by Wyatt Kane
Ty hadn’t been much for recreational drug use in his earlier life. Zzapp, for example, wasn’t something he’d ever been in a position to try. With what he made at the Concubine Club, even a casual beer had been a luxury, so to even think of trying something a little more extreme would have been financially crippling.
He’d never been truly high before, but thought that must have been what he was feeling just then. The clarity with which he could think, the associated release of endorphins—he was enjoying himself more than at any other time in his life.
Ty let out a quiet laugh as he surveyed the workshop. It was ironic that the hangover from this high had been the first thing he’d felt. Perhaps there would be another once AZT-407 left his system. But for that moment, at that time, Ty was over the moon.
“Meow,” said someone, out of the blue. Ty looked down and saw Gremlin on the floor, winding herself around his legs as if she hadn’t betrayed him entirely for Dinah.
“What are you doing here, you rotten traitor?” Ty asked her. Then he understood. “I get it,” he said. “You have a competitor for Dinah’s affections, don’t you? And you’re not sure yet if you can trust her.”
The cat had never been the friendliest of companions, but Ty liked her all the same.
“Well, you’re welcome to hang with me,” Ty told her. “But I warn you, I have a feeling I’m going to be busy over the next little while.”
Surprisingly, the cat accepted Ty’s words with aplomb and sat next to his feet. But when he reached down to pat her head, she adroitly stepped just out of his reach before settling down once again.
Ty laughed. “You horrible creature,” he said with affection.
Then he put the animal out of his head, and before he did anything else, he brought up his character sheet.
What he saw was nothing short of astonishing. It was like when he first put on the device. Across the board, his stats had gained a +2 buff. According to the holographic readout, he was smarter, stronger, and more durable than he had been before the drug had entered his veins. It was like the AZT-407 was a universal buff in a syringe, and he couldn’t help but wonder how long the effect might last.
Could it be permanent? Or was it temporary, good for a single round of gameplay but no more?
Either way, the important thing was that he had also levelled up in his skill. Where before he’d been a 3, his character sheet now showed a solid 5. But even that was secondary. Something else had appeared on his character sheet, something that hadn’t been there before.
There, in front of him, a new line had appeared:
Secondary Unique Skill: ?
The question mark suggested it was as yet undefined, but the implications of its presence alone were staggering.
It looked as if the drug had performed as advertised, conjuring a skill from nothing. And if it could do that for him, it could do it for others as well.
New Lincoln was indeed on the brink of an evolution. Tempest and Dinah, and Lilith as well, might have thought that evolution was all about the Architect’s device. But if this drug got out, if people started to use it, all things were possible.
No longer would simple body modifications be enough. People would pay for this drug. It would change what it meant to be human.
Ty knew he could no longer keep this to himself. He made a mental note to tell the girls what he’d found. He didn’t know what they might want to do about it, but one thing was certain. They needed to know.
But that was for later. Just then, Ty had an unknown length of time left on this inaugural dose. He had to make use of it. He had to do what he could to reset the playing field between him and the girls on one side, and Steam, Massive, Bain, Rubio, and the Master on the other.
38: Ty Supercharged
Ty knew just what he wanted to start with. For the first time, after a sequence of comparative failures in the workshop, he could see a clear route to succeeding with one of his goals: accelerated healing.
While it wasn’t exactly an offensive measure, it was a potential lifesaver nevertheless.
Always before, he’d become hung up on the need to understand all the complex workings of the human body. But now he realized he didn’t need to understand everything after all. All he needed was a clear picture of what a body should be like, and he could program the nanites to replicate it.
He just needed a pattern, a detailed breakdown of human tissue as it should be.
Fortunately, he had just such a pattern available.
Although he knew that Dinah was busy in the kitchen with Lilith, he didn’t hesitate. He gave her a call via his device.
“Ty,” the deerkin said, her holographic image smiling. “What’s up?”
“I’m working on something,” he said. “Can you access the anatomical files the med bot uses?”
The deerkin didn’t even blink. “Sure. It’s all cloud based. Give me a moment.” As was her habit, she hung up.
Seconds later, Ty’s device sounded an alert. Dinah had sent a message linked to everything he needed.
He sent a quick thank you to the deerkin (along with a reminder that she’d promised to send down some waffles), and got to work.
Over the next little while, Ty was a dynamo of furious, efficient activity. Using the Stark Imager to help him see what he was doing, he integrated a single nanite with the full knowledge of Gregory’s anatomical database. But integration wasn’t enough. He also needed to give the nanite the ability to act.
A couple of times before, Ty had found himself in a trance as he exercised his skill. It was like all he needed to do was stand back and let his talent guide his hands. This time was much the same, except that he could sense the success before it came.
In his mind, it was a form of magic. He was imbuing the nanite with life and purpose. He was doing it by means of new code that came to him as if by divine inspiration, but it may as well have been a spell.
Ty’s focus narrowed. He forgot about Gremlin even though the cat had curled up in the middle of his workbench. He forgot what day it was and everything else except for the task at hand. His focus narrowed so that all he could see was the code and the holographic representation of the nanite, and whichever part of Gregory’s anatomical references he had replicated at the time. The rest of the workshop meant nothing to him, and even when Dinah appeared with a plateful of waffles, he didn’t notice at all.
Only the work in front of him mattered. This shining, perfect creation that was forming before him. He was so focused that he nearly forgot to breathe, and only remembered when he started to get dizzy.
Finally, after an unknown length of time had passed, he was done.
He could have let out a whoop of sheer joy. Instead, he just stood back and stared at the holographic representation of what he had accomplished with a smile and a quiet sense of pride.
He’d done it. He knew he had—the simulations he’d run told him so.
The nanites would replicate itself within their host body. Millions and millions of them would come into existence, waiting and ready to spring into action. And when an injury happened, not only would the body’s natural defenses kick in, but the nanites would as well.
They would help heal bruises within twenty minutes. A cut within half an hour or so, depending how deep, and how many types of tissues were damaged. A broken bone might take an hour or two. But no more than that.
Ty had achieved something he’d started to think might have been impossible. And he’d done it in a matter of hours.
There was only one more thing he had to do. Test it in a real-world situation.
But first, he had to build up his supply of nanites. He transferred the specs to the fabricator and gave it a command. “Fabricate,” he said.
He looked at Gremlin, who was still sleeping in the middle of the workbench. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
Then he noticed the plateful of waffles on the workbench for the first time.
“How did they get there?” he
muttered. He hadn’t seen or heard anyone enter in the entire time he’d been working. Perhaps Lilith had teleported in and away very quickly, he thought. But then he shook his head. Why would she do that?
He decided it didn’t matter. The waffles were there, they promised to be delicious, and he was hungry. So, without any pretense of decorum at all, he stuffed them in as fast as he could, barely chewing before he swallowed.
It was almost a travesty to treat Dinah’s delicious offerings like that, but Ty was on a mission. Even then, his mind was still fizzing. He wanted to keep working as long as he could.
By the time Ty had finished eating, the fabricator had finished fabricating the nanites. More than a million of them, they looked like nothing more than a small puddle of mercury in the Petrie dish Ty had positioned to catch them.
There was no better time than just then. Ty could have swallowed the nanites, or injected them directly into his bloodstream. But he didn’t need to do either. They were small enough individually to enter his system through the pores of his skin. All he needed to do was touch them.
He did so. At once, the liquid metal started behaving in a way no true mercury ever would. It latched onto the tip of his finger and flowed upward. In just a few seconds, there was nothing left in the Petrie dish at all, and his finger looked as if it was enclosed in the tip of a metallic glove.
Ty watched, fascinated despite himself, knowing with great clarity what the nanites were doing. Even now, he imagined he could feel them working their way through his skin to the tissue beneath.
In less than a minute, they were gone.
For the second time in a matter of hours, Ty had willingly allowed an active foreign substance into his body. The first time, it had been AZT-407. The whole experience had been painful, and his body hadn’t enjoyed it at all. This time, it was a big non-event.
The only sensation was that of having dipped his finger into a cold liquid. Nothing more. He couldn’t feel the nanites at all once they had entered his skin.
Now all Ty needed to do was wait. He’d thought to test the nanites by cutting his thumb or causing some other form of minor injury. But he didn’t have to do even that. The burns on his leg and shoulder, while healing, still had a long way to go. Or at least, they would have, if it weren’t for the nanites.
Ty imagined them coursing through his bloodstream and limbic system, replicating themselves as they went to ensure there were enough of them for the job. He imagined them finding the injuries and, like bees in a hive, signaling to their fellow nanites to tell them what they had found.
Whether they really could do what Ty wanted, only time would tell.
In half an hour or so, he would have the answers he needed. In the meantime, there was still so much he wanted to do.
39: A Gamer’s Voice
Ty really wanted to give himself the ability to fly. It was something he’d worked on intermittently ever since his first flight with Tempest, when the blonde superhero had carried him across the city.
It was, in Ty’s view, the only way to travel. And while he thoroughly enjoyed it when Tempest picked him up as if he weighed nothing and launched herself into the sky, there was something appealing about being able to fly by himself.
Yet it was far from his top priority. He’d made himself strong and durable, like Tempest. But Steam could cut through his defenses with ease, and his best offence couldn’t hurt either him or his colleague, Massive. And what if there were others out there with even greater potential? What would he do then?
Ty knew he could make his shield more powerful, but in his mind, that wasn’t enough. He needed to come up with another offensive option altogether, something that could be used no matter what they were facing.
As soon as he had the thought, Lilith’s ability came to mind. Unified Field Control, her character sheet had said. That was the sort of power Ty thought he might need. Even at a low level, the demon woman could literally tear down buildings, and teleport across vast distances.
Surely, she could also tear down Steam and Massive? Surely a moment of effort would be enough to nullify them as a problem for good?
As tempting as it was, Ty wasn’t entirely sure how Lilith’s power worked. He hadn’t seen the full schematics like he had with Tempest. The mechanism behind Lilith’s power remained hidden.
There was also another issue. Ripping Steam or Massive apart would doubtless be fatal, and that wasn’t what Ty was looking for. He wanted to be a match for any superpowered villain he might come across, but that didn’t mean he was okay with wholesale murder.
Ty’s head was still buzzing, but it wasn’t his skill that was lacking just then. It was his ability to see outside the box. His creativity, his capacity to do more than just build on what was currently available.
He needed something new.
But this time, he wasn’t ready to give up. He might not be the best at thinking outside the box, but he knew someone who was.
Without hesitation, Ty called his friend Brad.
“Hey,” the gamer said, answering his phone on the third ring. Once again, the gamer’s face was displayed on the small screen rather than as a hologram. Maybe that would be another project, Ty thought. Integrating his phone with the device was just a start. It would be nice if he could make use of the best of all functionalities, whether he was placing a traditional call or using the device.
“Hey, look—” Ty began. But Brad interrupted him.
“Did you go to that place?” he asked.
It wasn’t what Ty wanted to talk about, but he owed Brad. “Yeah.”
“And? Did you get in?”
Ty nodded. “Yeah. They said I was the last they would accept.”
“Lucky bastard! Did they pay?”
“Yeah. Hey, look, I wanted to ask –”
“They didn’t accept me,” Brad said. “Pretty bummed about it, actually. Although I haven’t given up hope. There might be a back door. Or at least, that’s what Sarah said.”
Ty had known there was a chance Brad wouldn’t get in, but right at that moment, it was the last thing on his mind. “Oh,” he said. “Bummer, man.”
But Brad shook off Ty’s commiseration. “So? Does it work as advertised?”
Ty nodded. “Stat increase across the board,” he said. “Just like the device. And there’s something new as well. A new skill.”
“Man,” Brad said, and Ty could sense his jealousy even through the line. “Some guys just get all the luck.”
Ty didn’t know what to say about that. He knew Brad was right. Over the past few weeks, Ty had received more than his fair share of good luck. But in his mind, it evened out. Ty’s life up until then hadn’t been a bucket of roses.
“Yeah,” Ty said. “Hey, listen, I’ve got a problem and I thought you could help. Got a moment?”
Brad said he did, and Ty explained his problem.
“So, you’ve got a bunch of these bosses appearing everywhere,” the gamer said, translating everything into his own worldview. “And you’ve been leveling up, gaining new armor and weapons to suit your level. You are like a level 15 hero, and you’ve been upgrading your weapons and armor to match. And that’s been fine against the minions and level 10 or 15 bosses, but these guys are something else. Call them level 30 or 40 villains. You could level up even more, but that would take time, and you’re not sure even then it would do the trick. Am I right so far?”
“Yeah,” Ty replied. “That sounds about right.”
“So, what about artifacts? Can you get yourself like a legendary sword or something?”
That was a way of thinking about it Ty hadn’t considered. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Like a police cannon or something?”
“Well, I guess so.” Ty thought about it. Effectively, this was what he’d done to combat Lilith when she appeared in his bedroom. Although he was hard-pressed to think of his police baton as a legendary item.
But a police cannon was so bulky they were usually mounted on a car.
Could he and Tempest easily carry one into a fight?
“Or,” Brad said, “maybe something else. There’s this game I’m playing where you can drop mines, targeted to your enemy. Of course, if you stand on one, it’ll kill you as well, but maybe something like that?”
Ty’s fizzing brain latched onto the idea as if it could save him. As indeed it might. “Not mines. But maybe an EMP grenade,” he said.
“A what now?” Brad said.
Ty saw it all clearly. He knew what he had to do. “An EMP grenade. These two guys, Massive and Steam, they get their power through the device on their wrist. I thought before about somehow cutting their arms off, but I don’t know if I even could. Steam is able to go insubstantial, and Massive—he might be too dense for anything to cut. But that doesn’t mean I can’t target their devices anyway.”
“Oh. Well. Glad I could help,” Brad said with a grin.
Ty was more and more certain that this was the way to go. He nodded. “Yeah, this will work. Thanks, Brad. Got to go.”
And with that, he ended the call.
<<<>>>
Ty’s brain continued to operate at a high level. Sometime during the EMP grenade design phase, Gremlin got bored of sleeping on the workbench. She yawned hugely, showing healthy white teeth that any carnivore would have been proud of. Then she stood and started to meow at Ty with an indignant tone.
“What do you want?” Ty asked her. “You want some food? I don’t have any here, sorry. But maybe Dinah has some in the kitchen.”
That was assuming Dinah was still there. For all Ty knew, she could be anywhere. As could Lilith. He wondered briefly what the two women were up to, and idly reached out to scratch Gremlin’s head.
The cat ducked under his questing hand and nimbly stepped to one side. But this time, instead of simply moving half a foot out of his reach, she leapt delicately to the floor of the workshop and sauntered away.
“Fine,” Ty said. “Leave me, then.”
Yet he wasn’t really that bothered. He still had work to do.