David Fraser was late for class. He moved with a gait that couldn't really be called a run, not with one hand balancing a foam cup of scalding-hot coffee, the other clutching the strap of a half-zipped bookbag. Still, he was moving faster than a walk, long, gangly legs eating up the ground with careless strides. A textbook wobbled on the edge of the fabric, then fell with a clatter. David cursed under his breath and skidded to a halt. He bent to snatch up the book from the cool, dew-slick stairs before carrying on into the lecture hall.

The blast came a moment later. A burning hot wall of fire and air plucked David from the steps and threw him into the air. He had enough time to think What the fuck? as his head slammed into the gnarled oak tree that had stood beside the building for the last hundred and fifty years.

A rhythmic beeping noise woke me. It sounded like my alarm clock, but slower. It was a heart monitor, of course. Why had it been so hard to think of that? Memories came back, reluctant as if they were stuck in molasses. I remembered going to class, trying not to spill my coffee. There had been a loud bang, too loud to be just my Intermediate Structural Engineering textbook dropping. And then I had been…flying?

I realized that my head hurt a lot. I tried to move my hands to clutch my forehead, but they were just too heavy to do anything like that. Panic gripped me. I heard the beeping speed up as my heart rate increased. I must have hit my head really hard. People could die of that sort of thing— the brain is one of the most vulnerable parts of the human body. Maybe if I wore a helmet…no, that would look stupid. A set of surgically implanted plates, though. Weave them through just right…

The exact specifications floated through my head. I could see how the pieces would go together, what materials I would use. The surgery involved was fuzzier, but manageable. I could combine carbon-fiber steel with Kevlar and— how did I know these things? I was a mechanical engineering student, not some kind of—of…

The thought struck me, and my headache went from intolerable to white-hot. A roaring sound filled my ears and I cried out in pain, unable to do anything but writhe in agony. From a long way off, I heard the beeping sound get louder and faster, then a commotion of voices as people bustled into the room. I had a fraction of a second to be relieved as I blacked out again.

When I woke up again, my head was still aching, but it was more manageable now. I felt lightheaded, and a little drunk. They'd definitely medicated me with something strong. There were a whole bunch of buttons on a thick remote lying next to my hand, with the call button taped to the other. It was easy enough to figure out which one would elevate the bed— I could see the circuit board in my mind, imagine how the wires would be laid out for optimal performance. On the first button I tried, the bed's electric motor (a simple heavy duty DC engine) whined and the bed angled my back upwards to better survey the room. It was the standard hospital room I'd seen once before when I'd gotten my tonsils out. A few flowers sat on the display table, as well as a small stack of "get well" cards.

I was still reeling in shock at having suddenly developed powers, and getting left alone in a silent room gave me a lot of time to think. It was fair to conclude that I was some breed of Tinker— the way I could just see how things fit together was as good an explanation as any. Unless, of course, I was some sort of weird Thinker/Tinker cross, just able to understand the way things operated and nothing else. The obnoxious thing about powers is of course that they don't come with any sort of instruction manual.

I'd always wondered what it would like to have powers, of course. What kind of kid wouldn't? Still, while the odds of getting your own set of powers statistically climbed, a lot of that was just due to existing capes or villains having kids of their own. The Endbringers did their bit too, of course, but unless you lived in a major city or some other targetable place, odds were slim you'd ever see one.

And that brought me around to wondering how the hell all this had happened. Sure, Cornell University wasn't the smallest college/town combo the world had ever seen, but Ithaca was a long damned way from most major cape activity, as far as I was aware. It could have been your usual run-of the mill terrorist, I supposed. There wasn't available to me at the moment, which mostly left me feeling tired again.

I woke up to hear my parents conversing in quiet tones near my bed. I felt worse than the last time, better than the first. The meds must have been wearing off, or I was in between doses. My dad stood over my mom, supporting her with one arm while she held my hand. His face was hard, but I knew he was just the stoic sort. I hoped he wasn't too worried. My mom, on the other hand, was a wreck. She saw me move, and her tear-stained, red-cheeked face came up from where she had been hunched over the bed. "Dave? Is he awake? Can you hear us? Davie, sweetheart, are you alright? Jefferey, is he alright?" she asked my dad.

"Mom, I'm fine." I tried to say. My mouth opened to speak, but the words wouldn't come out. I tried again. "Mmmmh…" No. Why was this so difficult? I tried again. "Mmmmh…" what was going on?

Eyes wide, my mom reached over and smacked the call button taped to my other hand. A few moments later, a nurse poked her head in. "Is everything alright, ma'am?"

"Why can't he speak?" she demanded. "What's wrong? I thought the doctor said he was just sleeping!"

"Ma'am, I need you to stay calm. I'll go get the doctor." She closed the door once more.

"Davie, sweetheart, can you hear me?" Mom asked.

I nodded. That seemed to work just fine.

"Are you in any pain?"

I shook my head.

"Can you move your hands? Can you wiggle your toes?"

I moved my hands and wiggled my toes to prove that indeed I could. Mom's face crumpled further, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. "Jeff, he's all right." She sobbed. My dad held her close with one arm while he clutched my hand in the other. He nodded to me once, giving his usual stay strong look. The doctor entered a few minutes later, pulling off one pair of latex gloves and slinging them into a trash can. He pulled another set out from a box on a small counter and came over to my bed. "What seems to be the matter?" he asked.

"He can't speak!" my mom exclaimed.

"Hmm." The doctor shined a light into my eyes, had me wiggle my fingers and toes again. He shone a light down my throat and took a look at my vocal cords. He prodded various parts of my body, asking if I could feel it each time. I nodded whenever he did, and at last he seemed satisfied.

"Well, with a head injury like his we of course took an MRI, but he seemed clean, other than that nasty concussion and a minor skull fracture. From everything we could see, there was no brain damage, but there's clearly nothing wrong with his nervous system, nor his throat and lungs. The only explanation I can give you is it would seem to be some kind of Aphasia, but for some reason the trauma isn't evident at all. We'll do a second MRI just to be sure, and I'll see about getting him some speech therapy. This seems a bit unusual, but I promise we'll have him talking again in no time."

Two weeks later and I was walking out of the hospital to the parking lot, flanked on either side by my parents, who seemed concerned that I was going to fall, even though I'd been able to walk for five days. I carried a small whiteboard with a dry-erase marker, which I was to use for the time being to communicate. I sat in the back of our station wagon while my dad drove us home, discussing with my mother what the best thing to do with me when we got home would be. I lay back against the headrest, picturing the best way to make the car more well-equipped to handle side-on impacts with horizontal K-bracing.

I still hadn't had the opportunity to test out my abilities, hospitals are always so clean that putting together random scraps wasn't really an option, and taking apart the millions of dollars of medical equipment probably would have been a bad idea. I hadn't told my parents, either. I figured maybe when we cured my speech disorder I could maybe sit them down and have a long discussion about the subject, but now wasn't going to be that time. We pulled into the driveway of my house, and my dad held the door open for me and I stepped out. I wanted to tell him I had Boca's Aphasia, my arms and legs still worked fine, but I didn't have the energy to deal with pulling out my stupid whiteboard and writing all that. So instead I just bowed my head and stepped out, then followed my mom inside.

"Do you want a snack? She asked. "Or maybe I should see if any of your friends have come in?"

I shook my head. "I just want to lie down for a bit." I wrote on the whiteboard, then headed off to my room.

It looked like a tornado made of plastic and wood shavings had hit, as my dad had finally gotten the space he always wanted for his model trains when I left. My bed was still in the corner, though, and I flopped onto it, closing my eyes. For approximately a bajillionth of a second, I felt so exhausted I could have slept for a week. But then I realized I was in a whole room full of scraps and shavings from all kinds of model train stuff. There were engines and low-gauge wire, and…

My eyes snapped back open and I rolled off the bed. I looked around at all the stuff lying around, and a model diesel locomotive caught my eye. It was just a shell, really. Most of its parts were strewn around, with a couple of them looking a little charred. I grabbed a few tools and set to work. Not even an hour later, the locomotive was in better working order than it had been when it came out of the box. I'd added a few small improvements of my own, mostly just little resistors and such to guard against electrical failure.

I set the locomotive down, feeling much better. Maybe I couldn't speak, but when I could, I was going to have the best news ever for my parents. Smiling, I set the locomotive back on its track and headed back out of the room to where my parents were watching TV. I saw Cornell University, and the burnt-out hulk of the Engineering lecture hall. A reporter was saying something to the camera, but all I saw was the headline at the bottom of the screen:

"A New Villain: Mad bomber Bakuda strikes a second time"