Chương 116: Freedom

"I don't get it." The aftermath of the revelation was flat and silent. Doctor Tudor led me out to another room so we could discuss things privately. That was where I made the assertion of just not understanding what he was talking about. That I wasn't strong. That I wasn't durable. That it was all something else entirely, something far more substantial, and I wasn't able to comprehend it. It just made me feel like a moron. Like a fish trying to understand water.

"What specifically don't you grasp? I want to help you understand your abilities as best as we can postulate."

"Just… all of it. Like what do you mean I can control gravity?" Flicking through some papers, his large eyes flicked through the text as he spoke. It seemed to be some form of multitasking, as the words he spoke didn't carry the rhythm of recitation.

"So obviously we've only just verified all the exterior details, but I can go over postulations from myself and Agent Casney, who was the initial proponent of the theory."

"Casney was the one who came up with it?"

"Indeed. Casney's fought numerous superhumans with various forms of super strength. His expertise on superhumans is quite specialized, and he's a pretty sharp judge on identifying powersets. He will likely be pleased as punch to learn he was correct." When did Casney even put that together? Was it from that fight? Was it some time after? Why didn't he tell me?

"What… what were his theories?" I asked, as the doctor gestured to a chair for me to sit in. I complied, barely able to stay on my own two feet.

"From his perspective, he thinks you can alter or produce localized fields of gravity in all sorts of ways. Presently we believe it's exclusively from your body, but moments like when you let that shout out before fighting Brother Gleditsia for the second time? That caused a seismic event. To me, that indicates you should be able to assert gravitational force without any adjacency or physical connection, possibly." I thought of that yell.

I thought I was just yelling so hard my eyes were vibrating, my own body shaking. I didn't realize I was shaking the ground around me. How many other things was I just not noticing?

"And by localized fields, what do you mean?" Tudor put the papers down, before steepling his fingers.

"Let's use a direct example. In your fight with Technofiend, where you struck with enough force to split a hole in the air. What likely happened is you produced a sort of gravitational 'tube' where the force of your impact was heavy enough to 'fall' upwards and through the sky, with enough force to split a cloud in half." But it didn't feel any different than normal. All I thought about was hitting harder. I wasn't thinking about anything like gravity tubes or something like that. That made no sense.

"But then why am I more durable?"

"The same function. You're producing gravity wells for split seconds that are so steep and counter-operative that most blows feel like they're punching walls. In theory the opposite effect may sometimes occur, where instead momentum is sapped from a punch or the weight is counteracted upon through a gravity field. Your brain is likely subconsciously deciding these on the fly." Casney mentioned hitting me felt like he was striking a bunker. But wait, no, there was-"But when I grab stuff, I rip chunks out.

I can't grab stuff normally or I put finger-holes in whatever I'm holding. How does that work?" He leaned back in his seat.

"Again, the same function. You're exerting multiple gravity fields from your fingers, meaning significantly more weight impacting those surfaces you're holding." I shook my head.

"But the falls. Wouldn't I be falling slower? Why do I fall and move around at the same speeds?"

"That one I've been trying to rectify. My present theory is your body will actively exert multiple, consecutive gravitational counter-forces to the impact going up through your body, mitigating impact and letting you land harmlessly. My reasoning for that is in the latter tests with the flour and the smoke. I noticed in the photos there were numerous micro-shifts in the billowing around your body. If it were tactile telekinesis, they wouldn't have moved like that at all." He then rolled his hand.

"And if it were just you being largely invincible with no active forces being used to influence what makes contact with you, the smoke and flour would've billowed a lot more." The scientist then pointed a finger at me.

"Now think about this. Why can you be cut? Why can you be stabbed? Tough hides should prevent those as well, don't you think?" The cleaver. The spiked wood in my arms. The teeth that grew out of Gleditsia's legs.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"Those have more complex interactions. Ones too complex for a subconscious brain to just stir up compared to resisting or augmenting blunt impacts. And that ties in with your brain," he explained, tapping the side of his head.

"This would explain why your threat modeling or tapping into greater strength has neurological context."

"How?"

"Your subconscious mind already has to handle so many tasks related to sensory perception, bodily regulation, and more. You've added the extra task of manipulating a fundamental force of nature in the shape of bodily augmentation. That would likely be very, very taxing. When the brain is overwhelmed on information, it simply starts clearing excess material for the current task, similar to a starving body eating itself."

"But it took so many memories from me. Ones that defined who I was. I'm apparently a completely different person than I was before. Why would it happen like that?"

"Your nervous system is not sentimental, that's your endocrine system that handles that. So it just clears out wrinkles that would be in the way of any task. Some I think are simply repressed, like the ones needed to function as a human in terms of socialization and more complex sensory perception."

"…And when I lost most of my childhood memories?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. He sat up, resting his hands on the table.

"I think your younger mind actively chose to sacrifice long-term memory for the purpose of maximizing that gravitational control for that moment. Killing a kaiju is, normally, quite impossible. Their body increases in density the further and further you get inside. Have you heard of Zeno's Paradox?" I squinted, trying to recall it, then shook my head.

"It's formatted as an old Greek fable. The warrior-hero Achilles chooses to race a tortoise. The tortoise is given a head start of about one hundred meters. When Achilles catches up and hits that one hundred meter point, the tortoise has already moved ten more meters, meaning he has to cross that distance too. Once he hits that point, the tortoise has moved another two meters, meaning Achilles must close that gap as well. This goes on, with a smaller and smaller but uncloseable distance."

"…I think I get it, but could you give it to me a bit more simply? I'm still working through everything else."

"Certainly. My point is that every time you get a bit further into a kaiju's body, the deeper you penetrate, the thicker the further material gets, until it gets so dense that the overall force needed to fully rip through one is almost incomprehensible. It's not truly infinite, we have the dead kaiju to prove that. It's a lot of force to not only make a kaiju burst into viscera, but what you did also permanently marred the bedrock beneath it, a few thousand feet below it."

"I put a lot of force in."

"Correct. So much so that it was too complex for a child's mind, requiring your brain to accept the tax of memory loss, frontal lobe damage, and other things. You still have the powers, and some measure of your brain still remembers the basics, likely auxiliary functions you'd developed and practiced, which now seem to be your only fluent access to gravity control." I glanced around at the walls, at the ceiling. They were the same as when I came in, but it all just felt different to look at now.

"…I still don't really get it."

"Could you clarify?"

"Just… I know it's gravity now. But I don't get how that changes what I can do. I don't know how to suddenly stop making it drive me crazy when I use more of my powers. I still don't know how to not lose myself in my head whenever I'm trying to think more seriously about something. My powers don't feel any different just because you told me about them." Dr. Tudor smiled, getting up from his seat.

"They're not supposed to feel different. Your power has never been anything else, you're just now able to start recognizing them. To be clear, I don't recommend immediately reframing your understanding of how you function with this knowledge. That's too much."

"What do I do then?"

"Act as normal. I would not advertise to your enemies how your power works when you yourself do not remember all the details yet. But take the understanding of what makes it work, and try to practice some very simple tasks that specifically control over gravity would make easier. Oh, here's a great homework assignment. Get a bottle of water, leave it half-full. Just turn it up and down in your hand, and try to see if you can make the water fall down slower, or move a little differently."

"…But how would I do that?" He shrugged.

"Leo, I don't have gravity powers. I don't even know why you have them. Most superpowers don't have a tangible 'why' to them, even the ones with stated origins don't have a mechanism that explains how A got to B. You just need to test it out with what you know. For now, just act like you have your super strength and your durability, but also gravity powers. Like an extra one." I took a deep breath and nodded.

"Alright."

"Wonderful. You're all set with the mask and collar, by the way," he remarked, holding his small hands out. I handed him the items, not even realizing how comfortably they sat on me. Turns out when you're not being electrocuted by the devices you wear, you don't even notice them. Placing them on the desk, he nodded to me.

"I'll be going over those for some biomarkers, see if we can find any triggers to see what might get you in the appropriate state of mind for better power experimentation. But you've done good today, alright sport? You're all set, go find your boss. And go let Casney know he won his stupid bet." Nodding, I exited the room and began my search for Tancred. The balding asshole was nowhere to be found, and I had to start asking random researchers and staffers where he had gone.

Some were able to point me in the appropriate direction, saying Tancred was looking for Casney, which I found a bit concerning given I knew the two had a habit of clashing with each other. What worried me further was I noticed that several staffers I had seen before were completely missing, with no signs of where they were. When I brought that up with one SC staffer, they gave me a very disquieted look. Like I mentioned some off-color topic, and they refused to give context. They just shooed me along.

Going off of the clues and cues from others, I managed to find where Tancred was. It was a further corner in the facility, where he was standing by the door to a room that had a label: OFFICE OF AGENT HENRY CASNEY Tancred had a near tomato-red face, and was focused on pinching the bridge of his nose. The ground seemed to thud and shake a bit beneath our feet rigidly, though I heard no impacts. The office must have been similarly soundproofed.

"Hey, Tancred, where's Casney?" I asked, beginning to approach the door.

"Doctor Tudor wanted me to let him kno-" The agent immediately got in the way, arms spanned out over the door, body-blocking it.

"Absolutely not! Nope! Stay the Hell out!"

"What the Hell's wrong with you?" I asked, flinching back from the sudden motion. The mustached man let out a sigh as his body relaxed.

"Casney was acting a bit weird earlier, and I knew the look on his face, so I went to find him. Lo and behold he is in his office. Presently going through every woman in the building."

"…Going through…?" I partly understood the meaning, but not the reasoning.

"Yeah, he…" He pinched the bridge of his nose again.

"Has Casney actually explained his powers to you?"

"No?"

"So, Casney is a very, very old man. He was a founding member of the Sons of Liberty. You're in college, so you've probably seen a lot of conspiracy theories, like George Washington being a Freemason or something." Still struggling to grasp the context, I just listened in hopes we'd reach a tangible destination.

"This was… technically true. All of the Founding Fathers were into the occult, in a sort of gentleman's club way, not really out of any moral bankruptcy or something. They were trying to pile resources together to fight the British. One of them discovered a ritual that we don't have information on and Casney will not divulge. But Casney willingly let himself be the guinea pig for it. It bonded his soul to the idea of the American Empire or something." There was a destination, and it was not very tangible.

"And that means…?"

"He can't die so long as America exists. But it drove him pretty nuts. And he seems to have some sort of primal connection to the country itself. When things are about to put parts of the country through rigors it… excites him. A month before Pearl Harbor, he caused a 40% increase in divorce rates over infidelity in Washington D. C." My stomach churned at the mental image of that. But the prior sentences started to piece together what Tancred was implying.

"Wait, so-""Yeah. At this scale, it's gonna be something local. How soon, I don't kno-" The door slammed open. Casney, barely clothed enough to be deemed decent, leathery old skin bright red, eyes wide and pupils narrow, stinking of vulgar substances. He spoke with a tone comparable to a boar's grunts." I am the beast of freedom. I smell the times ahead. And I know a great test is coming." Henry Casney smiled. That was the last day he spoke to us.

According to Tancred, he noted that he would be monitoring the Virginia situation much more closely but separately from us until his symptoms subsided.