Pre-Destined I

My previous memories vanished, like charcoal in a wasteland... hundreds of thousands of years of isolation were quickly able to overshadow whatever my past had been.

This time, I'm Ray Stark.

I used to call this a 'second chance', only for the first few months of my life. Now I am fourteen years old and it hasn't been rough. After I started living with 'her' I realised there was not such a thing as a second chance, one of those ridiculous stories when one is reborn according to their karmic score, if you were a good person a nice life awaits you. No such a thing for me... I don't consider this a 'nice life'.

Fourteen years later I'm still as empty and she certainly doesn't contribute.

Her name is Veronica, a famous American-Latina model in New York, my mother. Although I have never called her mother, and she has never called me son. With time I realised I was just a medium to an end. She got pregnant by a rich man and filed for child support. From her point of view, that was all the purpose of my existence.

I didn't know if she planned it, I didn't care.

I have never met my father and she hasn't mentioned to me who he is either, I only know... his surname is Stark and he has a lot of money; that is enough for me to get some assumptions. I don't know exactly how much money she gets monthly, but I know it is around a hundred thousand dollars, of which I see almost none of it. Instead, most of it is kept in the safe of her room, or spent in luxury, or with her boyfriends which she changes faster than her panties, or in cars.

I couldn't care less about her, the moment I become eighteen, I'll leave. My life has been simple, I have taken advantage of everything at my disposal to make the most of it.

I work out in the morning every day, and spend as much time as I can studying... I'm not fond of wasting time. With hundreds of thousands of years of nothingness... this life I had to do something.

I went to elementary school and middle school in the most budget schools that you can find in New York and now I'm coursing my ninth grade much the same way. I only get new clothes once or twice a year. And yet, I never complain.

"I may not come back tonight or tomorrow. There is food in the fridge for you to get by. Or you can get a delivery, suit yourself".

"..."

When I came back from school, she was on her way out like every Friday.

Her boyfriend Jonathan was waiting downstairs, I met him and congratulated him. The poor fool didn't even know what I was congratulating him for. He's been with her for two months now, that's the longest relationship she has kept ever since I was born.

I watched them drive off through the window in her Porsche, to the next meeting, the next party. 

I sighed, dropped my bag and shoes at the entrance and collapsed on the sofa. I have the appartment for myself tonight and tomorrow... it just needs a bit of tidying up, something that the woman is seemingly unable to do. She just calls someone to clean once every two weeks. She doesn't care anyway, the majority of her time is spent either in her real house in Manhattan or in the streets. 

By dinner time, I had already cleaned the appartment. I made myself some cornflakes with milk and sat in front of the TV; it doesn't matter what I eat anyway, this body doesn't need food. I watched some national geography and basked in my solitude. 

After I finished I picked up a few books from my bedroom and sat in the living room, tuning down the volume to 15% just for the background noise. Computer science, coding and engineering were my favourite subjects. I don't know what the future has at stake for me, but I will be prepared. This life doesn't seem to have brought upon many opportunities, so I'll take advantage of what I can.

Ever since I was ten I got interested in science; to be more specific, I wanted to know more about 'void' the ambiguity of the term and what it truly means. The reason is simple; in this second life of mine, I have powers... miraculous and ridiculous powers I could have never even conceived.

All thanks to that bastard Oblivion and his cursed 'test'.

When I was nine, I was walking back home on my own. The school is about five blocks down the apartment, not too far away. It was not an excuse for a boy as young as me to be walking school by myself, but Veronica didn't care anyway.

I stopped at some traffic lights and waited. The lights changed to green and two enthusiastic girls rushed forward before I did. One of them was a redhead, the other one had auburn hair... I didn't pay them any mind, but that's when a drunk driver decided to almost our lives.

I was baffled, who drives drunk down the hill at two o'clock afternoon? I saw him coming towards us in his Toyota Corolla, even before the two girls did. People began screaming, it didn't look like he was going to stop at all.

By the time the two girls noticed, it was too late to make a runner, they instead remained just like that, fixed on the stop and watching the car come to reap their lives. 

I could have jumped back, who noticed with enough time, would have made it, but then the two girls, or at least just the auburn-haired girl, would have died there and then. I grit my teeth and push the two of them out of the way, by the time I do that, the car is already flashing its lights in front of me. 

I didn't know why I did it, perhaps deep inside me, I still don't see the sense of living. I closed my eyes and waited for the pain, but it never came. 

I heard a loud crashing noise behind me, the girls screamed and that's when I opened my eyes to see the car bump against the traffic light and drive into one of the shops, running over a lot of people, but not me.

The people were mad screaming and shouting and I... was okay.

I looked at myself over and over, but there was not a single scratch, I looked at the marks left in the asphalt, the marks left by the burning rubber of the tyres and they went straight around me. 

Both girls were on the floor, panting, panicked, staring the spot where I stood, and the spot where the car was now starting to burn inside the shop.

It was as if the car ignored me, like it made a suddenly miraculous turn at a ridiculous angle, avoiding me yet keeping in the same trajectory, but the tyre marks said otherwise. I thought for certain that was what happened until I noticed the people looking at me with stupefied eyes. They cleaned their eyes, and they questioned themselves and what they saw. 

In truth... that car 'phased' through me, like I didn't exist.

Because something can also be nothing.

Panting, I ran out of there as fast as I could... some people chased after me but I lost them along the way. I didn't want them to remember my face, my thoughts were exhilarating. I knew about mutants, I knew the treatment mutants were given. 

I ran inside an alleyway and dropped on my back. I still don't understand what my powers are, but I'm slowly but surely starting to decipher them. From then on I have kept them a secret and also investigated them, I saw the accident in the news. The driver and the copilot died together with three people who had been siting inside the shop, a cafe.

Some of the onlookers mentioned me but couldn't give any good enough description of my appearance. So it remained just as that, an incident in which five people died; It could have been seven.

I never met those girls again, until two years ago in Junior High when I was transferred from one school to the other. I didn't even remember them, but they remembered me and also... they were quite close. 

*KNOCK!*

*KNOCK!*

'Hmn, at this time?'