211 Portal
In the end, I chose to move alone.
It wasn’t an emotional decision, since those rarely factored into my choices anymore. Instead, this was a practical decision. Sticking with the team would only limit what I could observe. Alone, I could move faster, dig deeper, and test boundaries without collateral damage.
Moreover, a far better option how to conquer Lockworld presented itself to and I’m eager to apply them.
I scouted Urbanite thoroughly, block by block, subsystem by subsystem, paying particular attention to its technology. Knowing Gaboy wouldn’t touch directly not after what nearly happened, I acted more boldly than before. That didn’t stop his players from hunting , of course.
Splitting from the others gave room to experint.
I let the pill’s effects lapse on purpose.
The result was imdiate.
The mont I was seen roaming without its concealnt, the city reacted like a kicked anthill. Players poured in from every direction, converging on with unnatural coordination. It was almost impressive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gaboy had dangled so obscene reward in front of them just to watch them tear themselves apart trying to bring down.
It would have been troubleso if I hadn’t morized the pill’s effects down to the cellular level using Enhancer and Biokinesis. Reapplying its influence internally was crude, but effective. Once I slipped back under its shadow, the swarm lost interest as quickly as it had ford.
Urbanite returned to its artificial rhythm.
I established a temporary base in an abandoned building on the city’s fringe, far from major traffic routes. I scavenged what materials I could find from wires, scrap processors, and broken terminals, and repurposed them. Lockworld was designed to be technologically stunted, but that limitation wasn’t absolute and could be bypassed.
For example, Lockworld’s ecosystem.
I didn’t need sleep, which ant I could work through the night uninterrupted. As I rewired the building’s lighting and power flow, my thoughts kept circling back to Gaboy. A Reality Warper-6 operating in an environnt that should have throttled him into irrelevance.
That bothered .
Reality warping followed stricter rules than almost any other power class. The stronger the effect, the harsher the cost. There was very little flexibility. Most powers burned stamina, cognition, lifespan, or emotion. Mine stripped of emotion entirely, at least until Empathy grew deep enough to compensate.
So what was his price?
I couldn’t see it yet. But it had to exist.
By the ti I finished tapping the building’s light grid, dawn had arrived. Pale sunlight crept through cracked windows as I leaned back and tuned my attention inward, focusing on the bugs I’d planted back at the safehouse.
Their voices ca through clearly.
Perry. Qilin. Snap.
They were arguing.
“I’m telling you, we should wait,” Qilin said, his frustration barely contained. “He doesn’t just disappear wihtout a reason.”
“We can’t stall the whole mission for one guy,” Snap shot back. “Even if that guy is… soone you know and clearly have a vested interest in. Qilin, he didn’t return here and that should either arouse our curiosity or suspicion. Didn’t you find it odd how he promised he could make the Kingdom capes retreat and then suddenly vanish alongside them?”
Perry was quiet for a mont. When he spoke, his tone was asured and deliberate. “We don’t know his status. No signal. No confirmation. Until we do, we have to assu MIA.”
There it was.
Snap exhaled sharply. “Then we abandon the safehouse. It’s compromised.”
“It’s the closest one to the city center,” Perry replied. “Losing it would cost us too much.”
“There have to be others.”
“Possible,” Perry admitted. “But not guaranteed.”
Qilin growled under his breath. “So we just sit and hope?”
The argunt circled, unresolved.
I muted the feed, lips twitching faintly.
Good luck finding another safehouse.
It had taken long enough to locate this one, and even then it was barely optimal. F
A week passed.
I spent it half-buried in scavenged circuitry, the abandoned building slowly turning into sothing that resembled a workshop. Wires ran along the walls like veins. A jury-rigged receiver humd softly beside , its casing patched together from three different devices that were never ant to coexist.
The original earpiece was single-use. Once its battery died, that was it. I couldn’t find a replacent of the sa type anywhere in Urbanite. So I improvised. I built a crude radio interface instead, sothing that could catch and translate the signal from the bugs I’d planted in the safehouse. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked.
As I soldered, I listened.
Perry. Qilin. Snap.
Their voices drifted in and out of my headset as background noise while I worked, arguing, planning, circling the sa problems again and again. Lockworld suppressed most powers to a ceiling of six, but it didn’t seem to know what to do with Researcher ratings. The mories of schematics, signal logic, and material tolerances flowed freely, untouched by whatever rules governed this place.
I was tightening a connector when the tone of the transmission changed.
Perry was speaking.
Not to the others.
“Eclipse,” he said calmly. “I know you’re listening.”
I froze, fingers hovering over the board.
He continued, unhurried. “Finding the bugs wasn’t difficult. You were thorough, but not invisible. I let them stay.”
I leaned back in my chair, exhaling slowly, and slid the headset fully over my ears.
“There’s a reason for that,” Perry went on. “I have a rough idea why you split from us. Why you’re doing what you’re doing now.”
My lips curled faintly. Of course he did.
“Before anything else,” he said, “you should know this: Snap is a traitor. I’m killing him tonight.”
That got my full attention.
Perry didn’t pause to let it sink in. “I’ve known for days. I wanted to be sure before acting. He’s been feeding information selectively and carefully. Not to Urbanite. Not to Candyland. Sothing else. I think he’s a double-agent of the Kingdom, and he’s probably unaware of it, but Urbanite got his head tapped with a bizarre power.”
I wondered what his angle was. Perry never spoke without one.
Then he dropped the real bomb.
“Forestho has a precognition-type cape,” he said. “One we keep buried. Only Dr. Hera and I know about them.”
My hand tightened around the edge of the table.
“They saw your plans,” Perry continued evenly. “Not fragnts. Not symbols. The whole shape of it. Conquering Lockworld. Rebelling against the SRC. Breaking out of the Box.”
For a mont, I genuinely couldn’t speak.
Then I laughed.
It started as a breath, then spilled out of in a sharp, incredulous bark. “You’re kidding,” I muttered, shaking my head. “You’ve been acting hostile this entire ti.”
As if he could my words, he answered.
“My hostility to you had been deliberate, a front,” Perry replied. “I needed you to believe I was keeping you at arm’s length, and so were the people around .”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now I want in.”
I went silent again.
Perry continued, voice steady. “Dr. Hera doesn’t share my enthusiasm, but she’s pragmatic. She can be convinced. The real problem is Huston.”
I laughed again, this ti softer. “Of course it is.”
“I’ll deal with Snap tonight,” Perry said. “After that, Qilin and I will retreat to Forestho. I’ll leave you to your work. I trust that when you look back to this conversation, you will think you made an ally. I’ve grown tired of this world, and I’d rather die fighting with hopes of seeing the other side again than die a useless nobody here.”
A pause.
“I’m transferring you the points we accumulated this past week,” he added. “All of them. Along with a letter. It details the true nature of our ‘mission’ here. It should clarify what Urbanite was planning from the start. Gaboy is an arrogant and powerful man, but I have reasons to believe he is not the real brain behind Urbanite. Be careful.”
The transmission crackled, and then went quiet.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling as the implications unraveled in my mind.
A precog, huh?
Gaboy’s careful little web wasn’t nearly as tight as he thought.
I started laughing again, unable to stop myself this ti.
“Ha,” I breathed. Then louder. “Ha… ha ha ha—”
I wiped my eyes, grinning into the empty room.
Gaboy had screwed up.
Big ti.
Night pressed in through the broken windows as I stood over the machine.
Calling it brittle felt generous. The fra shuddered under its own weight, components mismatched and forced into cooperation through stubbornness rather than elegance. A multiverse-hopping device was never ant to look like this, but there was only so much I could do with scavenged parts and a reality that actively resisted ambition.
Still, it worked. Or it would, for a mont.
Withholding my Researcher rating from the SRC had been one of the smarter decisions I’d ever made. Letting them believe my capabilities ended at theft and survival had bought ti. Most of my technology had been stolen, reverse-engineered from better minds and better worlds, but the real danger wasn’t possession. It was replication. The fact that I could rebuild these things with inferior materials was, in a place like this, nothing short of heresy.
I keyed in the coordinates slowly. The console sparked beneath my fingers, blue-white arcs crawling along exposed wiring as the machine strained to interpret instructions it was never ant to understand.
Reality scread.
The safehouse split open like a wound.
Light poured through the forming portal, tearing the room apart as air displaced itself violently. The sll of ozone and burning tal filled my lungs. On the other side, familiar shapes resolved into clarity.
Keegan was sprawled on a couch, controller in hand, a flickering TV paused mid-explosion. Abner sat at the table with a bowl of pasta, fork halfway to his mouth. Both of them stared at as if I’d crawled out of a hallucination.
Abner blinked first. “What the hell—”
“Listen,” I cut in, stepping fully through as the portal stabilized with a painful whine. “Tell Guesswork I need a team. Not a strike group. A team! I’m planning to conquer the Box and destroy it from the inside.”
Keegan shot to his feet. “Boss! Take with you!”
I shook my head imdiately. “No. Stay put.”
His face fell. “What? Why?”
“Because I need everyone at once,” I said flatly. “And because dragging you around right now would get you killed. You’d slow down.”
Keegan opened his mouth to argue, then stopped, jaw tightening as he looked away.
I turned to Abner. “morize this.”
I rattled off a string of coordinates, long and precise, each number weighted with intent. Abner didn’t interrupt, his eyes unfocusing slightly as he committed them to mory.
“The capes I want,” I added, voice low, “have to be rated Six at minimum. No exceptions.”
Abner nodded once. “Got it.”
Behind , the machine scread, prompting to back off and ensure I wouldn’t accidentally get sucked in to the other side.
The portal began to collapse, its edges fraying as sparks erupted violently from the console. The device shuddered, then detonated in a shower of fire and molten tal. The light died with a sound like a snapping bone.
I laughed, breathless and sharp, as the building’s lights flickered and went out entirely. Sowhere outside, alarms began to wail.
“Well,” I muttered, turning away, “that’s my cue.”
I couldn’t leave a single trace behind.
I sank the remains of the machine into the ground with intangibility, forcing twisted tal and slag deep beneath the foundation where no one would ever find it. Then I set the building ablaze, fire racing eagerly along exposed wood and cheap insulation.
By the ti the smoke billowed skyward, I was already gone.
I ran hard and fast, vanishing into the streets before the players nearby could catch my scent.
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