“Okay, Davis,” I said talking to myself. “You can’t seem to create a new gathering point after you’ve already started. So, let’s try creating two from the start.” I reached an arm out to the left and the other out to the right. I visualized creating the two gathering points at opposite sides and it seemed to work. Then I spun them. I would have hoped that pulling two points was only slightly more difficult than pulling on one point. It wasn’t. It was a lot harder. But . . . it worked. It was a struggle to spin them at the same speed. It was more of a struggle to pull them inwards at the same speed. But eventually, I got there. After that success, I added one more point of gathering with each attempt until I had ten perfectly spaced points of gathering rotating around me and collapsing inward until I was rewarded for all my effort. Pulling just the nearby Nanos, and doing it repeatedly granted me just enough to break into my next Milestone.
Congratulations! You’ve reached the 18th Milestone. The Nanos have accumulated within your body to a point in which it is now possible to enhance your Nano Evolved Body or Abilities. Be intelligent with your decisions as all choices are final.
You may now open your Status and apply two points of enhancement.
“And done,” I said, feeling proud of my accomplishment.
“Good,” Light said. “Now, you can compete with me for the ambient Nanos.”
“Okay, how do I do that?” I asked.
“Do what you just did,” Light replied. “I’ll attack you so you can get a feel for it.”
I didn’t much care for the sink or swim lessons these guys liked to thrust upon me. Still, I complied. I felt my ten points rotate, each point picking up more and more Nanos. Then I felt a sudden drop in the gathered Nanos from one of my points. And then another, and another. Then I felt it, there were points of Nanos being gathered near mine, but they were moving faster, gaining on my points until they overtook them, stripping away thousands of my gathered Nanos.
I narrowed my eyes and glared at Light. I knew this must be his doing, especially after he smirked. Light never smirked, but now he was. I felt his points drawing closer to him, but also slowing down. I think that was when I understood. He moved his points faster to overtake mine and strip away Nanos. But now that he was ahead of me, he slowed down to increase the Nanos he gathered. I tried to push my gathering points faster, trying to catch up to Light’s.
I can honestly say, I was . . . pleased when Light’s smirk vanished, replaced by a look of astonishment as my gathering points tore through his own, pulling away thousands more Nanos than he took from me.
Light’s smirk returned when he reversed the situation again.
“You may have won this round,” I said. “But there is plenty of fight left in me. Round two?”
18
“Pick your shots,” Light repeated for the fiftieth time. “Let Hammer get their attention. As a marksman, our job is to pick them off from a distance without drawing their attention.”
I nodded absentmindedly as I targeted another Dungeness Spider, a cross between a crab and a spider and, as usual, bigger than both. It was more spider than crab except for the extra pair of appendages connected to its thorax in the form of pincers.
“We are going to eat so good tonight,” Hammer crowed excitedly as he smashed another. And did I mention that these things are apparently a delicacy?
I collapsed a void next to one of the spiders that was trying to attack Hammer from behind, rupturing the carapace and killing the little beast. But more importantly, I didn’t draw the attention of any of the other spiders.
Almost a week ago, we started moving through the wilds in an almost straight-line, northwest of the outpost, returning to the safety of the walled fort each night. Sometimes, we needed to clear out whatever moved in overnight. It was hard work and we were clearly moving toward a destination, but they hadn’t told me much about it yet. Anyway, when we were out in the wilds, I was pushed harder every day.
Light focused on teaching me how to fight from a distance without my Time Compression. He taught me how to lead my targets and pick my shots. I was encouraged to increase the number of shots I could take with my Void Burst regardless of the number of enhancements I put into my Space ability. As a result, I was able to get my Void Burst down to a quarter of an inch in size, just large enough to knock out a human so long as it wasn’t too close to the head. For something like these spiders that were the size of a small dog, they were the perfect weapon.
I killed two more spiders in rapid succession with each one receiving a Void Burst as they rushed at Hammer. I checked my Spatial Awareness, briefly enhancing it to check our surroundings. It was a habit by now. I found that a quick burst of enhanced Spatial Awareness was generally enough to let me know if there was anything I needed to worry about. “Second swarm incoming,” I reported after sensing a few dozen of the things swarming toward us from deeper within the wilds.
“I’m aware,” Hammer replied, punching a jackhammer into the ground and creating a fissure in front of him for about twenty yards, spreading the swarm to either side of him and slowing their progress. Through my passive Spatial Awareness, I faintly felt the new swarm’s progress and how much Hammer was able to hamper it. They either fell into the fissure where they were crushed at the bottom by the rocks that fell in after them or they simply piled up on the far side. Hammer’s solution did exactly what he intended, he slowed them down and gave us time to safely deal with them and not get overwhelmed.
I killed three more of the spiders in rapid succession as they crawled out of the woods and around the edge of the fissure Hammer created. That was something else that was great about my smaller Void Burst. It was so much faster. And as long as I picked my shots, I rarely ran out of power. It helped that I didn’t panic like I did in the beginning. I was sure a psychologist would say I had become desensitized to the violence. That or I had some strange form of PTSD. As a doctor I really should have known more about this kind of thing, but psychology was not my field of study.
“Hey Ward, we’ve got butter back at the outpost, right?” Hammer asked, humming as he crushed one spider after another.
“I think so,” Ward said, forming barriers around any of the spiders that started to move in our general direction. “If not, I’m sure we have something we can use on them.”
“Might be worth freezing them until we go back to New Haven,” Light suggested.
Hammer stopped punching spiders and turned to look at Light in disbelief. “Boy, if I didn’t know for a fact that you’re a hero, I’d arrest you for saying something only a villain would suggest.”
In my peripheral, I saw Light roll his eyes. He ignored the comment as he fired off bullets of light rapidly in an attempt to keep them off Hammer. “Just, kill the spiders, you can comment on my commonsense later,” he said, his rate of fire not slowing down as he picked them off.
Hammer quirked an eyebrow, surprised by Light’s cheek. Then he snorted a laugh and turned back to killing Dungeness Spiders.
Not much later the last of the spiders were dead.
“On your marks,” Hammer said with a grin, looking between Light and me. “Get set,” he said, pausing to build tension. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, he shouted, “Go!”
In an instant I had twenty-five cultivation points spread out to my maximum range, pushing them to rotate and grab ahold of as many Nanos as I could. Trying to feel for Light’s gathering points as I did. Over the last week, I also learned just how sneaky and conniving Light really was. “Got any tricks up your sleeve I haven’t seen at this point?” I asked, increasing the speed of my rotation.
“A few,” Light replied with a smirk.
Then, like a bowling ball, I felt Light’s gathering points crashing through mine . . . in the opposite direction, completely breaking the cultivation for both of us.
“What was that?” I asked.
Light’s grin widened, he answered, “Me winning. Better hurry and start your cultivation again or I’m go
ing to get it all.”
My jaw dropped slightly. I scrambled to spin up my cultivation again, this time watching for his rotation, but he was way ahead of me. I tried to rush up to speed but it was too late. I wasn’t going to catch him at that point. I grumbled under my breath. I barely got anything from the spiders because of that.
“Better luck next time,” Light replied.
I was about to say something witty, but Hammer spoke first. “Alright, let’s get moving. It’s still early, I want to try to get a little further today.”
We cleared out a lot of beasts daily. They didn’t always rush in to claim territory after we decimated the previous residents, but there seemed to always be at least one new group. Today, it was the Dungeness Spiders. Yesterday, it was a pack of quilldogs, and I even got a single enhancement point in physical resistance from cultivating the meat.
“What do the spiders give?” I asked.
“Nothing that I know of,” Hammer answered, moving ahead into the brush, then pausing at the edge of the clearing, he added, “I just know they taste damned good. Ward, you want to collect the legs for us?”
Ward nodded and answered, “Yeah, I can do that, just be careful moving ahead. We’ve got to be getting close to its territory.”
“It?” I asked, curious if this was the beast Light had alluded to.
“I suppose it’s about time to fill you in on what we’re after,” Hammer said, turning back from the brush and moving closer to talk. “Alright, we’re after a Warp Hunter.”
“And what is that?” I asked.
“A teleporting beast and a very dangerous one at that,” Hammer answered. “We need to get you enhancements to your Space ability. If you can kill a Warp Hunter and eat the meat, it should give you a hell of a lot of enhancements.”
“Okay, I get the feeling you’re leaving something out,” I said.
“No, I just haven’t gotten there yet,” Hammer replied. “Look, this beast is dangerous. Like the squirbit, no one has ever killed one to the best of my knowledge. Unlike the squirbit, this one is a predator. And an ambush predator at that.”
“So, what makes you think I’ll be able to kill one?” I asked.
“Your Time Compression,” Hammer answered. “Now that you’re able to activate the ability instantly, you should be able to freeze time or whatever and kill it before it kills one of us.”
Ward chimed in at this point. “It will create a distraction. I’ve heard it described as an unholy scream that could cause the most hardened hero to wet himself. The point is that it will draw your attention. And when you look away, it teleports in, kills, and teleports away with its food. It’s done in less than 5-seconds from scream to the endless dream.”
“And you’re sure I’ll be able to kill it with one hit?” I asked.
“Maybe, maybe not, but you should at the very least be able to daze it long enough for one of us to kill it,” Hammer answered.
“And whose insane idea was this?” I asked, glaring at the smirking Hammer.
Light cleared his throat then said softly, “It was my idea.”
“You?” I questioned, looking at my friend in surprise. “You suggested this?”
“Yes,” Light replied. “I couldn’t think of another way to get you the enhancements to your Space Ability. Without them, this plan of ours has little chance of succeeding.”
“What about Ward’s idea, getting more Milestones?” I asked.
“Villains don’t gain Milestones that quickly,” Light said. “It might have worked but there was a really big risk. I believe the risk to be too great. This is also risky, but at least, I believe, this has a chance to succeed.”
“So, most likely death versus certain death?” I quipped.
“Pretty much,” Hammer replied with a nod. “Anyway, keep on your toes. You hear the unholy cry of something from a hell dimension, you freeze time immediately and kill that thing before it kills one of us. This thing has been around for a long time and no one knows what its Milestone might be, it can probably even kill me. So, I say again, keep on your toes.”
I swallowed nervously and nodded. Suddenly acutely aware of all the strange sounds of the wilds around me.
Thankfully, we didn’t run into the Warp Hunter that day. The next day, we weren’t so lucky.
Hammer laughed as I tried to extricate myself from the puddle of Bunk guts. What is a Bunk? If a bat and skunk had a baby, you’d get your Bunk. And they stink so much worse than any skunk I ever encountered.
“Tell me this at least washes off,” I pleaded.
“I’m sure we have industrial sanitizer back at the outpost,” Ward offered, not bothering to hide his smirk.
“Oh, ha ha, very funny,” I said sarcastically. “Can we at least find a stream to try to wash some of this gunk off me?”
“Yeah, yeah, we passed one a mile or so back, we can go and take care of you there,” Light offered.
“Thank you,” I said loudly. “See, this is what a real friend looks like. You two should take notes.”
Hammer laughed louder and even Ward let out a chuckle. Both men were silenced when a scream cut them off. It was the most horrid thing I had ever heard. I can’t put into words exactly what is sounded like other than to say that if death had a sound, that might have been it.
Remembering Hammer’s orders, I instantly activated my Time Compression but didn’t see anything, but my Spatial Awareness could feel something was . . . coming? I enhanced my awareness and I could see a tube . . . no . . . it was a hole in Space. I could see something traveling through that tube and emerging on the other side, above and slightly behind Ward.
The beast that appeared was pure nightmare fuel. At first, I thought it was a monkey with razor sharp claws as long as its fingers. But that wasn’t quite right. The head was something between a chimpanzee and a bobcat only slightly smaller with cat ears and long whiskers with a rounder mouth filled with sharp teeth. The head was attached to a cat’s body. Then there was the tail. It was already moving toward Ward’s neck as though to grab it. I think it was prehensile. And it was bald or almost bald with tightly stretched grey skin. If the Time Compression hadn’t held me in place, I would have shaken my head to will the horror of it away, but I needed to act quickly, or Ward was as good as dead.
I formed my first Void Burst next to the beast’s head and to my greater horror, its eyes flicked over to me. I felt it forming another warp tunnel. I knew I couldn’t let it escape, I placed another Void Burst into the tunnel and collapsed both. I watched as the top half of the beast vanished while the lower half hung suspended in air.
Then time resumed suddenly. I was tackled painfully from behind. I felt something sharp dig into my back and I screamed in pain. I kept waiting to be teleported away and killed but it never happened. I felt the weight of the beast on my upper back and unmoving. In my periphery, the red bar that represented my health was steadily dropping. It had never even moved before. If the red bar vanished, would that mean I was dead? I didn’t like that idea. Not even a little.
“Davis,” I heard Light’s voice and a rush of feet.
“Ward, are you alright?” Hammer asked with similar urgency.
Ward groaned. “What hit me?” I heard him moan and start to move.
“Oh no, Ward, get over here, quickly,” Light said, sounding panicked.
“Don’t move it,” Ward said. “We need to be very careful removing those claws.”
I wanted to ask if there were claws in me, but I was starting to feel woozy. Blood loss was my professional opinion. The red bar just crossed the halfway point.
“He’s going to make it though, right?” Light asked.
“I don’t know,” Ward snapped back at Light. “Let me work.”
I felt pressure on my back and heard a wet squelching sound that accompanied enough pain that I blacked out, thankful for the bliss of unconsciousness. Before everything went black, I thought I saw the red health bar starting to go back up, but I couldn’t be sur
e.
19
A very angry looking hologram of Major Miracle demanded, “What were you thinking?” His image was being projected into the air in front of the three heroes using a common household Nanotech device called a holo-communicator or holocator for short. It was Planet Hero’s version of a phone.
“Sir, I decided it was worth the risk,” Hammer stated before Light could say anything or take responsibility. “The idiot civilian raised his Time ability instead of his Space. As a result, I needed to find a way to raise his enhancement without increasing his Milestones. Given he was able to kill a squirbit, I felt it was worth the risk.” Hammer paused, watching the Major. As soon as the Major opened his mouth to speak, Hammer continued, cutting him off in the process. “And I was right. He killed Shadowfury. Yes, he got hurt in the process, but he knew the risks and went along anyway.”
“Will he even be able to take advantage of it while he’s unconscious?” Major Miracle demanded.
Ward jumped in, “I’ll be waking him shortly. His wounds were deep but not life threatening. He passed out from the pain. I just wanted to let him heal a little more. As it is, we’re just about done cooking so it will be just in time.”
Major Miracle frowned. His jaw was clenched so tightly the muscles in his cheeks were flexing. Finally, he shouted angrily, “This had better work!” Which was immediately followed by him cutting the feed.
“He didn’t sound happy,” I said, enjoying seeing the trio jump in surprise.
“Davis, you’re up,” Light said first in surprise. “Are you okay?”
“I think so, my shoulders feel a little stiff,” I said. “Not going to lie, that really hurt.”
“You were stabbed through both shoulders with four-inch long claws,” Hammer said, then laughed and added, “I would be more worried if it didn’t hurt.”
Planet Hero- Civilian Page 13