Published at 12th of August 2022 9:16 pm

Book 2: Chapter 119: They Call Me Chell

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Dan stood in his underground bunker, pondering on his power. He’d felt unsatisfied with his progress, recently. His life was much more dangerous than he’d ever thought it would be, and he wasn’t optimistic about things changing any time soon. Dan needed to be better. His close encounter with Cannibal had taught him just how easy it would be for him to lose everything.

While Dan was pretty sure just about everything in existence could be dealt with by a heavy object moving at sufficient velocity, he needed a reliable option somewhere below ‘nuclear strike’. Simple physics made his preferred deterrent impractical within city limits. Given that Dan lived in Austin, a city of over a million people, he really needed an option with less potential for collateral damage.

Dan rubbed his hands together in anticipation: It was time to experiment!

First item on the menu was something Dan had always been curious about, but hadn’t ever confirmed. He could teleport into solid objects, that was a fact. His veil would eat whatever material was blocking his way, assuming it had the capacity. If it didn’t, he would appear as close to his target location as his Navigator could safely get him. These were all things that Dan had discovered while testing out his power. What he hadn’t thought about, hadn’t ever given more than a moment’s consideration to, was what happened to the air that occupied where he appeared.

Marcus Mercury had assumed Dan’s power was swapping space, so whatever matter occupied his new position had been shunted to his previous position. Dan, given his new understanding of his power, was no longer sure that was the case. Maybe it had never been. He hadn’t ever tested it, hadn’t ever defined its limits. Rules were important for power growth. Rules helped a person more perfectly visualize a power’s capabilities, and grow those capabilities in a firm, directed manner. Dan had a pretty good idea of what his power was doing, but he needed to prove it, to affirm that theory into reality.

To perform this experiment, Dan had acquired several bags of flour. He sat one bag on a stool, opened it up, then walked to the opposite side of his basement. He turned on his phone, activated the recording function, and positioned it such that it could observe the entire basement. Dan spun up a ball bearing, letting it fall for only a few moments, before firing it into the bag of flour. White powder ejected into the air upon impact, and Dan willed himself into the cloud.

He emerged, coughing and coated in flour. Dan checked his veil first, noting that he hadn’t snagged any particles despite where he’d chosen to appear. Next, he checked across the room where he’d started. Dan ran a finger along the clean floor. No powder that he could see. Finally, he checked his recording. It showed him appear in the center of the cloud, and the cloud visibly distorted at his appearance. It swirled outwards, like his body had pushed the particles out of the way. No bits of flour had appeared at his starting point.

That answered one question.

Dan reset the experiment, cleaning up the spilled flour before depositing a new bag on the stool. He did the exact same thing, firing a ball bearing at the bag and filling his basement with a new cloud. This time, he willed himself into the cloud with the intent of his veil absorbing the powder. He was once again coated in flour, but this time he could spot a decent chunk of it swirling inside his veil’s hammerspace.

Okay, that was good to know. One final test. Dan willed himself back to his starting position, this time with the intention of absorbing the air occupying his space. He popped back into reality, checked his veil and— Nothing. No air. He knew, instinctively, that his veil lacked the ability to do what he’d asked. It was every bit as limited at traversing empty air as it had always been.

Dan cleaned himself up, took a seat, and considered what he knew.

His veil was a door between t-space and normal reality. He could feel it, shape it, and direct it. His veil could move Dan through itself, along with whatever else he had the energy to carry. That was it. That was, at its core, all he had. The rest of Dan’s tricks relied on Dan’s knowledge and manipulation of t-space.

That was what he knew. Now, how could he abuse it?

Dan drummed his fingers against the cool floor. His mind drifted back to the fight with Cannibal. He remembered the frenzied creature dodging tree trunks and sticky bullets. He remembered it pausing for a moment, and Dan trying something new. He thought back further, to Marcus, to the mad scientist staring at a void in reality, enraptured. Dan looked down at the floor, where his veil pooled in a small, thin circle. Slowly, surely, the clear sapphire gave way to the swirling black of t-space. With a twitch of intent, his veil bubbled over the surface of the window, locking away the cosmic radiation.

Dan wanted to laugh. Marcus had slaved away for a week, nearly driving himself insane, to build a device that could do this. Dan had figured it out how to do it by complete accident. It was useless to him, though. He needed to go further than this. He furrowed his brow, willing his veil to complete the motion, to finish the act that had become all but reflex at this point. He pictured the basement, the very place he sat, only opposite himself. He pictured his veil opening, and staying that way.

Empty space filled with stars flickered, and vanished. Dan found himself staring at… himself. His head was tilted, looking down at the floor where the window had become a door, bordered in swirling sapphire.

“Huh,” Dan said, honestly a little surprised that it had worked.

He looked up and away, towards the opposite end of the room. Another hole in reality was floating there, suspended in mid-air. He could see himself, but from below. Dan moved his arm, watching the strange shift in perspective. After a moment’s thought, and another flex of will, a ball bearing appeared in Dan’s hand. He held it out at waist height and unceremoniously dropped it. It fell through the gateway by his feet, and exited across the room.

Dan grinned triumphantly as he whooped, “Now we’re thinkin’ with portals!”

He leaned down, reaching towards the portal’s surface. He pressed his left hand against it, intending to push through, but some instinct had him stop. It was a feeling of… maybe not danger, but discomfort. It was the same feeling he got when he pulled his veil from his body. It was that vague certainty that things could go terribly wrong if he wasn’t careful. Dan adjusted his motion, closing his hand into a fist and extending his pinky. He pressed the very tip of it past the door’s borders, and watched as the finger emerged across the room.

What would happen if he lost focus here? What would happen if the door closed? Dan suspected he’d lose the finger.

“Alright,” Dan said aloud. “So I can portal-cut myself. What else can I do?”

He regarded the opening at his feet, then slowly, cautiously, stood up. It was easier than he’d expected. Maintaining the door wasn’t nearly as mentally taxing as accelerating t-space had been. Dan figured it was because he was leaning into his power’s concept, rather than doing mental gymnastics. Regardless of the reason, he was able to stay connected to his gateway via a thin thread of veil that extended out from himself. He lengthened the thread as he walked towards his door’s exit, and soon he had swapped positions entirely.

Dan circled his newly created hole in reality. He immediately noted that the door could only be accessed from one direction. It had a ‘front’, so to speak, and the back revealed only the gaping void of t-space. It was the eeriest damn thing he’d ever seen. Dan scowled at it, and focused. His door flickered, then changed its perspective. His view of t-space was replaced with the ceiling, the perspective from the entrance gateway. Dan walked another circle, verifying that the construct was still only facing one way. As he crossed perpendicular to it, he noticed just how incredibly thin the portal was. At a certain angle, it simply vanished from view, like a two-dimensional slice of reality.

Dan nudged his veil, trying to rotate the doorway, but it refused to budge. Another mental nudge, and the entire thing flickered in place, then reappeared, facing a slightly different direction. So, he wasn’t reorienting the door’s exit, so much as just creating an entirely new one. With a shrug, Dan decided that there wasn’t any practical difference. He could do this all day long. He’d just need to work on smoothing out the transition.

He ran down his mental checklist, and bent to scoop up his fallen ball bearing. He carefully positioned it above the portal, angled so that it would touch the construct’s edge from above. Dan slowly, so very slowly, lowered the ball bearing until it brushed against the edge of his door. Then he opened his fingers, and let it fall. The heavy sphere of metal dropped straight through the gateway’s rim, drawn to the floor by the inexorable pull of gravity. Dan’s veil reported an extremely odd sensation. The ball bearing thudded against the floor, then split open like a cracked egg.

Dan stared down at it.

“Huh.”

That was pretty damn cool, but nothing new. Dan could already use his veil to destroy mundane items. The real test came next. Dan, once again using his pinky, gently ran his fingernail against the edge of his door. He applied pressure, and the portal’s edges wavered, and bent. Dan frowned, then pressed harder. There was no resistance as the edge buckled inwards. The view wavered, then vanished. The portion of Dan’s veil he was using to maintain the door snapped back into him.

Dan scowled at the empty space. He was already pretty sure that this wouldn’t work, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up on the idea. The idea of dropping a door in Cannibal’s path, and letting the brute bisect himself was too appealing an image to ignore. Dan spooled out his veil, ready to make another door, when he realized another limitation to this new technique.

The door’s exit could be in the air, but he needed a solid surface for the entrance. Dan’s veil couldn’t traverse the air with any kind of speed or efficiency. It was incredibly impractical for him to create a window in the air, even just a few feet in front of him. That shouldn’t be a huge problem, given these gateways should have the same nigh-infinite range as his teleportation, but it was something Dan needed to keep in mind and plan around.

He had a lot to think about.

But first!

He opened a new door in the wall beside him, and positioned the exit in his living room.

“Abby!” he shouted through the hole in reality, as his girlfriend’s lounging form popped into view. “Come look at what I can do!”

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