Chapter 1: Prologue: Wacky Warehouses

The keen wailing of a digital alarm tone rouses me from an uneventful slumber. I wake up, and instinctually flick my phone’s blinking screen so that the annoying sounds emanating from my phone lose their ability to harass me. When the incessant sounds coming from one of my few possessions cease I chuckle and relax.

For a few moments I enjoy the soft mattress underneath me. I elect to stay here perhaps longer than I should because this is the last time I’ll wake up atop a mattress, for a while at least. That may sound dramatic, but things like a mattress are not things I am in the habit of taking for granted. I’ve lost too much to foolishly assume that things will either get better, or stay the same. As bad as things are, they can always get worse.

I eventually manage to muster the will needed to get out of bed, and as I do I look outside. Sunlight streams into the other end of the motel room I have spent the last few nights in. I cleverly moved the bed in the room away from the window, to let me really relish the limited time I would be spending here, but all good things come to an end.

I stand up and stretch as I study the room I have spent the last two nights in. Today marks the beginning of what I assume will constitute a long stretch of rough nights as yesterday was the final day of the spring semester for students at the local public university in the tiny college town of Norfolk, North Carolina.

College students have always been alright to me, and when they are around I tend to get more money panhandling than I do during the hot summer months they spend in their hometowns. On the bright side, a few dozen college students are homeless and crowd the local shelter so now there’ll hopefully be a bit more space in them than there was yesterday now that they return to their families for the summer.

I begin to clean the room, spending a few minutes redecorating the place and putting things where they “should” be. It takes me perhaps ten minutes to finish putting the room back the way it was when I first began to sleep here two nights ago.

When I am done I study the room. I didn’t move all that much so I didn’t have to do that much today, but I still go out of my way to inspect the place. The room looks identical to how it looked when I first moved in, and that brings a smile to my face.

I grab my things, all of which fit inside of a backpack, and go to do an early morning check out. The whole process takes less than ten minutes, thanks to a helpful motel receptionist and before I know it I find myself free to roam the tiny town I call home.

The sun is low in the sky, only just beginning to creep towards the heights it will reach later today. Despite the sun’s current position the heat is already considerable and I chuckle as I consider what to do. Getting out of the heat would be ideal, but many places aren’t open just yet as it’s only seven in the morning.

I elect to locate a shady spot where I can sit down and not be harassed by anyone until a time comes when I can go to a place with air conditioning. Finding such a spot is not easy as this place doesn’t love homeless people and so I have to find a place where no one will complain about my presence but I manage to catch a fortunate number of breezes that help keep me from getting too hot for any meaningful amount of time as I walk in search of a sanctuary to rest in.

In a matter of minutes I find myself near the edge of town in the part of the settlement that people like to avoid. All around me I can see impressive, lightly occupied warehouses and long abandoned factories, signs of a time that I can barely remember and that most people who live here would rather forget.

This industrialized part of town is chock full of factories, warehouses, and even buildings that are only partially finished. It is an oddly beautiful reminder of an optimistic past and of a time when people believed that a “Build it and they will come” mentality applied even to jobs. A few functional factories fill parts of the sky with thick clouds of smoke, and I can hear the occasional voice in the distance, though only faintly.  

Cars occasionally pass me by as I slowly wander the streets of this mostly forgotten relic of the past. Truthfully this is my favorite part of town, as it is a neat place to visit and it is relatively unguarded since most people don’t like to see this grim reminder of what the town could have been.

If I turned around I’d be able to see downtown. That’s another point in this place’s favor, it is very close to downtown which is where I’ll be heading in a few minutes when things start to open for the day.

I spot a warehouse in the distance with no cars or people that I can see around it and I begin to make my way there. I prefer to sit in the shade of warehouses as opposed to lingering around factories where abandoned projects have long fallen into disrepair and a single misstep could lead to someone having something in them that they shouldn’t. Too many of my fellow homeless people have tried to rest in long forgotten factories only for some rusty factory tool or something to get stuck in their hands or legs.

The warehouse is in the middle of an ambitious lot, with many parking spaces and even a parking attendant’s booth that I pass by to get into the place’s parking lot. I don’t actually recognize this particular warehouse, but it’s not like I paid special attention to each warehouse so I chalk this up to the stresses of everyday life coupled with growing older, as even at a glance the warehouse serves as a reminder that it is a decently large, somewhat memorable place.

By the time I reach the warehouse it is almost seven forty-five in the morning. A decent amount of time has passed since I awoke, but many places don’t open until nine so I still have some time to kill. I silently stare at the large warehouse, close enough to the place that I can easily step into it if I so desire and if it happens to be unlocked.

I am under an awning that juts out of the building to provide cover for whoever once worked here when it rains. The awning provides valuable shade and I eventually find a place on the sidewalk that is underneath the thing and looks comfortable enough, so I sit down so that I can relax for a bit.

As I do this I look at the large warehouse curiously. The sleek building is elegantly designed and as I look at it I can feel curiosity welling up within me. There is a small voice in the back of my mind that whispers that it’d be fun to get away from the heat and go inside the building… I elect to ignore it, but unlike with my cellphone earlier this morning the voice doesn’t go away.

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Unlike some of my peers I tend to avoid entering places like this. I mean I’ve occasionally entered an abandoned place, but almost invariably because I wanted to track down someone with less caution than me who had gone ahead and tried to occupy a place like this. I’ve almost never entered a place because it looked cool or made me curious, but a lifetime of saying no to those impulses hadn’t made them any weaker.  

To my credit, I manage to resist the impulse for several minutes. In fact I think the only reason I eventually give in and stop resisting the impulse is because I am alone and the heat grows more oppressive the longer I am in the shade. Even with the shade the heat is only mitigated so much, so I like to think that most people would be impressed with my resilience.

There is a door leading into the building behind me. Normally such doors are locked, but on occasion someone can stumble across one that isn’t. This can be for any number of reasons, be it someone just having entered or exited the place and forgetting to lock up, or a lock that hasn’t been used or maintained in a long time that has broken because of a lack of maintenance. I try to open the door and almost cheer when it opens without fighting me.

I step into an enormous room, one that feels almost supernaturally large. Ahead of me stretches row after row of shelves, on which rest boxes containing what look like potions out of old video games. To my left and right are various consoles and what I assume must be devices that allow someone to clock in and clock out of a shift.

I step forward and I shut the door behind me as I do so. I allow myself a second to study the odd scene before me, right as my heart skips a beat because I distantly but unmistakably hear the sound of distant footsteps. The sound is almost enough to make me turn back around and to flee this place out of fear and surprise, but I manage to hold it together long enough to hear another distant footstep, and then more, further away.

I mentally track the sounds, hoping to see if I can determine if any of them are approaching me. After a few moments of careful consideration and many more footsteps I decide that for now I am safe.

I dart towards the closest shelf as quietly as I can move, and when I reach it I look into one of the boxes in front of me. The thing is filled with weird looking drinks in old-timey vials, and on each of them is a slip of paper that provides them with a name and a description.

“Essence of Flame” is the first one I read in full. The thing is a scarlet red liquid contained in a glass vial that manages to look hot to the touch, with the air near it shimmering in a manner similar to that of a heat mirage. Its description is intriguing, as it is all about fire manipulation even down to a conceptual level, but as I read it I realize these must be toys of some sort that are using when kids play pretend. Or, worse, some sort of secret government experiments…

I consider drinking the thing, just to see what’d happen if I did it, but I ultimately reject that thought after a moment of consideration. I decide to dart forward and deeper into the warehouse, purely to see what other “Essences” there are here.

I stalk quietly through the warehouse, stopping and inspecting boxes along the way. As I do I come across a range of essences, some with very fancy names like “The Essence of the Phoenix” or the “Essence of the Anti-Immortal”.

The descriptions I read make me believe that this really is all part of some scheme by a toy-making company to get kids to buy drinks that they can down whenever they play pretend. But… the descriptions of some of these essences are a bit raunchy for kids, and some of them clearly infringe on copyright like the “Essence of the Triforce” or the “Essence of the Minecrafter”. It’s all… really weird.

I continue my stealthy escapades into the warehouse until I see two distant figures appear from behind some shelves. I can’t hear them but I can see that they are laughing and I watch as one of them points his finger at the other and flicks it upward.

I feel my heart stop when the other man is suddenly lifted into the air. The man is floating, suspended in mid-air and I suddenly have to wonder if the descriptions of the vials are actually accurate. I saw a few that promised their imbibers the ability to use telekinesis, and while I’m no superpower aficionado even I know what telekinesis is. The man in mid-air begins to get angry, vibrating for a moment and then he seems to roar, and I watch a sound wave get emanated out of him that hits the shelf next to the man.

Both figures look at the shelf in horror and then watch as it begins to fall, almost slowly. The boxes of essences on it all slide off the thing and crash onto the ground, exploding as they do. I feel the air around me vibrate for a moment before the room’s lights change, going from a neutral color to a red one.

Something comes over me, perhaps my unconscious mind senses an opportunity that I am too stunned to sense consciously or perhaps I am just greedy in the wake of seeing two people manifest what I can only describe as real, honest to God superpowers, but I dart forward and grab a handful of essences right before I start to hear a loud alarm rip through the once-silent air. I don't even really think about it in the moment, I just grab as many essence as I can hold onto and I begin to move with an alarming speed I sometimes forget I can move with when the situation demands it. 

I only manage to get my hands on five essences, before I turn around and begin to dart towards the door I used to enter the warehouse. As I sprint towards the door I glance at the essences but I can only make out one as I hear the alarm and it unnerves me. The one I can make out right now is called the “The Essence of the Evolving Essence Creator”, and despite everything I manage to smile even as I reach the door and hurl it open so that I can dash out of the warehouse and away from here.

In a matter of moments I am hauling ass away from the warehouse, eager to get somewhere else, even as I hear the loud alarm begin to fade into the background.

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