Pulse: A Teenage Superhero

The 7:12 train was late. Again. Ethan Vale stood on the crowded underground platform, hands buried deep inside the pockets of his faded black hoodie, staring at the flickering digital clock overhead like somehow glaring at it hard enough would make time move faster. 7:18. Great. He shifted his backpack higher onto one shoulder as people packed tighter around the yellow safety line. Ashbourne Central Station was always chaos in the morning. Business workers muttering into headsets. Half-asleep students glued to their phones. A little kid was crying because his mother wouldn't buy him a chocolate bar from the kiosk. The air smelled faintly of electricity, cheap coffee, and metal. Normal. Predictable. Exactly how Ethan liked things. "Bro, if you stare at that clock any harder, it's gonna apologize." Ethan glanced sideways. Maya Torres leaned against one of the support pillars, balancing a half-finished iced coffee in one hand and her tablet in the other. Her dark ponytail was messy as usual, and the oversized headphones around her neck glowed faintly blue. "You're late," Ethan said. She smirked. "You're welcome for showing up at all." "You literally live five minutes away." "And yet here I am. Heroic." Ethan rolled his eyes. Maya grinned. She had this annoying ability to act like nothing mattered while somehow still being top of their engineering class. It was unsettling. "You study for the physics test?" she asked. "No." "Cool. Me neither." "You built a functioning drone last week." "That doesn't mean I understand rotational equations." "Yes, it does." "Okay, rude." For a moment, Ethan smiled. Small. Barely noticeable. But real. Then the station lights flickered. Once. Twice. The low mechanical hum running through the underground tunnels deepened into something strange. A vibration. Subtle at first. Then stronger. Maya frowned. "...That's weird." Ethan felt it too. A low pulse under his sneakers, like the concrete itself had developed a heartbeat. People started looking around. The digital arrival board glitched violently. Letters scrambled. Static flooded the display. Then every screen in the station went black. The overhead lights died. Darkness swallowed the platform. A collective murmur swept through the crowd. "What happened?" "Power outage?" "Seriously?" Emergency backup lights snapped on, bathing the station in dim red. And then came the sound. A deep metallic shriek from inside the tunnel. Not the sound of a train. Something worse. Something breaking. Maya's eyes widened. "Oh no." The tunnel ahead erupted in blue-white light. For half a second, everything was perfectly illuminated. Every face. Every tile. Every terrified expression. Then the shockwave hit. The force threw Ethan backward. His shoulder slammed into the platform wall hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. People screamed. Concrete cracked. The ground buckled beneath his feet. Somewhere nearby, metal tore apart like paper. Ethan looked up just in time to see the transit core. A massive spherical energy conduit buried within the tunnel's rail system. It had split open. Blue arcs of unstable electricity whipped through the air like living things. The entire station trembled. And then Ethan saw her. Maya. Pinned beneath a fallen steel beam twenty feet away. "Ethan!" Her voice cut through everything. Without thinking, he ran. The world slowed. Or maybe he just moved faster. He couldn't tell. He reached her, grabbed the beam, and pulled. It didn't budge. Another pulse rocked the station. The fractured transit core screamed louder. Energy spiraled outward. Wild. Unstable. Building toward collapse. Maya's face went pale. "Ethan, go!" "No." "You can't lift it—" He planted his feet. Grabbed tighter. And pulled with everything he had. The beam shifted. Just enough. Maya scrambled free. Then the core detonated. The blast swallowed the station in blue light. Heat. Pressure. Sound beyond sound. Ethan turned instinctively, throwing himself toward Maya. Then the energy hit him. It should have burned him alive. Should have torn him apart atom by atom. Instead— It poured into him. Through his skin. Into his bones. His nerves ignited. Every muscle locked. He couldn't scream. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. There was only light. Endless, blinding light. And motion. Too much motion. It felt like being hit by every moving thing in the world at once. A thousand speeding cars. A hundred collapsing buildings. The force of oceans. Of storms. Of impact after impact after impact— And then— Nothing. Beep. Beep. Beep. Ethan's eyes snapped open. White ceiling. Harsh fluorescent lights. The sterile smell of disinfectant. Hospital. His chest rose sharply as he sucked in air. Pain didn't come. That was strange. He sat up too fast. A wave of dizziness hit him. "Whoa, easy." Maya sat in the chair beside his bed. Alive. Bandage wrapped around her forehead. Dark circles under her eyes. But alive. Relief hit him so hard his shoulders sagged. "You're okay." She gave him a look. "Yeah. Thanks to you, apparently." "What happened?" Her expression shifted. Confusion. Concern. "Ashbourne Central's transit core exploded." Memory slammed back into him. The platform. The light. The blast. "I—" "You've been out for eighteen hours." "What?" Maya leaned forward. "Ethan... the doctors don't understand." His stomach tightened. "What do you mean?" She hesitated. "The explosion centre was right where you were standing." Cold spread through him. "You should've had third-degree burns." He looked down. His hands were untouched. Not even a scratch. No burns. No bruises. Nothing. "That's impossible," he whispered. Maya didn't answer. Because neither of them had one. That night, Ethan stood alone in his bedroom. Moonlight spilt through the window. The house was silent. His parents were asleep. His body felt... wrong. Restless. Like static beneath his skin. Like something was building inside him. Pressure. A pulse travelled down his arms. He frowned. "What is—" His phone buzzed on his desk. The sudden sound made him flinch. And the pressure exploded. A violent burst of force erupted from his body. The desk launched across the room. Wood shattered against the wall. The window blew outward in a spray of glass. Ethan was thrown backward— straight through his bedroom wall. He crashed onto the roof of the garage outside. Breathless. Frozen. Heart pounding. He stared at the jagged hole where his bedroom used to be. Smoke drifted from his hands. Blue sparks danced across his fingertips. Then vanished. Ethan's voice came out as barely a whisper. "What...?" Far below, sirens began to rise in the distance. And for the first time in his life— Ethan Vale was afraid of himself.