Lightning flashed arterial lines of blue over the rooftop, and seconds later, the world around them shook with a concussive force. Eli felt the tremor through his bones. He loved storms—they made him feel small, a single stitch in a vast pattern, a drop of water in a downpour.

Moments later, the rain began to fall.

In seconds, the first drops became a downpour.

“Shit,” muttered Victor, springing up from his seat.

He jogged toward the roof door.

Eli rose, but didn’t follow. Within seconds he was soaked through.

“You coming?” shouted Victor over the rain.

“You go ahead,” said Eli, the downpour erasing his voice. He tipped his head back and let himself be swallowed by the storm.

An hour later, Eli padded barefoot across the apartment, dripping rainwater in his wake.

Victor’s door was closed, the lights out.

After reaching his room, Eli peeled off his soaked clothes and sank into his chair as the storm faded beyond the windows.

Two in the morning, classes starting the next day, but sleep still

eluded him.

His cell phone sat on the desk, a handful of texts from Angie, but Eli wasn’t in the mood for that, and anyhow, she was probably asleep by now. He ran a hand through his damp hair, slicking it back, and tapped his computer awake.

Something stuck with him, from the roof. The image of the lightning in his palm. Eli had spent the better part of the summer studying electromagnetism in the human body. The literal and metaphorical spark of life. Now, drifting in that exhausted early-hours space, the darkened room and the artificial light of the laptop keeping him conscious if not fully awake, his fingers slid over the keyboard, and he began to search.

For what, he wasn’t exactly sure.

One screen, one page, one site, gave way to another, Eli’s attention wandering between articles and essays and forums like a mind lost in a dream. But Eli wasn’t lost. He was just trying to find the thread. He’d encountered a theory, some weeks before, on another insomniac night.

Over the last month, it had grown roots, fed on his focus.

Eli still didn’t know what made him click that first link. Victor would have blamed idle curiosity, or fatigue, but in Eli’s trancelike state it felt eerily familiar. A hand resting over his own. A blessing. A push.

The theory Eli had discovered was this: that sudden, extreme trauma could lead to a cataclysmic, even permanent shift in physical nature and ability. That through life-or-death trauma, people could be rewired, remade.

It was pseudoscience at best.