by Vowron Prime
Easier said than done—it was somewhat akin to holding a frictionless ball; the target kept slipping away, unraveling his work.
So he tried again. And again. Ten repetitions, then a hundred. With every attempt, he was able to anchor just a bit more of the wormhole onto the rock. The minutes turned into hours. Yet when he finally thought he had it, the wormhole merely collapsed on itself, winking out of existence.
He’d definitely had it—the entrance was fully anchored. Then it dawned on him that he’d completely forgotten to account for the exit point, having been single-mindedly focused on the entrance. So he’d have to anchor both points in space, which honestly didn’t sound too hard.
It was hard.
He wasn’t able to anchor one end before doing the other side, no—that would cause the other end to come undone. So he had to do them simultaneously, like trying to dual wield pistols—looked cool, damn near impossible to aim. If one side was tricky, doing both was a veritable juggling act.
The hours dragged on, bringing with them slow but steady progress. He knew this because the relocator’s ability sphere had finally begun filling with gore again. Learning that his HUD was the parasite’s doing only served to make the gory display even more grotesque. To think that thing was in his head even now, growing as he improved his abilities. Horrifying.
Nina eventually poked her head out of the habitation deck in the distance, then retreated when she saw how deeply he was concentrating. She knew better to bother him at times like these, opting to instead bring out some hot food, placing it nearby without a word. She sat down on the asphalt, observing him work.
Finally, after what felt like ages, finally he had it. The relocator’s ability bubble filled and burst all on its own. Drenched in sweat from the effort, he managed to juggle both entrance and exit to wrap the wormhole around both boulders. The link was established.
“No fucking way! You pulled it off? Ah, who am I kiddin’? That’s just par for the course for you.”
Smirking at his sister, he stood up and walked over to the two boulders. Sure enough, when he looked through the portal on one side, he saw Nina on the other, waving back at him. The portal contoured perfectly to the face of the boulder, making it almost invisible.
“STOP!” he screamed before she poked a finger through. “The hell are you doing? We haven’t confirmed its safety.”
Walking over to the bucket, he threw it through the boulder at Nina, who caught it at the other end before throwing it back.
“Geez, bro, relax! Works just fine.”
“Guess so,” he grunted, poring over the bucket for any defects. The ability used the same techniques that had allowed him to move objects to date, so this shouldn’t be any different, but it still scared him for some unknown reason. Maybe because he’d finally come to accept that all of this wasn’t a game.
“Still think we should get Nova to—” MC’s eyes went wide when he realized his sister had already crawled her way through the boulder-portal.
“See? No problem.”
“Jesus, Nina! What if something happened, or the connection got severed? I barely understand how this all works! It would have been safer if Nova checked it out.”
“Hey,” Nina said, squeezing his arm. “I’m okay. And sorry, it’s all just so damn exciting. I mean, a new world? Aliens? And Nova tells me there’s magic, too? I gotta see that. Like, ASAP.”
He laughed. “It’s kinda hard to avoid. I’m sure you will.”
“Like, meteors and fireballs and stuff?”
“Well, I haven’t seen any meteors, but I did get roasted by a fire attack, and electrocuted… and hit by a column of magical ice. All at once, too.”
“Damn. That’s pretty intense, even for you.” She hesitated. “But that’s not the whole story, is it? Nova told me about the parasite.”
“Yeah… About that.”
“Magnus, I’m so sorry.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she stood on her tiptoes to hug him around the neck. “I don’t even know what to say,” she whispered. “Horrific? Despicable? I wanted to rip out the throat of the asshole who did that to you, Magnus. Then I learned that person was Nova. Things got… awkward after that.”
MC reciprocated her earlier gesture, squeezing her arm with his right. “C’mon, princess. You think I’m going to take this lying down? Sorry. Not happening. Nova’s already helped out a ton, and she’s got more tricks up her sleeve. Besides,” he gestured to the boulders, “it does give me some pretty epic powers. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know if I want it gone at this point.”
“Addict.” Nina broke her embrace to stare him in the eyes. “You have a parasite in your head, taking over your mind. And it’s altering your perception? Nova said that I look like some kind of monster to you. Is that true!?”
“It is. But I can see how you really look, more or less, when I activate my radar ability. So it’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“If you were anyone else, I’d be worried to hell. But I bet it barely fazed you, didn’t it?”
“I mean, it was definitely a shock to learn that this was all real. And yeah, that sensory perception stuff does freak me out a bit. That’s why I reacted the way I did when I first saw you. I don’t really care how I see anyone else, but you? That was hard.”
“I’m going to murder the sons of bitches who did this to you, Magnus.”
“Sorry, princess, but I’ve got dibs on that,” he replied, chuckling. “I’ve seen so much shit over the years, Nina. Hell, I’ve done so many things I don’t dare speak of. So I’d say I’m pretty well equipped to deal with this.”
Through Midar, MC saw Nina’s gaze fall, just a bit. To this day, he’d kept his contract missions a total secret from her, a fact that hurt her. What she didn’t realize was that the truth would hurt even more. She simply didn’t need to know of that side of humanity, of the atrocities he’d committed.
“It’s not the easiest thing being your sister, you know? When you disappeared, I thought you’d come right back. You always do. But when you didn’t... Even you are not invincible, Magnus. Please remember that. Swear to me that you’ll do everything in your power to seek a cure? Do it for me?”
He sighed. “I will, princess. I can’t exactly die after bringing you to this place now, can I?”
“That’s damned right.”
That was Nina. Internally, she was probably a mess, but she had never impeded him or questioned his ways, not once. Her faith in him was utterly blinding, a fact he was acutely aware of. Her mere existence had always kept him grounded. How many times had he come so close to death, only to power through? How much of an impact would his death have on her? He couldn’t even imagine.
They fell silent for a moment before Nina spoke again. “So, uh, Nova… I kinda went off on her for doing what she did to you, and I may have said a bit too much.”
“Ouch. Well, you’re not exactly wrong.”
“Still, she’s a victim in her own way, isn’t she? It’s one thing to tell her to wake up and smell the roses, but we both know it’s never that easy to do. Not when everyone around you is telling you that you’re in the right.”
“You think so?”
Nina nodded. “I do. Still, with those wings and that ridiculous supermodel beauty and all… I really didn’t know what to make of her. But she’s fighting back in her own way. I have to respect that. And her innocence is pretty endearing. Besides, she’s the only one who can help you, so none of that really matters, does it? We’ll get along just fine, so feel free to invite her into your bedroom. I’m not gonna get in your way.”
MC rolled his eyes. “Like I said, there’s nothing going on between us.”
“Uh-huh. Sure, okay. Keep tellin’ yourself that.”
“There’s still one final test we need to perform,” he said, wisely ignoring his sister’s antics.
Concentrating on one of the boulders, he relocated it about ten feet away.
“Did you just teleport a portal-rock? Th
at’s so meta…”
It worked surprisingly well. The wormhole was still intact, connecting both boulders, and the mental drain hadn’t really increased, at least not appreciably. He relocated the boulder once again, all the way across the hangar. This time, the mental drain did increase, though by a negligible amount.
“I’ll need to run some more experiments, but with this, we might just have a crack at boarding that space station and getting me back in one piece.”
A bit of concentration killed the persistent wormhole, instantly severing the connection, leaving the rock exactly as it was before.
“Neat. So you can turn them off too.”
“Yeah, should be handy in an emergency. Still, it takes forever to establish a connection, and there’s a persistent drain whenever the teleportal’s active.”
“Portal… yeah, I like that. Not the most original name, but hey, this is so cool, it doesn’t need to have one.”
“How about we go pay Nova a visit? Where is that old crone, anyway?”
“Where else? Tinkering around with your fusion generator. She seems to love messing with that thing.”
That does sound like her.
“Wait, hold up, did you just say crone? How old is she?” Nina asked.
“Over two hundred, apparently.”
“WHAT? You're joking, right?”
“I see she neglected to mention that. She’s a little sensitive about her age, though apparently a couple centuries is young for the Dyn.”
“That’s so rude, Magnus,” Nina deadpanned. “I can’t believe you’re talking about her like that.”
They stared at each other then burst into laughter. Only to find Nova waiting at the top of the stairs to the habitation deck, looking none too happy.
The siblings exchanged a glance.
After several minutes of apologies and a severe cold shoulder treatment from Nova, MC managed to steer the conversation toward his new abilities. Nova’s irritation evaporated as childlike curiosity overtook her. She peppered him with questions on how it worked, what it felt like.
Crisis averted.
They eventually migrated to the CIC to talk through next steps. The hologlobe made the room a logical choice for plotting MC’s assault, which ended up being simpler than he’d thought—a good thing. Simple meant reliable.
MC would create a portal large enough to allow him through, relocating it into space above the planet. Given his utter lack of accuracy when teleporting things that far out, it’d end up at some random location, but that wouldn’t matter.
He’d wear one of his armored suits and proceed through the portal into outer space. Given that the suits created a sealed, pressurized environment for the operator, they ought to function just fine as space suits.
The plan was to modify the onboard jump jets to emit a continuous, low-intensity burn, rather than the explosive acceleration they were originally designed for. They’d fire the rockets, accelerating him over the course of several hours to get him moving fast enough to match the station’s synchronous orbit. After that, it was just a matter of letting the satellite come to him. Using the thrusters, he’d fine-tune his velocity with the station before boarding. Like a commando assaulting a pirate ship.
“We will need to run some tests to verify the feasibility of this plan, not to mention retrofitting your suit,” Nova said.
“Right.” The X42 walking tank was just a bit too big for this job. There were worries that its incredible hulking mass would be too much for the thrusters to accelerate with the limited onboard fuel—which would force him to rely on his teleports more to impart speed. Given that he’d be boarding an alien station, he wanted to be as fresh as possible so that was less than ideal.
Luckily, the X42 was far from his only suit. The M37 Stealth series was about as perfect of a candidate for the job as possible, if a bit claustrophobic.
“It’s… definitely smaller. Isn’t it a bit too small?” asked Nina as the three stood in front of the suits, all lined up in a neat row in a corner of the hangar bay, plugged into their charging ports.
“A smaller suit means less area to cover with the stealth field. Plus, it’ll be easier to maneuver once I’m inside.”
Unlike the X42’s hulking nine-foot-tall stature, this one stood at barely over six feet and wrapped around the operator like a glove. To compensate, its armor was far weaker and it entirely lacked onboard armaments, but MC’s powers easily compensated for those deficiencies.
Matte-black and highly angular, everything about it was built around stealth for situations where discretion counted more than outright firepower. It had another quirk, too—the left arm was missing, having been tailored to form a hermetic seal with MC’s cybernetic arm socket. Its formfitting frame meant that he actually attained increased mobility with his limb exposed.
The only problem? It lacked jump jets of any kind.
“We’ll have to retrofit the jets from the X42 over, which will take some doing.”
The suits were all made by the venerable Aegis Dynamics, so several parts were interchangeable. That included the jump jets and fuel canisters, but while swappable, the process was anything but simple.
“How will we hide your arm with this suit?” Nova asked, no doubt thinking up potential solutions to the problem the exposed limb posed.
“No worries there. I’ve got a glove accessory lying around somewhere that’s built to hide it. I kinda hate wearing that thing, but I guess we don’t really have a choice.”
“We may be able to do better,” Nova muttered mysteriously. “I suppose we shall have plenty to keep us busy, won’t we?”
MC grinned, wheeling out a huge pair of wireless loudspeakers from a nearby storage closet.
“That we do. But y’know, I have a feeling this is gonna be a lot of fun… Wait, why are you two looking at me like that?”
“Magnus? You’ve got an appointment with the doc,” Nina declared, glancing awkwardly at Nova, who smiled wryly in response.
“Indeed. And since I am apparently an old hag, in my senility, I might simply forget the anesthesia.” Nova’s expression at that moment might have been cold enough to make the oceans of Kelruhn freeze.
“Rest in peace, Magnus. It was nice knowing ya.”
MC narrowed his eyes at his equally guilty sister but just said, “Let’s get this over with.”
Nineteen
The next several days passed by in a blur. Nova read the service manual for both suits within the course of several hours, her eidetic memory working overtime, and while MC had planned to show her the ropes, she was soon the one directing the operation. She corrected any mistakes he’d make and even guided Nina who had no knowledge of the systems. Then she proceeded to find a handful of errors and inefficiencies in the manufacturer’s service manual.
The surgeries, on the other hand, were anything but pleasant. Whether or not Nova really used less anesthesia as she’d threatened, the autodoc was relentless, opening him and sewing him back in several places. The nanomachines, for their part, were mostly unnoticeable. Nova programmed them to seek out and undo any mutagenic damage, but she’d admitted it would take them weeks, if not months to undo all the changes. The only silver lining was that modern medicine accelerated recovery periods for all but the most major of surgeries. Movements were a bit tight, but he was mobile almost immediately after each operation.
What mattered was that they’d addressed the issue before they had become life-threatening and for that, he was grateful. There was more unexpected news—while the parasite had itself been mutated, altering his own brain in the process, it seemed to be actively working to keep his brain free of clots and other dangerous abnormalities, so it was the rest of his body that had suffered the most.
Nina alternated between helping them out with the retrofit and furiously studying up on the Zevan language. Because the Dyn had seeded the world with Zevan life only a few hundred years before, they had instituted a unified language for the entire planet, whic
h also happened to be the same as the one spoken by the Zevan. Efficient, yet somewhat surprising to the linguist.
Nova may have kindled his sister’s competitive spirit because her progress was downright astonishing, and she didn’t have a parasite to accelerate the process.
She has something better, MC knew. Experience.
With graduate degrees in linguistics, diplomacy, and public policy, Nina was fluent in eight languages and could speak several more in some capacity.
That left Nova and MC to do much of the heavy lifting, though Nova’s prominent wings meant the position of Grease Monkey went to MC. That suited him just fine. The angel’s eyes went wide when he changed into a black tank top and jungle-camo cargo pants to work.
Under Nova’s capable supervision, the retrofits progressed steadily, and before long, they had the rockets swapped and modified, which left just the control mechanisms. She’d even found a way to mount another pair of rocket fuel cells onto the suit.
Once depleted, MC would detach the cells from the suit, sending them back through the portal. That’s right, the portal—the angel also had the brilliant idea of strapping it onto the suit’s back. That way they could not only send him additional gear as needed, but he could beat a hasty retreat to safety if needed.
“We will now conduct a test on the suit’s stealth capabilities. Are you ready?” Nova said, holding up her portable scanner to the suit.
“Moment of truth,” his amplified voice called out over the suit’s speaker as he slipped his left arm through the armor’s gaping armhole. “Enabling active camo.”
The suit disappeared where it stood, the millions of tiny LED displays mimicking the rocky surroundings.
“Dang, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it invisible from the outside like that before.” Nina whistled, walking around the suit, squinting to try to make out its silhouette.
