by R H Nolan
Eventually, when he passed the glinting circle of starships in the desert, he turned north again and tried to orient himself to the tunnel Zryk’s Bug pod had made on their way to the surface. Really, it was pretty much just blind luck that he hadn’t overshot the distance by a mile or two—just a few yards. Max doubled back toward the shifting hole in the desert, which somehow hadn’t managed to fill itself in beneath the gusting winds howling over so much nothingness. He’d been working himself up to crawl feet-first into the tunnel of Qirinian biotech and pretty much slide all the way down to where the pod must have returned with Zryk. But when he stood at the edge of the tunnel dropping at an easy incline beneath the sand, he found the pod there, just at the opening below the surface.
Max stopped and turned off his skates. Then the door on this side of the pod slid open, leaving him to second-guess himself for a few seconds. Zryk had obviously assumed he’d be back despite Max saying he wouldn’t, and there had to be some sort of camera watching the opening to this tunnel. At least, Max hoped the pod wouldn’t open for just anyone who happened to stumble upon the only safe entrance to an undiscovered Qirinian ship.
Knowing he didn’t have the time to weigh the pros and cons of accepting this wordless invitation without Zryk in the pod, Max slipped down into the tunnel, landed on top of the pod, and dropped himself into it. The door closed immediately, and the pod sank a lot more smoothly into the tunnel than it had risen through the sand. This time, the lights were off. He couldn’t see a thing through the window at the other end of the pod, and in less than a minute, the glaring sunlight from the desert faded completely from view.
Down and down he went until the pod just stopped. There wasn’t a jolting shudder or an echo of finality—just no more movement. The door on the opposite side of the pod slid open silently, and Max stepped through. Zryk wasn’t waiting for him here, either, and Max hoped he’d remembered enough of the ship’s corridors to find his way back to the stasis chamber without getting completely lost.
Just ahead of him, a streak of faded yellow light lit up within the ridges of the Bug ship’s walls. It streaked through the organic coils of architecture and headed to the left. Then Max realized he might not have to remember how to get to Zryk at all; he had a pretty strong hunch that the flashing lights were directing him. If Zryk had left the pod for him and had some kind of surveillance to know it was Max at the head of the tunnel, the alien probably also knew Max was here now and needed to find him. So he took a chance on Zryk’s friendship and the open invitation to enter the energy chamber one more time for a much different process.
He followed the lights, and every time he came to a corner, he found the lights directing him with only one possible way to turn. It seemed to take a lot longer than he remembered from just a few hours before, but he finally found himself stepping out into the wide stasis chamber. For as little time as he’d spent away from the ship, this room looked a lot different.
For the most part, that difference came from the missing Qirinian carapaces that had first littered the floor here. The alien bodies were gone, the shattered glass had been removed, and the decades-dry stains of whatever liquid had filled those tubes seemed a little lighter. Zryk stood at the far end of the room beside the energy chamber, typing even more commands. Max cleared his throat.
“I had hoped you would return, Max. I did not expect it so soon.” Zryk turned to face him, spreading his front arms in a gesture of welcome.
Max frowned. “You sound different.”
Despite the threat of attack on his entire people and his own family, he couldn’t ignore the fact that the alien’s voice no longer filled the stasis chamber but came only from Zryk’s location. And he was pretty sure the Qirinian hadn’t moved his fingers over the console in order to speak.
“Indeed,” Zryk replied, stepping forward quickly on legs slightly longer than Max’s. “I created a… person translator.”
The Bug tapped a small metal box strapped to his suit on the shoulder of his front arm.
“I think you mean ‘personal,’” Max offered.
“Yes.”
Shrugging, Max took another quick look around the cavern. “I wasn’t gone for that long. Looks like you got a lot done in here.”
“I did. There is no more protocol now that I am alone.”
Max really couldn’t think of anything to say to that. They’d covered that ground the last time, and it seemed like the Qirinian was trying to move on. Plus, he didn’t really have the time to chat. “Does your offer still stand, Zryk?”
“To place you again in the energy chamber in exchange for your aid in finding the parts for my ship?”
Max nodded.
“It… stands, yes.”
“Good. Because I really need your help.”
“What happened?”
“Two of the most violent tribes in the Wastelands are coming for my people in a few hours,” he said, trying not to rush the words so Zryk’s newly crafted translator could better pick them up. At least, he assumed that was how it worked. Or maybe Zryk just fully understood the language but couldn’t speak it himself. “None of the Peacewinds really know how to defend themselves, and all Havix ever does is run. There’s nowhere to go. They’ll all be slaughtered and eaten and—”
“Eaten?” Zryk’s hands popped open and clenched into fists again, and the enclosed shell over what Max guessed was his mouth let out a few clicks.
“Yeah,” Max said bitterly. “That’s the Wastelands for you.”
Zryk just stared at him in what might have been horror.
“Look, I really wasn’t going to come back until I found out the Chaotix and Bloodletters are coming for us. I will do absolutely anything for those powers you talked about. I need them to stop the other tribes and save my people. I’ll break into whatever city you want, Zryk. I’ll find all the parts for your ship. I just have to—”
Zryk turned abruptly and scuttled across the floor toward the energy chamber.
“I told you my offer would remain, Max,” he said without turning around. His thick fingers moved with incredible speed over the control console beside the energy chamber. “Your goal is more urgent than mine. We will perform this procedure now, and when you have protected your… your pack, yes?”
“Tribe,” Max said, relief overwhelming him.
“Your tribe. Once you have accomplished this, we will discuss the parts for my ship.” The rounded door of the energy chamber slid aside to reveal the tall emptiness inside the thick-walled tube.
“Thank you.”
“It is the least I can do.” Zryk finally turned around and gestured toward the energy chamber with a dip of his head.
“Okay.” Max balled his fists and forced himself forward. If he thought too much about what he might be able to do after this, he thought he might change his mind. But this wasn’t just for him. This was for Kier, their mom, Havix, the entire Peacewind tribe outside Neo Angeles. There was no other choice.
The bottoms of his skates clicked against the chamber floor, and Max turned around to look at Zryk.
“You said it won’t feel that different from the last time, right?” he asked, his heart pounding in his chest.
The alien let out a few more rapid clicks. “More intense.”
Max nodded, but the door had already closed in front of him, leaving him a few feet short of the long narrow window in the chamber wall. He took another deep breath and blew it out through puffed cheeks.
Powers.
This was actually happening.
The same low hum filled the chamber, then the bright light returned. It had focused on his fractured arm the first time, but now the sharp tingling hit every part of his body simultaneously. And yes, it was a lot more intense than before. Max’s breath stuck in his throat when he realized that intensity had morphed quickly into the most intense pain of his life—like millions of needles piercing through every inch of his flesh at the same time, driving deeper and deeper inside him.
> The light flared around him again so brightly, it didn’t make a difference when he clenched his eyes shut. He felt like someone had just set him on fire and run him over with a tank. Max screamed, but he couldn’t hear it over the pain. Everything was bright light and agony, and he almost lost himself for however long Zryk kept him in there, rearranging his humanness to make way for instant evolution.
Then everything went dark. A soft whir filled his ears, and the temperature inside the chamber dropped by a few degrees. The pain was gone too, even more suddenly than it had appeared. When Max opened his eyes, he found himself lying on his side and staring through the energy chamber’s open door. He was panting, and it took a few seconds of blinking out into the chamber and staring at Zryk’s huge, hoof-shaped feet before he felt anything in his body again.
At the top right corner of his vision, Max’s life stats blinked in a faded blue. He thought he was seeing things at first, but when it didn’t go away, he sat up faster than he probably should have.
HEALTH: 1000/1000 (100%)
STRENGTH: 100/100
STAMINA: 220/220
AGILITY: 110/110
ENHANCEMENTS:Level 1
Energy Reserves: 0/2000
Disintegration
Efficiency: 20 units per cc
Energy Blast
Intensity: 2000
Base Range: 20 feet
Energy Blast—that was definitely something he’d never had before.
Max closed his eyes against the dizziness of sitting up too fast, then he pushed himself to his feet and stepped out of the chamber.
“How do you feel?” Zryk asked, wringing his hands again.
“Well, I think you got ‘more intense’ and ‘the worst pain of my life’ a bit confused in the translator,” Max replied, flexing his hands and rolling his neck.
But now he felt fine—more than fine. His life stats were at 100%, and he had some new power he couldn’t begin to understand.
“What’s Disintegration?”
Zryk consulted the screens of his alien computer. “That is an excellent first step into your personal evolution, Max. Disintegration enables you to break down matter and absorb the released energy into your own body. I believe your body may only be capable of storing this energy for a certain period of time, which of course depends upon your familiarity with the ability and how much you hone your skill in effectively using it. That energy can also be redirected at will, and I assume it would make for a powerful weapon.”
“What’s the ‘twenty units per cc’ mean?”
“It means that you can extract twenty units of energy from a specified volume of matter. Energy is measured in Qirinian units, but matter is measured in something I believe you humans call ‘cubic centimeters.’” Zryk pinched his fingers together so that they were almost touching. “A cube about this big. As you grow more powerful, you will grow more efficient at extracting and storing energy, allowing you to use more of it at one time.”
Max stepped past Zryk and placed his hand against one of the coiled, tube-like filaments composing the ship wall. All he had to do was think about breaking down that bit of wall, and his hand illuminated with a soft yellow light. It grew stronger and brighter with each second his hand remained, and the wall beneath his hand disappeared in the outline of his palm and fingers.
When he removed his hand, he realized that the Bug had been completely right about this power. Both Max’s palm and the back of his hand crackled with energy in that same bright-yellow light.
His life stats blinked again in his vision. Nothing in his main stats had changed, but something in the secondary ones had.
Energy Reserves: 1000/2000
He took a moment to appreciate the wonder of it before thrusting his hand out at the far wall of the chamber. A burst of pure energy exploded from his hand as soon as he considered doing it. The force knocked his hand a bit to the right, and the sparking ball smashed into the chamber wall a few yards beside what had been Zryk’s stasis tube.
Two things changed in his secondary stats. One was the reduction of his Energy Reserves to zero. The other was the addition of a new stat, Accuracy.
Energy Blast
Intensity: 2000
Base Range: 20 feet
Accuracy: 20%
With Accuracy at 20%, it looked like he would have to practice with the aiming bit.
“It seems you have captured the fundamentals,” Zryk said, his translator box delivering the slightly robotic voice as a slow hiss escaped his physical body. “However, I recommend examining the finer points of hitting an intended target.”
“You don’t say,” Max said.
“I DID say.”
“No, it’s a joke… never mind.”
Max stared at the last trails of smoke where his ball of energy had collided with the ship wall. When the smoke cleared, a small hole remained in the coils of the organic Qirinian infrastructure.
Then, to his amazement, the hole then began a quick and efficient process of sealing up and mending itself.
Max’s eyes widened, and he spun around to face Zryk. “Can I do that, too?”
The alien clicked at him. “Perhaps. In time. It would take a much larger amount of effort and training to do the same with your own physical body. This ship has been calibrated to repair minor superficial damage such as this. A ship is a ship, yes? You, Max, are not quite the same.”
The only thing Max chose to take out of Zryk’s response was that it might be possible to heal himself—eventually. The surprises just kept rolling in.
Then he thought of the pod moving toward the surface through the sand—the way the sand disappeared just feet in front of the moving vessel without actually being moved from where it had been packed into layers for decades, maybe more.
“The pod did the same thing, didn’t it?” he asked, turning from the restored wall to look at Zryk. “Disintegrated the sand, like I just did.”
“Precisely.”
“So where did all the energy go?”
If the pod—or the entirety of the Qirinian ship itself—could perform its own version of Max’s new ability, he would have expected that pod to light up with the same crackling yellow energy as his hand.
“It was redirected,” the Bug replied, “though not into an energy weapon. The pod’s commands were set to recreate the structural composition of this ship within the tunnel as it moved.”
Max’s mouth fell open. “So that tunnel’s a part of the ship, now?”
He gazed around them, reeling a bit beneath his attempts to imagine what kind of things the Qirinians had disintegrated and then turned into this almost-living starship of theirs.
“Not entirely,” Zryk replied. “It is merely a structure. But to redirect such energy into a new physical form is—”
“Let me guess,” Max interrupted with a suppressed smile. “I’m not a ship, and it would take a lot of practice for me to make something else out of pure energy.”
“You are a fast-learning human, Max,” the alien replied. “I must also inform you that the act of disintegrating matter around you, as well as dispelling the collected energy, can be performed by any part of your body. Hands, feet, thorax, abdomen, head. But performance with anything other than your hands will also take considerable preparation and mastery.”
Max shook his head at that; if he made it back from his only viable attempt to stop both the Chaotix and the Bloodletters, he’d remember to correct Zryk in the correct terms for human body parts. For now, though, he really had to get going.
“Okay, good to know,” he said. “Thanks. Can you have that pod take me back up the surface?”
He started heading for the exit corridor out of the stasis chamber.
“Wait, Max. You cannot yet leave.”
The urgency carried through the translation box’s robotic voice made Max stop quickly and turn around again. “You said I could go to my people and come back to talk about our deal when it was over!”
“Yes, b
ut you endanger yourself without first processing the necessary information. I must tell you about the consciousness animator.”
“The what?”
“The energy that animates a lifeform’s consciousness. The word is… spirit? Is that the word? No, perhaps a better term is ‘soul.’ It seems a more accurate translation. So let us call them ‘Soul Points’ for now. This specific type of energy can be absorbed to further power your genetic transformation, but they are only obtained through—”
“Zryk, I hate to cut you off,” Max said, “but I don’t have time for this right now. I have to go.”
“But I have not had the opportunity to tailor the himirini armor to your abilities.”
The alien took a few long, swift strides toward the computer beside the stasis tubes and lifted something that looked very much like a black bodysuit.
“This is limited in its effectiveness against physical damage, and it does not allow for the full use of your abilities—”
“Okay, I’ll take it,” Max said, running toward the Qirinian to accept the surprisingly light armor in the form of an actual suit. “It’s better than nothing. Please get the pod ready.”
“It is waiting for you.”
“Great, thanks!” Max had already taken off across the chamber, waving a hand at the Bug without stopping to look back.
He didn’t even need the flashing lights along the ship’s interior walls to show him how to get back to the pod waiting in the re-created energy tunnel. The door was open, and it closed behind him the minute he slipped inside. Then he was moving, though it wasn’t nearly as quickly as he would have liked.
While the pod traveled smoothly toward the surface, Max sloughed off his jacket, shook out the body suit, and stepped into it. He totally forgot to think about removing his skates and shoes until he realized they didn’t get stuck in the thin, lightweight material. Even if Zryk didn’t quite have a handle on the anatomical terms of the human body, at least the Bug had remembered that Max was shorter than a Qirinian, with two legs and only two arms.