We didn't do anything after our date. Neither of us wanted to.
We just… enjoyed something simple for once.
I started going to school less and less. Some days I'd leave halfway through. Other days, I wouldn't show up at all.
Alan stopped going completely.
I decided to visit him, but he wasn't home. That was strange, we still talked on the phone a couple of times a week. But the house felt abandoned, like no one had been there in months.
I called him. He picked up.
He said he got a part-time job and was staying near it.
I didn't question it. I just let it go.
Later, I checked online and saw that Darren Cross had been chosen by Hank Pym to lead Pym Technologies this year.
The following weekend, mid-September, Maria and I stayed home and binged TV.
Then everything changed.
A live broadcast cut in.
Magneto was attacking a hospital in Detroit with the Brotherhood of Mutants.
And standing beside him...
was Alan.
We both froze.
I turned up the volume.
[We are live in Detroit. The well-known mutant Magneto is attacking a private hospital with his Brotherhood of Mutants. Police have surrounded the building-]
The reporter kept talking, voice shaking.
[He's coming out...he's bringing patients with him.... wait, he just lifted all the police cars-!]
Gunfire. Chaos.
[Police have opened fire, three mutants are down. Magneto is retreating with the injured..]
The screen cut between flashing lights and panic.
We just sat there.
Staring.
Trying to process it.
When did Alan meet Magneto?
How long had he been part of them?
Why did he join?
No answers.
Just silence.
A few days later, Maria went to check on him.
She found him dead.
Alone.
In his bed.
His parents had abandoned him when they found out he was a mutant. They moved to another city and just sent money. Nothing else.
Since we were kids, he was like a brother to me. He used to sleep over all the time.
Somewhere along the way… we drifted.
I don't know when it started.
Maybe when we got older.
Maybe when we got distracted—with relationships, with life.
Maybe something else entirely.
No one had the answer.
We buried him a few days later.
The funeral was small, just my family, Maria, and her mother.
That was the first time I understood what loss actually felt like.
A few days after that, I looked into why Magneto attacked that hospital.
It was funded by Essex Corp.
That told me everything I needed to know.
Mutant experimentation.
Then I dug deeper into Alan's history.
That attack?
It wasn't his first.
He'd been involved in four others with Magneto.
That's when it hit me...
I didn't know him at all.
Not really.
I remember that my mother once said "I'm too focused on the future that I forgot the present."
I fell into a depression for a while. I stopped going to school for weeks. I blamed myself for not paying attention to the people around me, too focused on building everything on my own.
I didn't visit Lauren and Riley during that time.
I didn't go out with Maria either.
Everyone tried to cheer me up, and somehow… it helped.
I got over it after exams. By December, construction was finished, and the building turned out great.
Project Cosmic had already been completed by the end of August. I had even forgotten about it.
"What would happen if I take the serum?"
«I don't know, sir.»
"Okay. What about the Soldier Serum?"
«There's a 50% chance you'll die, a 48% chance you'll stop being human, and a 2% chance it will work.»
"What?! I thought the serum was 100% safe."
«No serum is 100% safe, sir.»
"But you recreated it exactly like that doctor did, right?"
«The serum itself is fine, sir. It's the process that matters.»
"What are you talking about?"
«Without the chamber, there's only a 2% chance it will work.»
"Oh… I forgot about that. I'm not taking that risk. Besides, I'm not in a rush."
I put that aside. Project Peak and Project Cosmic were finished. I needed to focus on my tech.
I stopped building anything after the funeral, but I eventually got back to it. I upgraded my smart glasses and, by the end of the afternoon, I finished building a smart ring.
The smart glasses now had 510 megapixel sensors installed. The smart ring functioned as a health monitor, I designed it that way.
Then I asked myself, "why did I even create a smart ring when the glasses can already do that through SPACE?"
Too late now. It's already built. Might as well use it.
I decided to look for a factory to mass-produce my devices. I found an old one for sale and bought it.
It was about 30,000 m² and surprisingly cheap, just $8 million. I chose it because it had multiple sections. I wasn't planning to focus on phones alone.
I renovated the factory to make it presentable. The upgrades cost around $7 million, including labor.
So in total, $15 million for the factory. Not bad.
While that was happening, I talked to Maria about learning how to use guns. She agreed. I brought out the weapons I had bought from a dealer some time ago.
We drove out to a nearby forest and set up targets before we started shooting.
At first, we struggled with recoil and stability, but we got the hang of it. We practiced all day.
Maria turned out to be good. Really good.
After three days, handguns felt like second nature to her, except revolvers. She couldn't handle those. Same with rifles and heavy machine guns.
By the fourth day, I started calling her "Commander Maria Christina Hill."
At first, she thought it was ridiculous and told me to stop. I didn't.
She could hit targets up to 30 meters. Within 15 meters, she was nearly perfect. Beyond that, she still landed her shots on the target.
While I was practising, I kept in touch with any news happening that has something to do with anything and SPACE categories them.