by Wyatt Kane
Abruptly, Dinah seemed to figure out why he was there.
“You’ve got it?” she asked.
Ty held up the single use inhaler, and that was enough. The deerkin made a gesture and the screens went blank. “And you’re sure you want to do this?” she asked.
Ty’s mind hadn’t changed. “I’m sure.”
“Well, let’s get you down to the med bay. We can’t have you passing out just anywhere, now can we?”
3: Single Use Inhaler
Ty realized he’d spent quite a lot of time in the med bay over the past few days. For much of that time, he’d been observing others. Spit Bitch struggling against her constraints. The bunnykin who’d taken a dose of AZT-407 and had been suffering the worst of its effects. Tempest’s father, the Architect, as they sought to keep him alive.
But he’d also taken his place on the surgical table more often than he would have liked. First to treat the burns he’d picked up battling Steam, then again when he’d taken his last dose of the drug.
Even so, he couldn’t complain. The drug was dangerous, and Dinah was just being thorough.
“Lie back,” the deerkin said. “We’ll get Gregory to look at you first. I took the liberty of securing some of Sarah’s serum. That should take care of the more dangerous side effects. But tell me, the last time you took this drug, you blacked out. Why? Did the drug do that? Or a side effect? What can you tell me?”
Ty just wanted to get on and take the drug. To him, time was crucial. But there were good and valid reasons for Dinah’s caution. As well, she moved and spoke with efficiency, wasting no time, as conscious of the time constraints as him. She just didn’t want to put Ty at any more risk than necessary.
So he did his best to answer. “I’m not sure. Maybe just the pain?” he said.
Dinah nodded. “I’ll give you a general analgesic as well as the serum. Maybe that will help.”
Ty agreed, and Dinah turned to the storage containers on the back wall.
As the deerkin prepared Sarah’s serum and the analgesic, Ty stared up at the ceiling. He’d met Brad at college and liked him immediately. Even then, Brad had been heavily into games, although at the time he had been studying how to build them rather than how to play. They’d become roommates before Ty figured out that at heart, Brad was a slob, and it had been a chance comment from Ty as they engaged in an online quest that led to Brad’s turning pro.
“Man, I can’t tell if you’re good at this shit, or if you’re just lucky,” Ty had said. “I’ve been looking for that scroll for weeks. Thought I’d tried everything. And you just waltz in as if you knew where it was all along.”
Brad had given him a huge, shit-eating grin. “You just gotta understand the game logic,” he said. “It’s what separates the noobs from the pros. If you get the game logic, it’s like you can sense where treasures will be hidden when you enter the room.”
Ty stared at the screen and watched as Brad’s character, a warrior in full armor, activated the scroll. Immediately, the screen focused on him to the exclusion of all else. Brad’s character was bathed in light and rose in the air as if the rapture had happened. Then each piece of armor started to change, spinning about in an impossible way, changing color and growing bigger.
When it was done, Brad’s warrior character was bigger, better, and more powerful in every way.
Brad was still grinning. “It only lasts until you get to the gates of Valhalla,” he said. “But it’s still a nice little buff, though. It should make getting through the next section much easier.”
Ty hadn’t been able to help it. When the shot broadened to show his comparatively puny character, he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of resentment.
“That’s like the third time you’ve done something like that,” he said. “I’d pay good money to be able to sense where to find this type of thing.”
At this, his friend had looked at him oddly. “You would, would you?” he’d asked.
◆◆◆
“Are you ready?” Dinah asked. In her hand, she held a large syringe filled with a green liquid. The needle was thick enough that Ty contemplated activating his shield, but he knew the deerkin was only trying to help.
He nodded, and before she could ask, he rolled up his sleeve.
Ty had never liked needles, and looked away as the deerkin jabbed him in the arm. A moment later, she was done.
“Give it a minute to work into your system,” she said. Then her expression softened. “It isn’t your fault, you know,” she said.
Ty didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. “But it is,” he replied. “They—Concussion—targeted my building on purpose. If it wasn’t for me, they would have had no reason to choose that building at all. Brad … everyone else who lives there would still be living their lives the same as always.”
Dinah didn’t argue. Instead, she nodded. “I didn’t say you weren’t the reason,” she said. “I just said it wasn’t your fault.”
Ty understood. Yet it would take more than that to assuage his feeling of guilt. He drew a deep breath and realized the pressure behind his eyes was already starting to fade. He brought up his inhaler.
“Now?” he asked.
Dinah paused for just a moment. “Take it,” she said.
A younger version of Ty might have hesitated. He knew the searing agony the drug would cause him, and knew the side effects could be fatal. Before donning the device on his wrist, Ty had been a bit of a wimp. He’d avoided conflict at any cost, and had no idea why people would do things that could be painful.
He’d never been rock climbing. He looked at those who rode in motocross events or X games as if they were crazy. Skydivers were a different species entirely, and while New Lincoln wasn’t near an ocean, the thought even of surfing was a bit much.
But that was before he’d gone toe-to-toe against armed mercenaries and superpowered villains. It was before he’d leveled up into who he was now. And it was before Concussion had taken out his apartment building.
Ty simply broke the seal on his one-shot inhaler, brought it to his lips, and breathed deeply.
Perhaps it was the analgesic Dinah had introduced to his system, or perhaps it was the serum. Maybe even a combination of both. Either way, the effects of AZT-407 drug weren’t as severe as they had been before.
They still seared his veins as if his blood was on fire, and his brain felt as if someone was using a police taser to electrify his mind, but this time, it wasn’t as severe as before. Instead of crying out in agony and blacking out, Ty simply gritted his teeth and gripped the sides of the surgical table.
His breathing came in short gasps, and he could hear his heart thumping in his chest. The skin at the tips of his fingers felt as if he’d plunged them into a fire, and everywhere else it started to tingle.
But this time, instead of the pain building until it was an incandescent ball of fire in his brain, it was different.
Instead of the head-pounding agony he’d experienced before, this time, AZT-407 was like a door opening in his mind. He could literally feel his consciousness expand, as if the constraints of his normal existence were suddenly gone.
He thought that perhaps Upgrade was the wrong name for the drug. ‘Unfettered’ might have been better. ‘Transcendence,’ perhaps. Or even ‘Enlightenment.’
It was like everything around him snapped into sharper focus than ever before. Instead of crying out loud and losing consciousness, Ty turned to Dinah and gave her a smile.
“Are you okay?” the deerkin asked.
For a moment, Ty didn’t understand her words. He was focused instead on the music behind them, the beauty of her speech. Her voice had always been warm to his ears, and she spoke with an accent that added to the effect. He could listen to her voice forever and never get tired of it.
“Ty?” the deerkin asked, a line appearing between her delicate eyebrows in the start of a frown.
“I’m fine,” Ty blurted. “Better than fine. I feel amazing!”<
br />
Dinah’s frown disappeared, to be replaced by an answering smile. “Good to hear. It’s working, then?” she asked.
In answer, Ty reached for the device on his wrist and brought up his stats. He knew that it would take a while for the drug to take full effect, but wondered if the effect of successive doses could be cumulative.
Either way, to him, this boost felt stronger, and the stats agreed.
General
Name: Ty Wilcox
Modifications: None
Unique Skill: Technological Enhancement
Secondary Skill: Cyber Assimilation
Alignment: Neutral Good
Baseline
Strength: 4
Durability: 3
Healing: 5
Stamina: 4
Agility: 4
Intelligence: 7
Wisdom: 5
Skill: N/A
Secondary Skill: N/A
Post enhancement
Strength: 7 (+3)
Durability: 6 (+3)
Healing: 7 (+3)
Stamina: 6 (+3)
Agility: 7 (+3)
Intelligence: 8 (+3)
Wisdom: 6 (+2)
Skill: 3 (+3)
Secondary Skill: 1 (+2)
“Better than ever,” Ty replied. He shifted his arm so the deerkin could more easily see the holographic stats sheet, and watched as her eyes widened in response. Then he dismissed the stats and swung his legs off the surgical table.
“Time to get started. Want to give me a hand?” he asked.
4: A Better Solution
Ty’s brain was buzzing. If his mind was a bucket of water, the AZT-407 drug was like a lump of sodium. Put the two together, and they fizzed and sparked with a chemical reaction that was hard to contain.
Despite the fact that his friend may have been injured or worse, Ty couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he and Dinah entered the workshop in the mansion basement.
As had become his habit, Ty took a moment to let the aura of the place sink in. This cool, white room was filled with wonders, both of his own making and those of the Architect before him. The fruits of the Architect’s labors could be seen in the display cabinets lining the walls. Prosthetic devices for the most part, arms and legs filled with grace and complexity. With the AZT-407 surging in his veins, Ty could almost see the inner workings of each of them. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could improve them even more, could take them from pragmatic replacements to works of true art.
For the first time, Ty felt he could sense everything going on in the room. The wires and conduits hidden in the walls were as clear to him as the lights in the ceiling. He could intuitively sense the inner workings of both the Stark imager and the fabricator devices bolted onto the workbench, and could almost feel the conduits through which the fabricator accessed its source materials.
To Ty, it was like the workshop was a living, breathing organism of which he was also a part. He felt connected as never before, and knew that this was what his talent should be like all the time.
Yet even then, he knew there was still more to it. Even with the boost from the AZT-407, he was still at no more than level six, or thereabouts. What would it be like when he reached double figures? What would he be able to do then?
Would he be able to manipulate the technology around him by willpower alone?
He didn’t know, but wished to find out. Maybe he could invent a machine that enabled him to level up more easily. Perhaps something that worked in conjunction with the drug. A new generation device that made the one he currently wore look like a toy.
It was an interesting thought, and one day, Ty would have liked to turn it into reality. But for the moment, there were more pressing needs.
“What are you going to do?” Dinah asked, bringing him back to the present.
“I need to come up with a way to find survivors buried in the rubble and keep them alive long enough for help to arrive,” he said.
Dinah nodded. “And somehow signal where they are,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“Do you have any ideas?” she asked.
Ty grinned even more broadly. “Nanites,” he said. Already, possibilities were swirling about in his head. Ty’s medical nanites would need modification. They were designed to move through a person’s blood stream, but that was quite different to making their way through the rubble of a collapsed building.
“They have to be autonomous,” Ty said. “With the ability to make their way through anything. Sand, rock, water, whatever. And, as you say, they need to be able to send data back to me. They don’t need to be as small as the medical nanite, and it would make sense if they carried a supply of those nanites as well.” Ty nodded to himself as he thought out loud. “So, maybe they wouldn’t be nanites any more. Not exactly. More like spiders.”
At this, Dinah gave a shudder. “Spiders? Really?” she asked.
“What’s wrong with spiders?”
“I just find them creepy,” the deerkin replied.
Ty continued to grin. “We don’t have to call them spiders, if you like. Maybe crawlers. But it would make sense to model them after some sort of insect.”
With that, he got to work, activating the Stark imager and getting it to display one of the medical nanites as a hologram over the workbench, but expanded a few thousand times so he could see it more clearly.
To start with, Ty modified its physical shape, making it bigger, giving it stronger legs and a body that would allow it to survive in the real world. He added sensors and gave it a proboscis through which it could inject the medical nanites it would carry.
Then he integrated a miniaturized version of his energy converter, giving the nanite—or crawler—a virtually unlimited lifespan.
When he was done, he paused to look at what he had designed.
“Looks like a metal cockroach,” Dinah said.
She was right. A cockroach with the proboscis of a mosquito. “It’ll be smaller,” he said. “Maybe a tenth the size. But it does look like one, doesn’t it?” he said.
After that, Ty moved onto the programming, but this was much more straightforward. His medical nanites had to be able to access an entire database of human anatomy, and their actions had been complex. But with this, Ty only needed the crawler to move, to send signals back to a control device, and to perform a few other limited functions.
All in all, it was a much easier ask.
He decided that the device he wore on his wrist was the best option for receiving the data from the crawlers. It was attached to him. He would never lose it. And besides, it was one of the few portable devices capable of producing a holographic image like that generated by the Stark imager. At the site of the apartment collapse, it would show him a three-dimensional representation of everything the crawlers could find.
In total, the work took him no more than an hour and a half. He worked with an efficient focus, largely forgetting everything else around him. The collapsed apartment was a distraction that he shoved aside, and even Dinah’s warm presence faded to little more than a sense of comfort, a spot of love in the workshop beside him.
Several times before, Ty had achieved a state of flow as he worked on a piece of technology. This time, it was stronger than ever, and he knew he could have done anything. His only regret was that he largely excluded Dinah. He couldn’t help it. While gifted in her own way, this was Ty’s area of expertise. There wasn’t much she could do to help him.
Nevertheless, as he stepped back from his design and became aware of the world once again, he could see that Dinah had shared in his frenzy of creation. Not completely, but in her own way. She was looking at him with an expression akin to amazement.
“That was incredible,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone work like that before.”
Ty was starting to come down from his frenzy. The drug was still there, but without the focus of creation, it no longer lit up his brain as it might.
“I have,” Ty
said. “I’ve seen you do much the same.”
The deerkin looked slightly puzzled, so Ty explained. “When the Master showed us the image of the Architect in the alley,” he said. “Your focus was intense when you were looking for him. It’s the same thing,” he said.
The deerkin nodded. She looked back at the oversized crawlers hovering over the workbench. “Will it work?” She asked.
Ty had no doubt. “It will.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Dinah asked.
Ty grinned at her. “Fabricate,” he said.
In addition to the crawlers themselves, Ty fabricated a simple sphere, like a pokeball, to contain them. Within that sphere were several hundred crawlers, each of which contained a small supply of healing nanites. More than enough to get the job done.
For a good measure, Ty fabricated an EMP grenade—just in case—and another supply of his healing nanites as well. He encased the latter in a second pokeball, which he clipped onto his belt next to the first. Then he sent a quick message to Lilith and turned off the mansion’s shield so it wouldn’t interfere with the demon woman’s powers.
“Good luck,” Dinah said as they waited for Lilith to arrive. “I’ll keep watch from my communications room. If Concussion shows his face, I’ll let you know.”
There wasn’t much Ty could say in response. With the buzz of creation fading, the grim realities of the task ahead were starting to sink in. His building had been destroyed, and it was clear that Brad was the target. Had Ty’s gamer friend been at home at the time?
Brad was a slob in all senses of the word, and he kept the hours to match. Ty knew that his friend seldom got to bed before midnight, and rarely opened his eyes again before noon. Likely, he would have been sound asleep when the building collapsed around him.
Or had Sarah’s influence changed that about Ty’s friend as well? Was it too much of a stretch to hope she had encouraged him to get up for a predawn jog?
Ty cracked a quiet grin at the thought. There was a better chance of her getting Brad to give up gaming, and that would never happen. But maybe, just maybe, his friend had chosen to stay over at Sarah’s place instead. And maybe he’d forgotten to charge his phone as well.