| User | Total |
|---|---|
| dasstan | 13 |
A bitter, silent laugh hitched in my chest. Even the universe thought I was an idiot. With a familiar sense of grim duty, I reached into my mind and tore the new ticket.
The rich aroma of the coffee filled the air, a grounding scent in a world that had just tilted on its axis again. My attention was lost somewhere in the dark, fragrant steam rising from the kettle as the information settled into my brain. My first thought was a cynical dismissal. Great. A power source for a type of power I don't even have.
A cold click sounded behind my eyes, a neurological switch being flipped. My right hand twitched on its own, my fingers curling into a perfect, economical grip around a phantom hilt. My stance shifted, a subtle adjustment in my feet that I hadn't ordered. The knowledge settled into my muscles, a hard-coded instinct for violence with a blade. It felt utterly unearned, a software patch installed directly into my brain without a license agreement. A useful file for a different fight, on a different day. I filed it away and tore the next ticket.
A strange, buoyant sensation lifted me. I looked down. My feet, clad in worn socks, were floating a perfect centimeter above the clean linoleum floor. I pushed off, and the world became a sheet of ice. I slid across the kitchen with a silent, frictionless grace. The sensation was a key turning a lock I didn't know I had. A phantom echo, not a real memory. The feeling of a cheap towel tucked into my collar, flapping like a cape. The dizzying, joyful terror of being swung around by strong, safe hands. A man's deep, rumbling laughter. The details were smoke, a memory of a memory, gone before I could grasp them. A genuine, unforced smile spread across my face before I even realized it. It was gone a moment later, but the warmth of it remained.
A sharp, splitting pressure built behind my temples, a half-second of vertigo that made the floor seem to tilt. Then it was gone, replaced by a stunning, brilliant clarity. A flood of esoteric theory and alien blueprints filled my awareness. I looked at the simple stainless steel kettle on the stove, and my mind supplied three different ways to enchant it for instantaneous boiling using rendered fat and a pinch of powdered bone. The connections snapped into place with an unnerving precision. This was the key to building an arsenal. A project for the long, cold peace that was coming. It was a promise of real, custom-built power.
A perfect, ruby-red apple materialized in my palm. It was cool to the touch, its skin flawless. I raised it to my face, and the smell was a ghost from another life: sweet, crisp, and utterly real. For a stupid, hopeful second, my breath caught in my throat. I took a bite.
A patch of air in the corner of the kitchen shimmered, coalescing into a form that was hard to look at directly. It was a translucent, spectral shape, a pillar of shimmering heat and quiet sorrow. A new, phantom sense bloomed in my mind alongside it, a silken string connecting me to the creature, a channel of awareness just waiting to be opened. I understood it on a gut level. It was a scout. A spy. A perfect, unseen set of eyes. An immediate, high-value tactical asset. This, I could use.
With a soft pop, a small, brown rat appeared on the floor. It blinked, sniffed the air, then began grooming a whisker with a fastidious delicacy that seemed out of place in the silent house. I felt the spark of its intelligence, a keen, analytical mind hiding behind the twitching nose and beady eyes. On my phone, GLaDOS's aperture icon narrowed to a contemptuous slit.
The name echoed in my skull. The reward appeared in my mind's eye. It was not a trophy for a battle won. It was the first piece of raw material for the war to come.
The change began quietly. A subtle, wet stir from deep within my gut. A fluttering.
The universe was a casino, and I'd just won a billion blood-covered dollars. I closed my eyes and for the first time, truly felt the new reality. I could feel the principle of nimbleness threaded through every cell, a constant, fluid potential to shift mass and muscle density at the speed of thought.