skin hummed with leftover static, muscles twitching with sparks of sensation. Every breath was a storm of smells he shouldn’t be able to name: the rot of garbage bins, the copper trace of old blood somewhere on the bricks, the oily tang of car exhaust drifting in from the street.

He staggered backward until his spine pressed against the wall, needing the solidity of brick to prove he was still there. His knees shook. His fingers flexed without permission, like they were still trying to remember their shape.

Fragments of the fall flashed in his head. Not the terror of dropping — but the impossible moment after. When he had come apart. When every piece of him had scattered into the air like dust and yet still thought, still knew.

The memory made him gag. His stomach lurched, but nothing came. His body wouldn’t let him purge, wouldn’t let him release the weight. It held together, stubbornly intact, as if the rules no longer applied to him.

He pressed both palms to his chest, half-expecting to find a hole where his heart should be, a c***k where bones had failed. But all he felt was a steady thump against his ribs — strong, fast, alive.

Alive when he shouldn’t be.

Above, the rooftop was silent. No shadow peered over the edge. No voice called down to claim him.

But he knew the man hadn’t disappeared. Someone like that didn’t give up.

And now, after what he had just done — after what they had just made him do — there would be no going back.

He pushed away from the wall, feet unsteady, breath ragged. The alley stretched ahead, a strip of darkness littered with bottles and papers and a single rusted dumpster. Beyond it lay the city, endless lights and noise, a million people who had no idea that, in the space of a few seconds, one of their own had become something else.

Something not quite human.

He stumbled forward, every nerve screaming that he should run — though he didn’t know where. Home? No. His parents couldn’t protect him now. The hospital? The police? The thought made him laugh, a hollow, broken sound. What would he even say? I fell off a twenty-story building and didn’t die? I broke apart into atoms and came back together? They’d lock him away faster than the man in the coat ever could.

His hand brushed the wall as he walked, needing the anchor of rough stone to stop himself from drifting apart again.

Because even now, in the edges of his mind, he felt it — that lingering awareness of the molecules around him. The air, the dust, the microscopic life clinging to the damp brick. His thoughts reached for them without trying, tugged at them like invisible threads.

It terrified him.

And thrilled him.

He stumbled to the mouth of the alley, where the city stretched out alive and merciless. The neon lights flickered. Sirens wailed somewhere far away. A couple walked past without sparing him a glance, their laughter sharp in the night. To them, he was just another shadow in the dark.

But he knew better.

The man had been right.

He was an anomaly.

He lingered at the alley’s mouth, frozen between stepping into the crowd and sinking deeper into shadow.

Every instinct told him to move, to disappear into the veins of the city before the man on the rooftop could circle down and finish what he’d started. But his legs refused. They trembled under him, not with exhaustion but with a strange, restless energy. Like every muscle was waiting for an order he didn’t know how to give.

A sound cracked behind him — the rattle of a bottle rolling across the alley floor. He spun, heart lurching into his throat. The shadows were empty. Nothing but broken glass and the reek of spoiled food drifting from the dumpster.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling. Eyes. Watching. Waiting.

He pressed a hand to his temple. His skin felt hot, feverish, though the night air was sharp with cold. Heat bled outward, pulsing in waves, until he realized it wasn’t just inside him. The air shimmered faintly around his fingers, like ripples spreading across water.

He yanked his hand away, clutching it to his chest, horrified. The shimmer vanished — but the memory of it burned, undeniable.

This wasn’t healing. This wasn’t resilience. This was control. The molecules in the air, the smallest fragments of matter, had bent beneath his touch.

“Stop,” he whispered to himself, squeezing his fists shut. “Stop it.”

The city answered with a car horn, distant laughter, the shuffle of shoes on pavement. Life went on, indifferent, while he stood trembling on the threshold of something he couldn’t name.

For a moment, the temptation nearly pulled him back into the alley. To test it. To reach again. To see if he could make the shimmer spread further, stronger. A part of him ached to know, desperate for proof that what had happened wasn’t madness.

But another part — louder, sharper — knew the cost of being seen.

If the man in the coat had been telling the truth, then others already knew what he was. Others might already be closing in. And if he stood here any longer, he’d be easy prey.

He forced himself forward, out of the alley and into the living current of the city. Neon painted his face in fractured colors as he merged with the pedestrians, just another figure swallowed by the noise and light. His heart pounded in his ears, matching the rhythm of passing footsteps, but the paranoia never faded. Every shadow felt heavy. Every reflection in the shopfront glass seemed too slow to follow.

And over it all, the whisper of the fall replayed in his head: the scatter, the countless selves, the impossible awareness of being everywhere at once. It lingered like an echo, a resonance inside his bones, reminding him that nothing — not even his own body — would ever feel simple again.

The crowd didn’t notice him. People passed without so much as a glance, too lost in their own worlds. A businessman barking into his phone. A couple arguing about where to eat. Teenagers laughing at a joke too crude for public.

He should have felt relief in that anonymity. Instead, it gnawed at him. Every stranger’s face looked like a mask, every passing glance too quick to be harmless. Anyone could be watching. Anyone could be waiting for him to slip, to reveal what he had become.

The paranoia grew heavier with every block. He caught himself glancing over his shoulder, scanning alley mouths, watching the rooftops for silhouettes against the neon glow. He expected at any second to see the man in the coat stepping out of the shadows, hand extended again, calm and merciless.

His breath came short. The city was suddenly too loud, too alive, each sound cutting sharper than it should. He could hear the flicker of streetlamps, the hiss of steam from a manhole, the faint vibration of metal as a subway car rattled far underground. Every sense screamed at once, dragging details into his head faster than he could sort them.

He stumbled into the doorway of a closed shop, bracing himself against the glass. His reflection stared back — pale, wide-eyed, a smear of fear surrounded by neon colors. But something about it was wrong.

For the briefest instant, his reflection lagged behind him. When he raised his hand, it hesitated before following, the outline shimmering like heat over asphalt. His stomach twisted. He stepped back, blinking hard, and the reflection snapped back to normal.

“No,” he muttered, shaking his head, breath fogging the glass. “No, no, no.”

A group of late-night drinkers passed on the sidewalk, their laughter sharp as broken glass. He pressed himself against the wall until they were gone, heart hammering, convinced one of them would turn and point, convinced they could see it in him somehow.

But they didn’t.

The silence after their passing was worse.

He pushed off the glass and walked again, faster this time. His legs burned with tension, energy pooling under his skin, demanding an outlet. It felt like his body wanted to come apart again, as if the molecules themselves were restless. He clenched his jaw, forcing his steps steady.

At the next corner, he ducked into a side street. Fewer people. Dimmer light. But the sense of being hunted only sharpened here. His eyes tracked every shifting shadow. His ears strained for footsteps behind him. The city felt too big to vanish into, too alive to hide from.

He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go to the police. He couldn’t trust anyone.

The rooftop man’s words replayed in his mind. You were built for this.

The phrase burrowed under his skin, more dangerous than any threat. Built. Not born. Not grown. Built.

And that meant someone had the blueprints.

He stopped in the middle of the empty street, chest heaving. A thin drizzle had begun to fall, painting the pavement with scattered silver. He tilted his head back, letting the drops sting his skin, grounding himself in their chill.

But even as he stood there, a thought crept unbidden: each raindrop was a cluster of molecules, simple and fragile, bound together in patterns he could feel. His awareness brushed against them instinctively, like fingers trailing across piano keys.

The power answered back.

One raindrop quivered before touching him, suspended in midair for an impossible second, before gravity reclaimed it. Then another. And another.

He staggered away, heart racing, terrified of himself.

He wanted answers. He wanted safety. But more than anything, he wanted to believe he was still human.

And with every step he took deeper into the night, that belief grew thinner, like paper soaked through by the rain.