Published at 17th of September 2024 7:27 am

Chapter 265: The Commute

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“Uugh…” Nat groaned into the sheets, a sticky, panting mess, her long black hair strewn across the bed and her shaking form.

“You’re welcome,” Perry said, tugging his pants back on. “And good night.

“Need…shower,” Natalie said, trying and failing to lever herself up on shaking arms, collapsing back down onto the drool spot she’d left there a moment ago.

“Love ya babe.” Perry murmured, leaning down to kiss her shoulder.

“U oo oo,” She groaned into the sheets.

Perry stretched and took one last glance at his good work before getting back to his actual job…that no one paid him for.

Portal.exe

Perry stepped through the portal, squinting at the morning sun beginning to show above the horizon.

Silhouetted by the light was a single man wearing nothing but a pair of ripped jeans and a hat, cooking sausage and eggs, hunched over just outside his duct-tape riddled tent.

“Mornin’” Australia Man said, glancing up at Perry.

“Morning.” Perry said, nodding back.

“Sleep well?”

“You could say that,” Perry said. He didn’t actually sleep, instead picking through various projects at home that needed his attention, checking on the twins, and getting his containment facility for Mimics set up, but it couldn’t be said that he didn’t get some R&R. When the commute was a fraction of a second, and he didn’t need to sleep for a couple months, Perry couldn’t think of any reason not to spend part of the Chicago day with Nat while Australia slept.

Other than ambushes on the camp in the middle of the night, but…they were grown-ups. They could handle themselves. And the Mark Nine was watching out for them anyway, so…

“Egg?” Australia Man asked, scratching a wooden spatula along his cast-iron pan nestled in some smouldering coals he’d diverted away from the campfire proper. The others began emerging from their own tents, drawn out by the smell of the sausage.

“Sure,” Perry said, sitting crosslegged across the fire from him.

“Fought an emu for these,” Australia man said as he handed Perry a slab of wood with a giant egg on it.

“Did you win?” Perry asked.

Australia Man raised a brow, the two of them sharing an unspoken moment before he shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Global apocalypse wipes out most of the world’s population, and fifty years later, people still –”

Anya emerged from the tent, the ghost gliding through the fabric before turning and opening the tent flap for Wraith.

Heather emerged with a graceful stretch and a massive yawn, reabsorbing her ghost partner. “Morning everyone! I slept pretty great last night. It might’ve been tough for someone who can’t morph, though. Ground was pretty bumpy. How’d you sleep, Paradox?”

“Nat says hi.” Perry said.

Heather’s exaggerated yawn cut off, her eyes narrowing. “Oh, you bastard.”

“Ask nicely tonight.” Perry said.

“Never.”

“Egg?” Australia Man asked.

“Yes, please,” Heather said, sitting down beside Perry and receiving her own egg and sausage, curling up against him as she ate.

The rest of the team got breakfast and got ready, shoveling their food down and packing up their tents with a professional manner that got everything ready to travel in a matter of minutes.

Once they were done eating, Perry stood up and held his arms out.

The Mark Nine unfolded from where it was slung over a tree branch, skittering over to Perry, it’s undulating form revealing tiny fleshy gaps between the carbon plating as it crawled up his legs, collapsing around his body.

“…Is your armor…alive?” Natura asked, glancing up from where she was stripping off Bob’s duct tape from her feet. The new flesh looked a bit paler than the rest of her, but other than that her feet seemed fine.

“Technically, yes.” Perry said.

“You should’ve mentioned that. There are some venoms that can do nasty things to any living thing, and we need to know if we need to be alert for that sort of thing.” Natura said.

“Apologies.” Perry said, “I’ll keep that in mind going forward.” He turned to Australia Man and offered him a duplicate of the super’s bullet-torn hat. “Here’s a hat I made last night. It’s got some sensors in it that’ll record the stresses you put your hats under, and it should be more durable than a storebought.”

“Cheers, mate,” Australia man said, donning the new hat.

Then Perry got to witness Australia Man move at the speed of Love.

In his dimensional sight, it was as if Australia man already was everywhere, and simply chose to express himself in a different position. Like a lens that was out of focus, spreading Australia man out thinly to every point in the country, before it was brought back into sharp focus, revealing a man behind and to his left.

Not teleportation or portaling, but a rearranging of personal reality.

It was subtly similar to how Gerome manifested a physical body by moving himself through the fourth dimension, but…somewhat more limited in scope.

Probably limited to Australia and the present moment, if Perry had to guess.

“Are you…no longer human?” Perry asked, grabbing the fluttering hat from where it fell through the air. He glanced over his shoulder at Australia Man, who was pulling on another pair of ripped jeans.

“What’s human even mean?” Australia man asked. “I’ve always thought it’s what we do, how we treat others, and especially how we’re remembered. Nice hat by the way. Didn’t even catch fia.”

“You realize I’d have to distill the ‘concept’ of a hat that can manifest itself into reality, to allow it to make that jump with you?”

“I’d appreciate it if you could, but one that doesn’t get destroyed is good enough for me,” Australia man said, taking the hat out of Perry’s hand and placing it back over his thinning hair. “I can always pick it up later.”

“Alright, let’s get started.”

The day went by quickly, bagging another dozen venom samples before they came across the home of a dickbag.

“There,” Natura said, pointing to the side of a rock, where a mud sphere had been built on the south side of the rock, sheltered from the sun and wind by a bit of overhang, baked by the arid heat into something resembling terra cotta.

It was about the size of Perry’s head, and the wasp that emerged was as big as his entire hand splayed out, antennae tapping around the edge of the entrance, making sure its home was in tip-top shape.

“Careful, those things can kill you,” Natura said as Perry approached.

Perry nodded.

Dragor’s Kinesis.exe

Not being interested in finding out if its venom could somehow kill his armor, Perry reached out with the telekinetic spell and grabbed the wasp as delicately as he could. upon contact, with the wasp, it began struggling and stinging the air, and for a brief moment, it slipped out of Perry’s mental grasp. Perry tried to compensate, and the spell returned with redoubled force, crushing the wasp utterly in an explosion that sounded like a firecracker.

Cancel Dragor’s Kinesis.

Perry switched the spell off before it could do any damage to anything else.

“…was that supposed to happen?” Bob asked.

“…no.” Perry mused, standing up. “It stung my spell, and the spell jerked out of my control, like someone began tugging wildly on the steering wheel.”

The weakening of the spell wasn’t too surprising, but it has also made Dragor’s Kinesis momentarily stronger. And that was interesting to Perry.

Perry knelt down and began searching the remains for bits of venom that he might sample, but the creature had been reduced to nearly unidentifiable bits.

Perry shoveled as many of them as he could find into freeze-bag and moved on. He could get a computer to pick through the remains to ID pieces of the venom-producing organ and take samples

The sun was beginning to set when they called it a day.

Since the days were only a little over ten hours this time of year, they had plenty of time once the sun went down to eat dinner and talk, but Perry had work to do.

“Alright, see you guys tomorrow,” Perry said, patting his bag of preserved samples.

“Uh-uh, you’re taking me with you. Sleeping on the ground was hell.” Heather said.

“I’m going to the lab.” Perry said.

“And then you’re going home for the night, right?” Heather said.

“Yes.”

“I’m coming.”

“You know, I’d like to see those mimics you told us about.” Bob said. “And Tinker-tech always interested me.”

“Same, if they’re such a problem, I’d like to get eyes on them.”

“…agreed.” Australia Man said, nodding. “You mind giving us the tour of your ‘neutral location?’”

Perry thought about it for a moment. He had created a floating laboratory out in the middle of the ocean that was packed to the gills with Paradox-enhanced thermite. If anything went wrong, it would erase itself and everything nearby from existence.

It also wasn’t his primary lair and he didn’t have much in the way of proprietary tech there.

“Sure.” Perry said, opening the portal.

Portal.exe

The cold grey walls of his lab revealed themselves through the shimmering portal.

Was Nat visible through the portal this morning? Perry asked himself. No, I was standing in front of it and at the portal was at the wrong angle. But the fact that he had to ask himself that question meant he should start exiting the bedroom before portalling out, lest he one day accidentally give someone a free show.

“Right this way,” Perry said, walking through and waiting until all the aussies had made it before closing the portal.

“Seems kind of…drab?” Dirt mused, scanning the walls.

“Your name’s Dirt.” Perry said.

“True…”

“It’s a pop-up lab. I haven’t really had time to paint it.”

He motioned them to follow him down from the landing area to the lab proper, where every single sample he had collected was being pumped out in larger quantities by biomechanical tanks, visibly oozing venom of some form or another into glass holding jars.

“Whoah, visitors!?” Gna’kis said from her station in the distance, looking every part the nerdy lab-tech side-character from a procedural crime-drama. Which was deliberate, Perry was fairly sure.

The Demon Lord of Sinful Technology sprang out of her seat and hurried over to them, seemingly having difficulty deciding whether to kneel or curtsy, treating her oversized lab coat like a dress.

“My lord, I’ve been subjecting all the samples to different doses against our ‘biological human’ flesh sacks. So far, the mimics have been able to replicate human biology to a surprising degree, and we haven’t had any results that are statistically significant.

“It’s only been one night,” Perry said, handing her the sack full of samples. “Start on that clump of dirt and exploded wasp parts. Get some DNA samples, and see if you can’t find the venom sack. I got a good feeling about it.”

“AS you wish,” she said, curtsy-bowing again.

“These are our guests. Australia Man, Natura, Dirt, Backdraft, and Bob, collectively known as the Aussies.” Perry said, motioning to the five of them. “Aussies, this is Gna’kis.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Gna’kis said, shaking Australia Man’s hand.

“Likewise.”

Perry switched to a more serious tone. “How are the mimics moving?”

“Generally expanding in every direction, from what I can feel in their cybernetic enhancements. No sudden shifts in behavior or direction.”

Gna’kis was a piece of secret surveillance Perry utilized as soon as he knew that the mimics were using cybernetics. Cybernetics being high technology, Gnakis could feel where it was and report back to him.

It wasn’t foolproof though. Not every mimic had the time to design themselves cybernetics, not every cybernetic was in a mimic, and they didn’t bother to tell Gna’kis which was which.

Most of the cybernetics in the wilderness was mimic, but in the city, it was hit or miss due to the population density of people with tinker-tech on or in them.

“You said you wanted to see what a mimic looks like?” Perry asked, glancing back at the Aussies.

They nodded, expressions stoic.

“Follow me.”

***

“Please let me out of here!” The young woman cried, sobbing, her arms wrapped around her naked body defensively, thick streams of black mascara-laden tears working their way down to her chin.

“He’s crazy! He dragged me out of my home! My name’s Carmen Ferris, my mom and dad are probably worried sick! I won’t tell anyone, please! PLEASE!”

“She believes it, too.” Perry said, nodding.

“You’re um…sure you got a mimic there?” Backdraft asked. The rest of the aussies looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“Oh you should’ve seen the fight she put up when we caught her the first time.” Perry “Oh wait, you can. I recorded it.”

Perry motioned and the far wall began projecting a silent image of Ms. Ferris eating the family dog before her parents walked in on her in the living room.

A moment before she eviscerated her parents, Perry showed up and snagged the mimic, dragging her through a portal.

“He’s lying,” the mimic said, sobbing, her face deformed in a perfect imitation of ugly-crying. Well, she actually was ugly crying because Carmen was piloting the meat-suit at the moment. Or she thought she was.

“He’s making that up, I’m human! I’m HUMAN and he’s raping me!”

“Nope.” Perry said with a shrug. It was interesting to see how baseline humans reacted so viscerally to the mimic’s manipulations. Actually, this was also an interesting case study, since the mimic was prompting Carmen’s consciousness to say things that weren’t true, which gave them an indirect window into how the interplay between the two minds went down.

Did it supply those memories, or was it simply urging her to say whatever she had to say to gain their trust? Micro details in Carmens behavior that would reveal whether she was lying or if she believed what she was saying.

“Take a note of this, Gna’kis.”

“Yessir.”

“Don’t worry Carmen, we’re gonna figure out-“

Bob stepped closer to the glass cage, and Carmen exploded into motion, unfolding a massive bone spike tipped with what appeared to be pieces of a girly necklace melted down and reshaped using a tinker-twitch.

A white-hot ball of plasma formed in front of the spike and slammed into the glass, intending to shatter the mimic’s prison through temperature shock.

THUNK! The glass prison shuddered in place as the spike ricocheted off it, the ball of white-hot material failing to have any effect on the Paradoxed glass.

Bob fell onto his ass and scampered backwards.

“A for effort,” Perry said, giving the mimic a thumbs-up. This was one of the weaknesses of the mimic: It didn’t seem to have the patience that Abun’zaul had, to stick it out come hell or high water until it was absolutely sure it had the upper hand. This mimic, while its disguise was as perfect as Abun’zaul’s, would abandon it much more readily.

That kind of made it more dangerous, since it spread quicker, and the cybernetics weren’t doing anyone any favors.

“Well, that concludes the tour.” Perry said, clapping his hands to draw the Aussie’s attention away from the snarling ball of tentacles trying to force its way through the oxygen vent for the thousandth time.

“Would you guys like me to drop you off at camp where Bob can change his pants?”

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