An Abnormal Coincidence

Summer, 21:00; 
Location: Victor’s house, Earth;

Victor woke up feeling oddly refreshed, as if reborn. That is, if the weird, persistent thirst could be ignored.

The thirst had plagued him the entire day, and no amount of water seemed to quench it. He drank a full bottle of water, but it did nothing other than make him feel bloated.

"Man, I feel like I've drunk a whole week's worth of water in one day…" Victor sighed, putting down the empty bottle on the coffee table. “…What the hell is happening?"

There were some obvious, subtle changes that were undeniable enough to prove the fact that this was not an illusion.

My college friends seem normal, too.

"Hmm, Spider? — Let’s do some hand signs to test—” Victor felt something and looked up at the wall to notice a spider. An idea sparked in his mind as he flicked his wrist and performed some unnatural gestures, which did nothing other than strain his wrist and fingers.

Nothing.

"And nothing seems to work…”

Well, what happened was an interesting thing—let's put that aside for now and first complete our daily online ritual.

He booted up his laptop, then headed to the fridge to refill the bottle and grab some snacks.

He shared the link in the group and got a response right away. The first person to respond was Theo, with Leo joining a few seconds later.

“Whoa… It feels like you guys were waiting for it!" Victor said in amazement.

Theo turned on his mic and camera, "Well, among us, you are the only one who is this punctual at night".

Theo was going to say something, but he stopped after looking at both Victor and Leo.

Victor was about to say more, but he paused, noticing something odd. All three suddenly grew quiet, observing one another.

Leo spoke first, "So something happened to you guys, too, huh?”

"Let's take this to our private network," Theo suddenly interjected.

“The drone one? That thing you two made for fun?”

“Uh… Yes,” Theo awkwardly nodded.

"Will it even work?" Leo asked, quite skeptical about it.

"It will, but there will be some connectivity and bandwidth issues." Victor nodded to Leo, then turned toward Theo. "Give me a few minutes… You guys prep the drones. Theo, start the server."

Victor bolted to the basement, startling his cat on the way. He retrieved a dusty drone and an old laptop, connected the drone, and then ran to the terrace. He set it flying at a safe height, high enough not to alert the authorities, and returned to connect to Theo's server after tweaking a few settings.

They again made a meeting and rejoined after a few minutes.

Victor laughed, "This shit came in handy, huh…I thought I was the only one. I didn't notice anything strange at college, either.”

"Same here. I even tried to confirm it discreetly with a few people on Mumpy,” Theo nodded.

“…You have friends?" Victor asked, raising a brow with a weird look on his face.

"Yes. Three. And they're all girls." Theo's smug smile nearly begged to be punched.

Leo squinted his eyes and, with a mocking smile on his face, asked. "Are you sure they're girls?"

Theo's smile instantly vanished, then his face became stiff, and after 20 seconds, he got all serious and said, "We are getting off-topic, our private network is not that good, and the drones are pretty old too, let's discuss what happened —”

“Hehe", Victor and Leo gave a knowing laugh. They all knew Theo was a little naive in these matters.

"Your topic-changing skills have leveled up, I guess… so who will go first, you or Leo?” Victor asked.

"Leo, you go first, you look more… hmm… How should I say it? Your changes look more severe than ours…” Theo said, unable to find the correct word to describe Leo’s change.

"You guys sure about this…?" Leo hesitated, watching Theo and Victor nod. “Well, where should I start… hmm… It started yesterday night, well, today would be the correct word, but let’s not think about it."

"It all started after I received a call from Victor —" Leo paused for a few seconds and took a deep breath.

"The call that you didn't even let me pick up. I went to pick up the phone, felt sleepy all of a sudden, staggered towards my bed, and then felt pain all over my body—"Leo shuddered as he recounted this part.

“This was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my 20 years. It was so painful that I can’t even describe it. I felt like I got burned, every part of my body felt like burning, like I was being cooked alive— I can't describe the horrible feeling, it was a nightmare with agony. After that, what felt like an eternity, I lost consciousness and don't remember anything."

"And after that, adding salt to the wound, I just woke up at 16:00. I can pretty safely say my luck is pretty bad, I got 200 missed calls from my mom and 1 from dad." Leo sulked as he explained the last part.

"tssss" both Theo and Victor sucked a cold breath.

"My condolences, bro…” Victor closed his eyes for a few seconds as if praying.

“Will come to your funeral…" Theo nodded and closed his eyes, too. “I will make sure to delete your study materials out of our friendship — "

Leo got angry as he watched his friends preparing for his funeral. "Shut up, you bastards! I've already sorted it out with them!"

"Tsk, what a shame, no entertainment at all." Victor shook his head in disappointment.

"Tch, no full fun at all, we were hoping for some full-blown drama." Theo clicked his tongue along with Victor.

Victor spoke successfully, changing the topic, “So tell us your improvement and changes…”

"Well, I can tell my weight has increased. As you guys can see, my muscles have buffed up quite a bit, and I didn't get time to check other improvements.” Leo flexed his biceps a little. "As for my condition, I think you can see from my skin, its redness, it has faded a lot, but there were many marks when I woke up."

"Wow, it was pretty rough with you, huh…” Victor nodded after a few moments of silence.

"Yeah, man, good job… " Theo spoke, a ‘fighting’ motivation sticker appeared on the screen.

Leo blinked and typed “…”

Leo froze for a second, "Wait. You mean… that nightmare only happened to me?!"

"Uh, I guess so… I mean, I was calling to disturb you guys when I suddenly felt something off, and the next second was hit with dizziness. So, I just had to fight my dizziness and check all my doors and windows, and after that I hit the bed and fell asleep." Victor said as he tried to remember more details, but eventually shook to indicate that it was all.

"What the hell, that easy?" Leo exclaimed in shock as he looked at Theo.

"Yeah, bro", Victor affirmed, while Theo nodded and sent an upside-down face emoji.

Leo's mouth fell open. "That's it?!"

“Uh, mine is similar too, like I was on the terrace. When I felt that something would happen, I just ran to my room and closed the door. After that, I was hit with intense dizziness and fell on the floor and fell asleep, no pain…" Theo explained his experience.

“BLOODY HELL! Why just me?!" Leo howled.

“Tsk, stop whining like a baby… nowadays, they also don't cry and just glare at the doctor after just coming out,” Victor spoke as he tried to lower the volume of his earphones, but noticed that it was already at the last level; further lowering would just mute it.

"What?! Really?! But still… why me?!" Leo looked like he was having an existential crisis.

“Okay, let's move on, and let's see what we have in common”, Victor mercilessly changed the topic.

Theo raised his hand. "I'll go first."

“Go on…” Victor said as he muted Leo's mic.

"I ran some basic tests, and from what I observed, it’s a little increase in strength, better agility, dexterity, and enhanced senses, nothing more — like there are no extra healing powers or anything… see this cut? It is still there. But yeah, my stomach problem and small illness are gone… hmm… ah… There is also a weird thirst that didn't seem to go away, and meditation helps… but it takes around eight hours to ease the thirst—maybe more. Still testing… that’s it, I guess," Theo finished explaining in one go.

“Did you just cut your wrist to check it?" Victor was baffled.

Leo (in chat): "Yes, about the thirst, you are right— "

Victor unmuted him and spoke, "Well, I didn't have time to test, but yes, some increase in height, weight, enhancement in all basic attributes, that was all I can tell… and yes, I also have the same thirst which seems never to go away."

"BASTARD! Don't mute me ag—!" Leo had just started to speak, but immediately, his mic was muted.

"It wasn't me this time, bro.” Victor shrugged and sent a smiling angel emoji.

Leo (in chat): “Theo, you bastard, just let me catch you!!”

“Why would I let you catch me? If you are a real man, then come and catch me— that is, if you can.” Theo taunted Leo by sending a middle finger emoji.

"Hehehe…" Theo's derisive laugh made Leo flare up again, but Victor again just changed the topic.

“Alright, save the duel for later. Let's compile what we've got," Victor said as he unmuted Leo.

"We all got some decent buffs… but nothing game-breaking, like summoning fire or shooting webs. And that thirst—" Victor summarized. "And the thirst… that's our common trait."

"All this shit happening to us is like some conspiracy… " Leo spoke while glaring at Theo.

“Don’t know what’s happening… or what this even is. But whatever it is… we need to take precautions", Theo spoke with a serious expression on his face.

“Hmm… what precautions?" Victor asked, looking at Theo with curiosity.

“We don't know if it only happened to us or others, too, as we don't have any way to confirm it yet.” Theo sent some news snippets. “I checked the news for the whole day but didn’t find anything special…”

"It’s quite an abnormal coincidence that we got some power boosts and we happen to know each other too…" Leo muttered.

"Well, unless we know what happened to us, we can only presume it's a coincidence. And truth be told, the powers we got didn't even make us any type of superhuman; it's just a basic boost,” Theo said with a casual expression. “These types of things are common in professions like Boxers, F1 drivers, or Olympic runners… basically, we are above an average citizen who hasn’t taken any enhancement drugs."

"Well, what you said makes sense… So why don't we meet together and discuss it more clearly and see what we can even do?" Victor asked with a lazy expression as he checked the drone’s temperature and noticed it was just a few degrees from critical.

"Yeah, we can do that… and what are the precautions you are talking about?". Leo asked.

Theo's tone grew serious. "For starters, we should keep our communications secure. The local server we're using is decent for now. Also… we should avoid using our real names."

“Hmm, valid reason. And aren't we already using our gaming names to communicate all this time?" Victor laughed a little.

“Yeah… hmm… Then we should complete our names. After all, Leo, Theo, and Victor can be said to be good nicknames. Well, Victor is a normal and complete name, and yeah, we should give ourselves a surname for complete identification. It could come in handy, you never know.” Theo said after thinking for some time. “I will try to get some forged identification.”

"Good suggestion… Let’s see…, my gaming name is 'Victor' and it's complete, so I don't think it needs to be changed, so let’s just add a surname… hmm… well let’s go with ‘Walker’, Victor Walker." Victor declared.

“Umm… Now that you mention it, ‘Leo’ does feel a bit incomplete… let’s go with ‘Leon.’” Leo scratched his head as he thought about his surname. “And since I love bikes and long rides… ‘Ryder’. Leon Ryder. Feels solid."

Theo was a little surprised, "Damn, you guys are good! Let’s see… hmm… as you guys know, how much I love to use a mage character, so let’s go with my favourite mage character, and change ‘Theo’ to ‘Theodore' and ‘Miller’ as a surname, so I am Theodore Miller."

"Umm, Theo, you should write our names in your diary so that we don't forget,” Victor interjected awkwardly and turned to Leo. “… Also, I gotta say… Leo, even though your naming sense is garbage, you did well this time."

"Was already on it", Theo chuckled.

“It was good that we were using some normal names for the recent games, or we would have to think about new names from scratch…” Leo laughed heartily.

"We should thank Victor for that. I still remember your old username… ‘sexyboy069’” Theo grinned.

Leo's laughter immediately stiffened. He grumbled, “Bastard… you have a good memory, huh?”

"Umm… I think we should keep it till this for today. The drones are overheating, and the precautions are easy to maintain as well, as we were already using our fake names from the start,” Victor said while yawning. “And what else… ah… I think we should improve our communication tools, too. I guess we are going to need it more often… and maybe stay safe…?"

"Well, I agree and suggest you guys meditate. I don't know what to say, but I have got a bad feeling something will happen the moment our thirst vanishes." Theo suggested one of his hypotheses.

"I also think so; this thirst is too abnormal." Victor nodded, somewhat agreeing with Theo’s hypothesis. “And yeah, let’s meet offline!”

"Tomorrow?” Leo asked with excitement. "Theo's apartment?"

"OK, come anytime, I don't have any classes on Saturday, and Sundays are holidays anyway." Theo waved his hand lazily.

“I envy you, bastard — " Leo sent a middle finger emoji was going to talk more, but Victor ended the meeting.

“Bye.”

Victor looked at his reflection from the black screen and began to anticipate tomorrow's meet-up. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.