Date: January 20, 2021
Location: Amarillo, Texas
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10:00 AM – Blaze's Safehouse, Amarillo
Blaze's sapphire-blue eyes flicked open with sharp clarity. The silence around him was... too perfect. A kind of stillness that only occurred when the world held its breath. His brain, always running dozens of calculations per second, instantly noticed three anomalies:
1. The neighbor's dog wasn't barking. It barked every morning at 9:54 AM at a passing jogger. That sound had become background noise. Now it was gone.
2. The air pressure had shifted by exactly 1.7% since 9:00 AM—meaning a door or ventilation port had opened somewhere it shouldn't.
3. The electromagnetic lock on his sub-basement had flickered at 9:41 AM for exactly 0.2 seconds. He'd rigged that lock to act as a passive tripwire, only noticeable to someone with his level of perception.
He sat up in bed, not with panic, but cold resolution.
"They're here."
Within two minutes, Blaze packed his essentials. He placed his encrypted drive "Protocol Arcturus" into a velvet-lined box, collected five syringes of hybrid blood in a reinforced vial case, and removed the hidden chip from the heel of his custom-made Oxford shoe.
He placed a small incendiary charge on the laboratory wall and triggered it with a single word: "Erase."
The fire devoured everything but the holographic wall projection—a false illusion designed to make anyone believe he'd escaped into the sewer system.
He stepped into the shaft under his bed, landing silently in an underground corridor leading two blocks west.
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10:17 AM – Government Strike Team Arrives
The black-clad strike team breached the door with synchronized efficiency. Holographic helmets scanned for heat signatures, finding only the dying embers of the lab and a flicker in the sewer access point.
"Target escaped. He went into the drains," one soldier reported.
A woman in a white lab coat—Agent Rilke from Hidden Division 13—frowned.
"No... he wanted you to think that. This is staged. Everything's too clean."
But Blaze was already blocks away.
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11:00 AM – Blaze Blends In
On 6th Street near the Amarillo Civic Center, Blaze walked with calm precision, wearing a fresh black trench coat, vest, and gentleman's tie. His dark hair was slicked back. Not a single sign of panic in his gait.
He passed a homeless man and offered him a hundred-dollar bill in exchange for a burner phone.
"You in trouble, kid?" the man asked.
Blaze's smile was cold, yet polite. "No, sir. But soon, the people who are will be."
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12:00 PM – Cybercafe, South Polk Street
Inside a dusty cybercafe, Blaze sat in the corner with a borrowed laptop. He plugged in a custom crypto drive.
His fingers danced over the keys, accessing the Federal Digital Identity Database through a backdoor he'd discovered a year ago—buried under an algorithm no one but he could parse.
He erased his aliases:
Aaron Yule, homeschooled honor student
Joshua Bright, part-time coder in Dallas
And he created new ones:
Gavin Kross, janitor in Shreveport, LA
Nolan Pierce, Nebraska-born teen presumed dead in 2016
Blake Harmon, church orphan in Salt Lake City
He smiled faintly.
"A ghost doesn't run. He just misleads the living."
He uploaded a virus into the ID database: any query containing "Blaze" or "Alex" would now redirect to a static page saying "No records found."
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1:30 PM – Observing the Hybrid Capture
Through a hijacked satellite feed, Blaze saw the worst: a black van pulling away from his lab ruins. The hybrid containment chamber was inside.
His notes were copied. His sample was taken.
Blaze stared at the screen. Then whispered:
"So they want to mass-produce my sin... I'll make them choke on it."
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6:30 PM – Breaking News
"U.S. Government identifies new top-level global threat: a 16-year-old boy named Blaze..."
Photos flashed on screen. His old aliases. A childhood photo. Descriptions of his intellect, crimes, and warnings of his danger.
The reporter called him a "monster in human skin."
Hidden Organizations activated:
Circle of Shadows offered a bounty of $20 million
The Witching Guild issued a magical blacklisting curse
A bounty hunter named Crowther announced he'd take the job
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11:30 PM – Tunnel Beneath Amarillo Rail Station
Blaze moved like shadow, vaulting across rusted steel pipes with parkour grace.
His coat was torn, his face smudged with soot, but his eyes were still sharp as razors.
He whispered:
"A genius cornered... is just evolution in motion."
Above ground, drones scanned the region.
But Blaze had become a ghost.
And his next experiment?
Was war.