Power

Maxwell Carter, Max to just about everyone, is stuck working the only job he could find in the area where he lives that will cover all of his bills. The government energy research facility needs maintenance workers, after all, as well as scientists. The previous forms of the research being performed here proved to be dangerous, so they're working with a smaller version of the original while located in the middle of nowhere. If they succeed, they believe that they'll have an endless source of cheap energy that they can convert to electricity and feed to the grid.

Unfortunately for them, their shielding efforts for the project were inadequate and the wormhole generated to produce the power began to spill energy into the surrounding area. They tried to regain containment of it as the energy spread, but the new energy started to affect the surrounding area it was flooding. As the local wildlife began to change, and then scientists and other workers at the labs started dying to strange incidents that seemed directly related to their interests, Max decided that he was done with the research labs.

He and his friend Ron leave the labs after experiencing some very odd occurrences that are far too similar to some of the online games Max has played. Unfortunately for them, the energy is slowly expanding its area of influence as it spills from the wormhole. They discover that its expansion is by design and Prometheus, the AI supercomputer in charge of the project, is guiding the expansion of the new energy, named Mana, in a manner that means people can access it.

Max isn't going to worry about anything but keeping those he cares about safe for now, but to do that means he'll need to play along with Prometheus' games, gaining a class, and fighting against the strangely mutated wildlife, and other creatures, that the mana produces.

This book is approximately 164,000 words long, and DRM free.