Normal day
Ethan's mornings always began the same way.
Light first.
Not the alarm clock he rarely needed it but the pale glow slipping through the edge of the curtains. Even indirect, filtered through buildings and glass, the Sun registered instantly. Not as warmth. As presence.
He lay still for a moment, listening.
The city was already awake.
Distant traffic. An elevator somewhere in the building. The soft hum of electricity in the walls. His mother moving in the kitchen, measured and unhurried.
Routine.
He liked routine.
It made everything else easier to hide.
Breakfast was quiet.
Margaret sat at the counter with a cup of coffee, scanning emails on her tablet.
Ethan ate without rushing, eyes drifting occasionally to the window.
"You're going to be late if you keep staring outside," she said without looking up.
"I won't," he replied calmly.
She smiled faintly. "You never are."
That was true.
He packed his bag books he had already memorized, notebooks he used mostly as camouflage and slipped on his jacket.
"Have a good day," Margaret said.
"I will."
And he meant it.
School was noise.
Hallways crowded with voices, lockers slamming, shoes scraping against polished floors. Ethan moved through it all without friction, another body in motion, another face teachers recognized but rarely focused on.
First period: math.
He finished the worksheet in minutes, then waited. He always waited. Counted breaths. Let his eyes wander. Pretended to check his answers.
The boy next to him Daniel leaned over.
"Did you get number six?"
"Yes," Ethan said.
"What'd you get?"
Ethan paused just long enough to seem uncertain. "I think… forty-two?"
Daniel nodded, satisfied, and turned back to his paper.
Ethan returned to waiting.
Lunch was observation.
He sat at the same table every day. Not popular or isolated. A neutral zone where people came and went without forming expectations.
Conversation drifted around him.
Games. Complaints about teachers.
Parents arguing about money.
Someone mentioned a vacation. Someone else bragged about a new phone.
Ethan listened.
Not because it mattered now.
Because it would matter later.
After school, he walked home instead of taking the bus.
It added ten minutes.
Ten minutes of sunlight. Minutes of quiet.
He kept his pace slow, casual, hands in his pockets. No running, Sudden movements. Just another kid heading home.
The interface ticked upward imperceptibly.
At home, the apartment felt different.
Quieter.
Controlled.
He dropped his bag by the door and changed out of his school clothes. Margaret wouldn't be back for another hour.
That hour was his.
He sat at his desk and powered on his computer.
The screen glowed to life.
Order replaced noise.
He worked methodically not chasing profit, not pushing limits. Reviewing data. Adjusting flows. Making sure nothing stood out.
Everything he did had one rule:
No pattern that pointed back to him.
When that was done, he shifted to learning.
Scientific papers. Old patents. Research summaries that most people ignored because they were dull, incomplete, or "inconclusive."
Those were his favorites.
Inconclusive usually meant unfinished.
Margaret came home just after six.
"Homework?" she asked, setting her bag down.
"Already done," Ethan said.
She raised an eyebrow. "Of course it is."
They ate dinner together.
Talked about small things.
A colleague of hers. Project deadline.
Tacher who assigned too much reading.
Normal.
Afterward, Ethan washed the dishes without being asked.
Margaret noticed.
She always did.
That night, lying in bed, Ethan stared at the ceiling.
Not thinking about school or money.
Thinking about trajectory.
He didn't need to skip grades. Didn't need degrees. Recognition. Everything he needed, Could acquire on his own.
Knowledge.
Resources.
Time.
Vought remained distant for now.
A shadow at the edge of systems too large to move quickly.
That was fine.
He wasn't ready to move either.
The Sun would rise again tomorrow.
And Ethan Cole would wake up, walk through another normal day, and quietly continue becoming something the world had no framework to measure.
Ethan realized something uncomfortable one evening while sitting alone in his room.
For the first time since his rebirth, he wasn't planning for survival.
He was choosing.
That difference mattered more than he expected.
Timeline of his life had always felt rigid before. Childhood. Education. Work. Sacrifice. Everything in his previous life had been subordinated to one obsessive goal. Longevity. Control. Beating death at any cost.
There had been no room for preference.
No room for liking things just because he liked them.
Now there was.
And it unsettled him.
The thought came to him without strategy attached.
Annie January's school.
Not because it was prestigious or it offered leverage.
And not because it placed him closer to Vought's orbit.
He remembered watching The Boys in his previous life late at night, exhausted, sick, half-delirious from treatments. Annie had stood out then not as a symbol, but as a person. Earnest. Naive. Trying to be good in a system designed to punish it.
He had liked her.
Not romantically or idealistically.
Humanly.
She had been proof that not everyone broke the same way.
In his old life, liking something had always been a liability. Time wasted. Focus lost. Weakness indulged.
This time, he didn't have to deny himself something so small.
So he didn't.
He examined the idea calmly, not to justify it, but to understand it.
Going to the same school didn't bind him to her story. Didn't force an encounter. Thousands of students passed through that place. It wasn't fate.
It was proximity without obligation.
A quiet indulgence.
And for the first time, that felt… acceptable.
Movement came next, not as ambition, but practicality.
Ethan still relied on schedules he didn't control. Buses. Trains. Other people's timing. That dependency irritated him not emotionally, but structurally.
He couldn't fly.
Not yet.
And when he could, he wouldn't not openly not now.
So he thought about driving.
A license wasn't freedom in the dramatic sense.
It was mundane autonomy.
The ability to leave when he wanted. To go where sunlight was better. Adjust distance without creating patterns that stood out.
He penciled it in mentally.
Not urgent.
Inevitable.
Money no longer preoccupied him the way it once had.
It existed.
Quietly.
Enough to matter. Not enough to draw interest.
His income didn't look like success. It looked like noise small flows, irregular timing, nothing that formed a narrative. Exactly the way he wanted it.
Understanding systems well enough to move through them without leaving fingerprints.
He didn't hoard.
Distributed.
Tools. Redundancy. Stability.
Money was no longer the goal.
It was maintenance.
Late at night, his thoughts shifted again.
To intelligence.
Not his own.
Artificial.
He didn't imagine a voice or a personality. He had no interest in companionship from bot. What he wanted was something closer to a mirror a system that could track patterns while he focused elsewhere.
No autonomy, initiative.
Just clarity.
A silent architecture that noticed what humans missed and presented it cleanly.
Not Jarvis.
He Never wanted Jarvis.
Something quieter.
Something that never asked why.
He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, city light drifting faintly across it.
In his previous life, every choice had been sacrifice disguised as discipline.
Now, discipline remained but sacrifice was optional.
He didn't need to rush.
Need to deny himself harmless preferences.
He could go to that school.
Get a license.
Could build something simply because it interested him.
The Sun would rise tomorrow.
His body would continue its slow, patient evolution.
And for the first time, Ethan allowed himself a thought that would have felt dangerous once:
This life didn't have to be only about winning.
It could also be about choosing.
By the time Ethan turned fourteen, the world had finally started to feel… negotiable.
Not fragile or hostile.
Negotiable.
His body had settled into a pace that felt stable. Growth still happened, but slowly now quietly, without drama and problems such as a sudden improvement in hearing or problems with controlling force, which sometimes caused him to destroy things The Sun did its work in the background, patient as ever. Nothing rushed,leaked.
That suited him.
The license came first.
Not the dramatic kind, rebellion.
No racing down empty roads at night.
Just paperwork.
A special permit. Legal. Boring. Invisible. The kind of thing adults skimmed past because it didn't fit their idea of danger.
Ethan studied the rules once and never forgot them. He passed the written portion without hesitation, the practical part with deliberate restraint. Drove like someone who had nothing to prove.
Which, ironically, unsettled the instructor more than mistakes would have.
"You're very calm," the man said as they pulled back into the lot.
"I like predictability," Ethan replied.
That was enough.
The car came next.
He chose it carefully.
Not new, flashy.
But old enough to look suspicious.
A compact sport coupe clean lines, good handling, reliable engine. The kind of car someone sensible with decent money would buy. Not a statement
He paid outright.
That was the mistake.
Margaret stared at the receipt for a long time.
Then she looked at him.
Back at the paper.
"Ethan," she said slowly, "you're fourteen."
"Yes."
"You just bought a car."
"Yes."
"With your own money."
"Yes."
Silence filled the kitchen.
Not anger.
Shock.
She sat down without asking him to explain.
"I knew you were… capable," she said finally. "But this this is more than capable."
Ethan didn't rush her.
"I didn't do anything illegal," he said. "And I didn't take risks."
"That's not what I'm worried about," she replied quietly.
He met her eyes.
"I know."
The conversation that followed wasn't explosive.
It was careful.
Margaret asked questions. Ethan answered them truthfully, but selectively. He explained that the money came from consistent work. That it had grown over time. He hadn't hidden anything dangerous.
What he didn't explain was how easy it had been.
Margaret listened. Processed. Adjusted.
Finally, she sighed.
"I don't know how to be the parent of someone like you," she admitted.
Ethan hesitated.
"Neither do I," he said.
That made her laugh short, surprised, real.
"All right," she said. "We'll learn."
The house came later.
Quietly.
Ethan didn't announce it. Didn't dramatize it. He presented it like a logistical solution.
A small, clean place. Not extravagant. Not isolated. Located in the general area of the hight shool Annie January had once attended.
Margaret read the listing twice.
"You're planning far ahead," she said.
"Yes."
"Why there?"
Ethan paused.
Because he liked her, he though and can.
Because in another life, he wasn't allowed to like anything.
He shrugged instead.
"It's a good location," he said. "Sunlight. Privacy. Long-term value."
Not a lie.
Just not the whole truth.
They drove there together a week later.
Margaret walked through the rooms slowly, touching walls, opening windows. She stood in the living room for a long moment, watching the light move across the floor.
"This feels… intentional," she said.
"It is," Ethan replied.
She looked at him then not suspicious, not afraid.
Proud.
A little sad.
But proud.
That night, Ethan stood alone on the balcony.
The city felt farther away here. Quieter. The Sun would hit this place differently in the mornings longer angles, cleaner exposure.
The interface ticked upward, almost imperceptibly.
Growth continued.
So did everything else.
He had a car now.
A place near where he wanted to be.
Money that didn't ask questions.
And for the first time, his plans weren't only about control.
They were about presence.
Somewhere ahead, the story he remembered was still unfolding.
This time, he wasn't watching it from a screen.
He was already nearby.