During the week after I found the abandoned bunker, I was busy getting ready for the weekend. I'd need multiple repeater, batteries and measuring-tools to make the bunker into something suitable for me. By now, my shell game was in full swing so it was easy to get the necessary parts, even enough to build a computer strong enough to house Galatea. I was planning to back her up anyway and a secret hideout was a good choice for that.

I caught a lucky break when I learned that my father, barbie and my brother would be at some fundraising-dinner Saturday evening and gone for the full weekend so I could stay out long if I wanted to. I just had to make sure Galatea was able to redirect a call to the house to me, something she was easily able to do.

Saturday morning, I went out to the bunker, my backpack filled with measuring gear and electronics. I easily found the hatch I used before and after placing a repeater in a nearby tree and taping one to the inside of the hatch, I started climbing down. With multiple repeaters and a stronger flashlight, I was able to scout out the complete complex. It was a sprawling complex, obviously built to house people in comfort and safety. There were several points that looked unfinished, similarly all portable parts had been taken, probably by the construction-crew but some larger furniture still remained. A few tables, a couple of doors, stuff like that. What truly surprised me was the lack of dust on the floor. Intellectually, I knew that the base had been abandoned decades ago but the floor was almost dust free, looking as if it had been abandoned only recently.

I made a full floor plan and even found a second, larger access-hatch never opening it but getting the coordinates of the hatch, before going back down. Thanks to multiple strategically placed repeaters, Galatea had full signal coverage in the complex letting her 'accompany' me as I roamed it.

By now, I realized that I had found the best opportunity and needed to grasp it. I made multiple trips back to the house, carrying equipment and supplies into my new base. It took a few trips, but by the end of the day, I had everything I needed down there. I even had a few sensors set up to keep readings for oxygen-content in the air to make sure that I would not suffocate in my hole.

I debated going home for the night but I was unsure how long I would need to build the reactor so I got down to business, letting myself slide deep into a trance.

My surroundings grew hazy as the world was reduced to my project. My mind spun into overdrive, sharpening my senses and dexterity allowing me to fabricate at an impossible level. What normally would need specialized tools to build was overcome by the virtue of my power. Metal was shaped, electronics placed and soldered, sensors installed and plastic shaped. I did not feel the passing of time, only the slow progress of my creation taking shape.

I was surprised when I placed the final piece, completing the reactor and coming out of my trance. My stomach told me with a loud noise that I had neglected it. I took out a sandwich and looked my project over. It looked crude, simple even, like a cheap knock-off toy.

I knew that optics did not matter to me, I just wanted it's utility. After a look at the clock, I knew that I could test it once. After flushing the reaction-chamber with inert gas, I hooked it up to the water-electrolysis equipment and fired it up. It needed some energy to actuate but soon, the gas-bubbles showed me that I was creating deuterium and oxygen, one going into the reactor, the other for now simply being pumped into the bunker.

With a small prayer to whatever deity might be listening, I pressed the buttons to activate the reactor. For the first moments, nothing happened. Then I was getting small spikes on the measuring-tools, indicating that I was fusing Deuterium into Helium. Now, the question remained if it was creating enough energy to off-set the input. With each field-cycling, the spikes evened out into a smoother return-curve, far higher than the input-curve.

My mind took a few moments to grasp my new reality. I had just created something truly rare, there were fusion-research projects out there but nothing I had read spoke of success. But I had it in front of me, a working, running fusion-reactor. Part of me wanted to shout it from the rooftops, to bath in the adulation of the crowds but both the realistic part of me and Galatea stopped me. If I showed the world my reactor, it would be gone. I would change from a commodity my father wanted to sell into a commodity everyone wanted to sell. Freedom would be even further away than now. No, I needed a power-base before I showed anyone my cards and even then, I would have to be incredibly careful.

There were humans out there that matched up to mid-tier Powered by using technology. One was in the hero's league in a different city, using an exo-suit to protect himself and fight. I planned to build something similar, not to be a hero but to get the interest of the Guild. If I managed to become a member in good standing, I could tell my father to take a hike. But would a fusion-reactor be enough leverage in a group that was purportedly ruled by the simple maxim of “Might makes right”? Not likely.

But with the reactor in place, other things became possible.

Over the next few weeks, I started to get serious with making the base mine, all mine. I built up some simple robots, little more than roombas with hands and linked them to Galatea to use as hands within the base. She cleaned the base and even cleared the entrance-ramp, allowing me to bring greater loads inside, at least if I could get some kind of mobility. To do so, I rigged up a simple support exoskeleton for me, basically an open frame, that allowed me to lift heavy objects and slowly walk with them. It was far from the full suit I'd need for anything serious but it allowed me to move bigger things down the ramp. With that I could start building better tools, giving me the ability to make better, well, tools. If I was in a cave, with only a box of scraps, I wouldn't be able to build anything. I'd have to first built myself the tools that I'd need to continue my plans and dreams. But for the first time, I had a feeling that my dreams weren't mere pipe-dreams, illusions conjured up by an imprisoned bird, dreaming of the free sky. For the first time, I thought I would be able to fly.

Building the tools for the base was the next step and it ate up a lot of time but by spring, I was done. I had crucibles for high-temperature work, a mill, grinders, drills, basically everything I needed to machine and forge parts. Add in my power allowing me to do micro-construction by hand and I was set up to make interesting things.

Another thing happened during that period. At school, we were asked to do a partner-project in world history, selecting a “Major Upheaval” and analyzing it in terms of our modern point of view. It could be anything, from the slow decay of the Roman Empire to the Second World War and the resulting downfall of the third Reich and the creation of the Scourge. Especially ancient history was littered with humans that might well have had powers beyond others, bending whole civilizations to their will.

One recent example was the Mad Painter, with his visions of racial purity and supremacy. Luckily, the rest of the world disagreed and fought a bloody war against him, ultimately cornering him. Sadly, his chosen method of suicide was to use his strange Nightmare-Painting power to create his ultimate revenge, what we now call the Scourge. Independently replicating monstrosities, fueled only by madness and hate, sent out into the world to cleanse it, so his Aryan Nation could rise again. To this day, they pop up from time to time, spreading destruction and terror.

His reign and demise was one of the events leading up to the formation of the Guild.

In our modern era, roughly one in five-thousand had a power, maybe half of that were combat-worthy powers. The statistics varied depending on a multitude of factors, interestingly population-density was one of them. The more people on small room, the higher the individual chance for someone having a power.

However, those numbers had changed over the years, shortly after the start of the twentieth century the numbers of Powered Humans had risen. There is controversy about the reasons, some claim that it is a result of the First World War and it's death-toll, others claim it was the earlier Tunguska Event that caused it. Some even say that it was the ending of the industrial revolution that triggered it, as the cultural norms shifted.

At first, those Powered Humans stayed in the shadows but after the events of the Second World War, they came into the light, one group forming the Guild, working with the United Nations and rejecting Nationalism, other groups working with their countries to implement National Hero-Groups, sometimes as part of the military, sometimes in different forms. A lot of individuals stayed in the shadows, becoming what is now known as 'villains' as they are highly persecuted by the nationalistic Hero-Groups, like the Hero's League in my country.

But back to the project. I had nobody to partner with, so I was certain I could simply knock it out alone, doing the work in half the time I'd need compared to working with a partner. Sadly, it was not to be. The teacher assigned partners to those who didn't have one and I got partnered with one Sophia Collins, the petite girl that had drawn my eyes since the first day of school. Watching her, I had realized that, for some reason, she was just as alone and isolated as I was but something within me held me back from trying to talk to her. That is, until we were partnered for the project.