The ride home from the hospital was strangely silent. The girls sat in the back of their family cars, the happy chatter of their relieved parents washing over them. They would smile and nod, saying they felt fine, but their eyes would dart to one another, sharing a secret, silent conversation. The image of Rosy's handprint sunk deep into the steel of the hospital bed was burned into all of their minds.

Krishna had been the one to calm them down before they left. "Don't say anything," he had whispered to them when their parents were busy with the doctors. "Not yet. Act normal. We'll figure this out together, I promise."

And so they did. Each girl went back to her own home, back to her own room, feeling like a stranger in her own life. The world looked the same, but they were different, and the secret they now carried felt as heavy as a mountain.

For Rosy, the secret was a humming, vibrant energy under her skin. She had always been strong, the most athletic of the group, but this was something else. In her room, she looked at her heavy, solid wood bed. She remembered the feeling of her hand hitting the metal bed frame, the way it had given way like soft clay. Curious, she gripped the foot of her own bed with one hand and lifted.

It came up off the floor with no effort at all.

She gasped and dropped it, the bed thudding back onto the floor. She stared at her own hand, flexing her fingers. It looked the same, but it was capable of impossible things. A thrill of fear and excitement shot through her. She was strong. Not just athlete-strong. Super strong.

For Simran, the change was quieter, but no less shocking. She sat down at her desk to catch up on the college work she had missed. In front of her was a complex engineering problem set that the rest of her class had been struggling with for a week. She looked at the first equation, and something clicked in her mind. The numbers and symbols weren't just a problem anymore; they were a language, and she was suddenly fluent. The solution unfolded in her head with perfect, beautiful logic. She picked up her pen, and in less than an hour, her entire week's worth of difficult assignments was finished, all of it perfectly correct. Her mind felt like a computer that had just received a massive upgrade, processing everything faster, clearer, and more deeply than ever before.

For Mahira, the discovery was the most terrifying. She was in her bathroom, washing her face, trying to forget the impossible events of the last two days. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and thought about her favorite movie actress, how she could command a scene with just a single look. I wish I could be that confident, she thought, picturing the actress's face in her mind.

As she stared into the mirror, her own reflection began to shimmer, like a heat haze on a hot road. Her face softened, her bone structure shifted, and in the space of a heartbeat, she was no longer looking at herself. She was looking at the famous actress.

Mahira screamed and stumbled back, her heart hammering in her chest. The moment she broke her concentration, the face in the mirror shimmered again and returned to her own. She stared, her hands shaking, at her familiar reflection. She had just worn someone else's face.

For Gunjan, the power revealed itself through touch. She was helping her mother in their small rooftop garden, her hands in the cool, dark soil. She leaned back for a moment to rest, her bare arm pressing against the rough, concrete wall of the terrace. She stayed there for a minute, enjoying the sun. When she pushed herself off the wall, she felt a strange, scraping sensation on her skin. She looked down at her arm. Incredibly, the skin had taken on the grey, rough texture of the concrete. She touched it with her other hand; it was hard as a rock. Panicked, she shook her arm, and the stony texture faded, returning to her normal skin. Later, in the kitchen, she nervously reached out and touched a stainless-steel pot. For a few seconds, her fingertips turned a bright, shiny silver, cool and hard like metal. Her power was in her touch. She could become what she held.

That night, a single message went out on their private group chat. It was from Simran. "Krishna's house. Emergency meeting. Now."

A half-hour later, the five of them were huddled in Krishna's room, the door locked. The air was thick with fear, wonder, and a thousand unspoken questions.

Rosy spoke first. "I dented that bed," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "And... I can lift my own bed with one hand. I think I'm... really, really strong."

Simran took off her glasses and cleaned them, a nervous habit. "I'm not strong, but my mind... it's different. It's faster. I can see the answers to problems before I even start them. Everything is... easy."

Mahira was trembling. "You're not going to believe me," she started, her voice shaking. "I was looking in the mirror, and I... I changed. My face. It wasn't my face anymore." To prove it, she closed her eyes, her face tight with concentration. Her features softened and reformed, and for five surreal seconds, she looked exactly like Simran. She let out a gasp and her face snapped back to her own.

Gunjan and Rosy stared, their mouths open.

Finally, Gunjan held out her hand. "Touch the lamp," she said to Krishna. He did. It was cold, hard metal. Then, Gunjan touched it. She held her hand out again. Krishna tapped her fingertips. They made a soft, metallic clink. Her skin had turned to steel.

They all fell silent, the weight of their impossible new realities filling the room. They looked at the one person who hadn't shown a power, the one they had always turned to. They looked at Krishna.

Krishna had listened to each of them, his expression calm and focused. He wasn't panicking. He was processing, analyzing, seeing a pattern. He stood up and paced the small room for a moment before turning back to them.

"Okay," he said, his voice quiet but firm, cutting through the tension. "So this is real. This isn't a dream." He looked at Rosy. "You could have seriously hurt someone, or yourself." He looked at Mahira. "You're scared of what you can do." He looked at Gunjan. "You don't know how to control it." And he looked at Simran. "And your mind is probably running a thousand kilometers an hour right now."

They all nodded. He understood completely.

Then, he had one of his strange moments. His eyes drifted away, as if he were looking at a bigger picture that only he could see. "This is the 'with great power' part of the story," he said softly, almost to himself. He then snapped his focus back to his friends. "But what comes next is the most important part. The part where we learn. Right now, these powers aren't gifts. They're dangerous. To ourselves and to everyone around us."

He looked at each of them, his gaze serious and full of purpose. "We can't tell anyone. Not our parents, not the doctors. No one would understand. This is our secret. Ours alone."

A pact was formed in that moment, a silent agreement that passed between the five of them.

"Before we can even think about why this happened, or what we're supposed to do," Krishna continued, "we have to learn. We have to understand what's happened to you. We have to practice. We have to learn to control it."

They looked at each other, the weight of their new, shared secret settling upon them. Their old, normal lives were over. The fear was still there, but now, it was mixed with a new feeling: determination. They weren't alone. They had each other.

"We'll start tomorrow," Krishna said, his voice now filled with the quiet confidence of a leader. "We'll find a place where no one can see us. And we'll start to learn."

The training was about to begin.

[To be continued…]

Support me: vanshbosssrahate@oksbi (UPI ID)

Author: Vansh Rahate

Editor: Vansh Rahate

Story by: Vansh Rahate

Under: Alaukika Studios