I stood in the center of the pristine, lavender-scented living room, holding the embossed stationery by the very corner as if it were smeared with biological waste.
*Check your email, Doctor. We have a 9:00 AM consultation.*
"You didn't," I whispered to the empty room. My voice lacked any dramatic resonance; it was just the hollow, trembling rasp of a man who wanted nothing more than to crawl back under a duvet and cease to exist.
*I most certainly did,* my Alter replied smoothly. He materialized in the pristine mahogany office of my subconscious, buffing his fingernails on the lapel of his imaginary cashmere suit. *We are officially open for business, Helian. I have secured our first client, established our encrypted billing infrastructure, and ordered a wardrobe suitable for a man of our newfound, highly lucrative tax bracket.*
Right on cue, a sharp, terrified knock echoed from the heavy oak door.
I manually engaged my apathy shield, pulling the dense, lead-lined darkness over my prefrontal cortex just in case Lance Cromwell was waiting outside with a SWAT team. I unbolted the door and pulled it open.
A trembling courier in a faded municipal uniform was standing in the hallway, holding a massive, velvet-lined garment bag. He didn't make eye contact. He just shoved the bag into my chest and practically sprinted back down the wooden stairs.
I nudged the door shut with my knee and unzipped the bag. Inside was a charcoal-grey, bespoke three-piece suit crafted from a material that felt like spun silk and kinetic armor, paired with impossibly sleek Italian leather oxfords.
"I am not wearing a three-piece suit," I stated flatly, dropping the entire bag onto the floor like a sack of wet laundry. "I am going back to sleep. You are going to cancel this appointment, and we are going to live quietly off Arthur's money until we die of natural causes."
*I physically cannot cancel it,* my Alter replied, his tone dripping with mock sympathy. *I encrypted the scheduling firewall to prevent exactly this kind of pathetic, avoidant behavior. Besides, our client is already en route. I suggest you get dressed, Doctor. He is not the sort of individual you want to keep waiting in the lobby.*
I groaned, a long, miserable sound that scraped the back of my throat. I snatched the heavy Obsidian phone from the marble island and opened the highly encrypted mail client my Alter had built while I was comatose.
There was one file.
**CLIENT INTAKE: Allister McLight.**
**AGE:** 16**
**EGO CLASSIFICATION:** Dual-Manifest (Class-A Photonic / Class-S Electro-Kinetic)**.
**PARENTAL GUARDIAN:** Shayna McLight (The Dawn Queen). Rank: No. 3, Sector 4, Raphus Devonté (scientist). Rank: Unranked, Sector 7.
I stared at the glowing screen for a long, quiet moment.
"You booked us a session with the Dawn Queen's son," I said. It wasn't a question. It was a verbal confirmation of my own impending death. "She is a Class-SS Warlord. She incinerated an entire city block last year because a barista used two-percent milk instead of oat. And her kid is a dual-manifest."
*Correct,* my Alter noted cheerfully. *He inherited his mother's photonic light-bending and his father's volatile electro-kinesis. According to his heavily redacted medical file, his birth literally triggered a localized cataclysmic weather event that blacked out the eastern seaboard for a week. He is a walking natural disaster.*
"And you invited him into my living room."
*He is paying us ten thousand credits for forty-five minutes, Helian. For that price, I would invite a Freak Wormhole in for a charcuterie board. Put on the suit. He will be here in four minutes.*
Cursing my own subconscious with a string of deeply unimaginative profanities, I stripped off my undershirt and practically dragged myself into the bespoke suit. I had to admit, as I tied the immaculate silk tie with clumsy, reluctant fingers, it fit like a second skin. I looked significantly less like a burnt-out municipal worker and much more like a high-end corporate assassin.
I walked out into the living room and sat down heavily in the armchair just as the antique grandfather clock in the corner chimed 9:00 AM.
The air pressure in the apartment immediately shifted.
The comforting scent of lavender was violently overpowered by the sharp, metallic tang of raw ozone and an obnoxiously expensive, heavy bergamot cologne. The hair on my arms stood straight up I could feel it in the suit. Static electricity began to arc across the hardwood floor in tiny, jagged blue webs, making my new leather shoes tingle.
There was no knock.
The heavy brass doorknob glowed cherry-red for a fraction of a second, and then.
*BANG* the heavy oak door simply blew open, the deadbolt melting instantly into glowing slag that dripped onto the floorboards.
Standing in the doorway was a sixteen-year-old catastrophe.
Allister McLight was built like a catalogue model and dressed in dystopian streetwear that likely cost more than the structural foundation of the building we were standing in. He was wearing an oversized, holographic designer jacket and glowing, kinetic-dampening sneakers.
He was also literally glowing.
A blinding, pulsating aura of pure, incandescent white light radiated from his skin, threaded through with violent, crackling veins of blue lightning. He looked like a radioactive glow-stick that had just been struck by a thunderbolt.
"Are you the miracle worker?" Allister sneered.
His voice was layered with the terrifying, metallic distortion of a massively powerful Ego, but beneath the intimidating acoustics, it was just the whining, nasally pitch of a deeply irritated, incredibly spoiled teenager.
He stepped into the room.*BZZZT* A stray bolt of lightning arched off his left shoulder and completely vaporized a potted fern sitting near the bay window. A small pile of ash settled onto the floor.
"My mother forced me to come here," Allister complained loudly, throwing himself onto my newly repaired couch. The upholstery immediately began to smoke beneath his glowing jacket. "She said my 'outbursts' are ruining her PR campaign for the Sector Council. Which is completely unfair, because she's the one who ruined my life!"
I didn't flinch. I didn't reach for a weapon. I didn't even sit up straight.
I manually clamped the lead-lined vault of my apathy shut, projecting a wave of absolute, soul-crushing boredom so thick it could have stopped a kinetic missile. I slowly pulled a cheap ballpoint pen from my inner pocket, clicked it once, and looked at him with dead, unblinking eyes.
"And how did she ruin your life, Allister?" I asked. My voice was a flat, monotonous drone, utterly devoid of any clinical warmth.
Allister threw his glowing hands up in the air. "She bought me the matte black armored transport for my birthday! I specifically told her assistant I wanted the glossy obsidian finish! Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to pull up to the VIP lounge in a matte transport? I looked like a municipal garbage collector!"
His sheer, unfiltered indignation caused his Ego to flare. A blinding flash of light filled the room, and a fork of blue lightning shot from his forehead, shattering the glass coffee table between us into a thousand glittering pieces.
I didn't flinch. I slowly brushed a piece of shattered glass off my knee.
"A true human tragedy," I deadpanned, staring at the empty space where the table used to be. "I'll alert the media. Did you start a telethon?"
Allister paused. The crackling lightning around his shoulders physically stuttered. He blinked, the blinding white light dimming just enough for me to see his deeply confused expression.
"What?" he asked, his metallic resonance slipping.
"I said, did you start a telethon," I repeated, resting my chin on my hand. "For the matte paint. It sounds like a severe hardship. I'm surprised you found the strength to get out of bed."
"They were looking at me!" Allister yelled, entirely missing the sarcasm as his glowing aura flared brightly again. The air in the room hummed with a terrifying, high-voltage vibration. "The peasants at the bus stop! They saw the matte paint and they were judging me! I had to teach them a lesson!"
He leaned forward, glaring at me, trying to use the sheer, terrifying weight of his god-like Ego to intimidate me. Sparks of electricity danced across his pristine, orthodontist-perfect teeth.
"You don't look like a miracle worker," Allister growled, dropping his voice to try and sound like a Warlord. "You don't even have a visible aura. You look like a nobody. If you waste my time, I'll vaporize you and this entire miserable building."
He waited for me to cower. He waited for me to beg. He was used to a world where adults fell to their knees and wept the second he sparked.
I stared at him. The silence stretched for five agonizingly long, utterly quiet seconds.
Then, I sighed. It was a heavy, profound sigh that carried the weight of every exhausted retail worker who had ever been yelled at over an expired coupon.
"Are you quite finished being a human strobe light?" I asked, looking pointedly at the antique clock in the corner. "It is 9:07 AM. I haven't had my coffee yet, and your glowing is giving me a migraine. Power it down. You're raising my electric bill."
"Excuse me?!" Allister shrieked, his voice cracking violently. The metallic resonance vanished entirely, revealing the deeply offended sixteen-year-old underneath. "Do you know who my mother is?!"
"I do," I replied smoothly, projecting a wave of weaponized, impenetrable apathy that completely suffocated the oxygen in the room. I wasn't just ignoring his power; I was actively, aggressively bored by his existence. "Your mother is a Class-SS Warlord. She is terrifying. You, on the other hand, are a glorified flashlight throwing a temper tantrum because you didn't get the shiny toy you wanted. It is profoundly exhausting to witness."
*Oh, excellent strike, Doctor,* my Alter applauded lazily in my mind. *Hit him right in the Oedipal inferiority complex.*
"I am not a flashlight!" Allister roared, jumping up from the smoking couch.
He raised his hands. *WHOOOSH* A massive, swirling ball of plasma and lightning began to form between his palms, illuminating the apartment in a blinding, lethal blue light. The air pressure dropped violently. The hairs on my arms singed. He was preparing to level the entire block.
"I could kill you right now!" Allister screamed, his face contorted in rage, the plasma ball humming like a jet engine. "I could turn you to ash!"
I didn't move. I didn't even uncross my legs. I just looked at the glowing sphere of death, then back up to his flushed face.
"Are you going to throw that," I asked in a flat, monotonous drawl, "or are you just going to hold it there like a very. Expensive. Lamp?"
Allister froze.
"Because if you're going to vaporize me, please do it quickly," I continued, checking my fingernails. "If we go over the forty-five minutes, I have to bill you for a second hour. It's in the cancellation policy."
The plasma ball between his hands flickered.
The sheer, overwhelming cognitive dissonance of my reaction—the absolute, undeniable certainty that I was not afraid of him, and worse, that I was *bored* by him—completely short-circuited his rage loop. He was an Ego that fed entirely on the fear and submission of others. I was giving him a thermodynamic void. It was the psychological equivalent of trying to light a match in a vacuum.
The plasma ball sputtered, let out a pathetic *hiss*, and died.
The blinding white light radiating from his skin sucked backward, vanishing entirely. The lightning faded into the ambient air. Within three seconds, Allister McLight wasn't a terrifying, Warlord-in-training anymore.
He was just a sweaty, exhausted, deeply confused teenager standing in a ruined living room.
He collapsed back onto the smoking couch, rubbing his temples. He looked at me like I was a math problem he couldn't solve.
"You're the worst therapist I've ever met," Allister mumbled, his posture slumping into a sulk. "You didn't even ask me about my feelings. My mom is going to hear about this."
"I eagerly await her Yelp review," I said, clicking my pen shut and sliding it back into my suit pocket. "Session is over. You can see yourself out. Try not to melt the doorknob on your way down."
Allister scoffed, rolling his eyes with maximum teenage petulance. He reached into his holographic jacket, pulled out a heavy, platinum-plated cred-stick, and practically threw it at my head. It bounced off my shoulder and landed on the floor.
"Whatever," he muttered, standing up and storming toward the door. "You're a fraud anyway. You didn't fix anything."
"I never said I would," I replied to his back.
He paused in the melted doorway, turning back to glare at me one last time. Out of sheer, petty spite, he snapped his fingers. A tiny spark of blue lightning arched through the air and struck the thermostat on the wall, permanently fusing the dial at eighty-five degrees.
"Oops," he deadpanned poorly, before turning and stomping loudly down the wooden stairs.
I sat alone in the living room, surrounded by shattered glass, melted brass, and a vaporized fern. The apartment was already starting to get uncomfortably hot.
*Well,* my Alter mused, sounding thoroughly entertained. *He certainly isn't cured. He is arguably just as volatile as when he arrived. But he didn't kill us, and he paid the invoice. I consider that a resounding clinical success.*
"I hate you," I muttered, bending over to pick up the platinum cred-stick. "I hate you, I hate this city, and I really hate teenagers."