Chương 110: No Room for Anxiety

I stopped in the middle of the park walkway, holding my slightly vibrating smartphone in one hand. The call was from an unregistered number. I made a point of never leaving my personal contact information on shady websites or handing it over in exchange for discount coupons, so the odds of this being some routine spam call from a loan broker were practically nonexistent.

"Hello," I said, bringing the phone to my ear.

"This is Captain Hawk with the Military Police Internal Investigations Division," a young male voice said on the other end, accompanied by the unmistakable smack of chewing gum. He was clearly trying to sound official.

"Can I speak to Second Lieutenant Thomas Ross?"

"That's me." I calmly stepped off the paved path and sat down on a wooden bench beneath a broad maple tree, bracing myself for a conversation that probably wasn't going to be pleasant.

"I have a couple of follow-up questions about the incident in Bogotá on July twenty-first." I could hear fingers tapping rhythmically on a keyboard in the background.

"Lieutenant, is now a good time to talk?"

"Sure," I said, feeling a faint sense of cognitive dissonance. In my old frame of reference, a call from an organized authority like the military police meant, at minimum, a summons for a formal interrogation with every breath duly recorded. This, on the other hand, was just a routine phone interview, as if a cable company representative had called to ask how satisfied I was with my internet service.

"According to the initial report, your S-Armor was damaged during the mission and rendered completely inoperable. Please walk me through what happened from the moment you entered the portal." I mentally opened my memory palace and pulled out the dry facts from the very report I had personally typed up and signed after the evacuation. For a second, I had the almost childish urge to read the whole thing back to him word for word, just to rub his nose in the bureaucratic inefficiency of his own department.

The report had been sitting in their database for ages, so this call was nothing but a waste of everyone's time. I quickly suppressed the impulse, though. That kind of petty streak tended to surface after I had spent too much time around Selina, and I had more practical things to worry about. Instead, I simply recounted the events in my own words, condensing three hours of chaos into three minutes of clear, factual narration.

"Got it," the captain said when I finished.

"Thanks for your cooperation, Lieutenant Ross. Someone will be in touch through the official channels." A few short beeps came through the speaker. The call was over. What exactly had that been about? Was the investigator comparing my current account with my original statement, looking for inconsistencies? Or did he just need to check a box on some departmental checklist? Either way, I had gotten nothing useful out of it, which meant the system had once again put me into non-client-facing standby mode.

Still, there was one undeniable benefit I had gotten from the conversation: I had put my upgraded endocrine system to a practical test. Normally, an incoming call from an unfamiliar number gives any reasonably normal person a little jolt of anxiety. It isn't misanthropy or some irrational fear. It's simply the reasonable assumption that people don't call you out of the blue just to ask how you're doing.

They're calling because they need something from you, which means you'll have to spend your personal time dealing with it. The only person who ever calls me for no particular reason is my mom. A conversation with someone from military justice certainly wouldn't have made that feeling any better. Even if your conscience is as clean as a set of books after an audit, the paranoid thought that something unpleasant might be coming still creeps into the back of your mind.

It's like getting an unexpected summons to the CEO's office: you know you're the best specialist in the department, but some part of you still starts calculating how much severance you'd get if you were fired. But this time, my pulse didn't even twitch. No anxiety, no nerves, not the slightest hint of that clammy knot in my stomach. It felt as though I'd spent the last thirty seconds exchanging a few words with my mom about yesterday's episode of some police drama.

That was when I truly appreciated the practical value of the evolution I'd undergone. No expensive psychoanalysis, no personal-growth courses, no meditation. All I'd had to do was eliminate the bugs in my brain chemistry, and I'd become a perfectly balanced, rational human being. In an excellent mood, I got up from the bench and continued on my way. The summer sun no longer burned my shoulders and the back of my neck. My skin calmly absorbed the ultraviolet radiation, converting it directly into usable energy.

Another practical detail occurred to me at the same time: sunscreen wasn't merely useless anymore. It was actually harmful to my new metabolism. I wasn't even remotely tired after walking the three miles to a chain sporting-goods store. As I passed a mirrored storefront, I caught a glimpse of my reflection and noticed something interesting: my posture was still perfectly straight. Before, after a long walk, my back muscles would tighten up, and I'd have to consciously force myself to keep my spine properly aligned.

Now, my upgraded intervertebral discs maintained the entire structure at an optimal angle without any conscious effort on my part. At the store, I picked out a fitted T-shirt, a simple pair of shorts, and a comfortable pair of sneakers in a matter of minutes. I changed right there in the fitting room, stuffed my old clothes into a bag, and headed for the fitness center two blocks away.

"Good afternoon," I said to the girl behind the reception desk, where cool air from the AC washed over her.

"I paid for a single visit through your website about an hour ago. Thomas Ross."

"One second, Mr. Ross." Her fingers flew across the laptop keyboard. After checking the information on the screen, she nodded and handed me a plastic key bracelet.

"Everything's good. Your payment went through. The locker room and showers are down the hall on the right." This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Thanks." I'd already taken a step toward the gym when she called me back.

"Mr. Ross, would you mind answering a couple of questions?" She quickly pulled up a survey on the screen, her fingers ready to type.

"It's a quick survey about our service. It'll only take a couple of minutes." The usual pushy customer-service routine. In the past, that kind of minor delay would have triggered a dull irritation inside me, even if I kept it carefully hidden. But now, I didn't feel the slightest urge to sigh, roll my eyes, or otherwise show my annoyance. The irritation simply wasn't there. My hormonal balance kept the entire system at a perfect zero. She wasn't some annoying girl trying to hit her daily data-collection quota.

She was just an ordinary employee doing exactly what her job required.

"Fine. Go ahead and ask your questions." I deliberately glanced at the wall clock.

"Just get to the point, please. I don't have much time."

"Mm-hmm, sure." The girl hurriedly got to work, the tip of her tongue sticking out slightly in concentration as she tapped at the keyboard with one fingernail.

"What's the main purpose of your workouts?"

"Work-related necessity."

"Oh, I see. Police work." She jumped to her own conclusion, quickly sizing up my broad shoulders and military bearing with a practiced eye.

"And why did you choose our gym?"

"An analysis of industry websites showed that you have the fewest customers between noon and five p. m." I gave the clock another quick glance.

"I prefer to work without distractions."

"Oh, I get it. I won't bother you anymore. There are just a couple of questions left…" By keeping my answers as brief and to the point as possible, I finished the entire survey in exactly three minutes. With the formalities out of the way, I headed toward a row of metal lockers to stash my civilian clothes, but the receptionist's voice caught up with me just as I reached the locker room entrance.

"Mr. Ross!" With the energy of a seasoned promoter, the girl pulled a chilled plastic bottle filled with bright yellow liquid from a glass-fronted refrigerator.

"Would you like to try our new vitamin and mineral complex? It's great for cleansing your skin, flushing out toxins, and…"

"Not interested." I raised an open hand, cutting off her sales pitch mid-sentence.

"I don't need any extras. My priority right now is getting through a proper workout. If nobody interferes with the process, I'll consider getting a monthly membership when I'm done." I left the girl blinking after me, trying to process what I had said, and walked into the locker room. The sensation was interesting. There was no lingering guilt over being curt, no pointless second-guessing along the lines of, "Should I rephrase that so I don't come across as rude?"

The whole little encounter with aggressive marketing was processed and discarded instantly, without leaving a trace, with about the same emotional impact as closing a spam notification in my inbox. My upgraded brain was now operating at one hundred percent efficiency, ruthlessly dumping the background mental garbage that consumed processing power for years in most people. And living with that kind of mental framework turned out to be damn convenient. I locked my bag in a locker and stepped into the main gym.

The equipment had seen better days. The faux leather on some of the benches was cracked, and the paint had chipped off the weight plates. This was a far cry from the high-end facility for professional athletes in Los Angeles, with its isolated training stations, where I was used to working out. It was a budget option with a more modest selection of equipment, but more than adequate for an initial assessment of my upgraded physiology.

The biggest advantage was that there genuinely wasn't a single other person in the gym at the moment. On autopilot, I started my usual warm-up, getting my joints ready for heavy weights, but within a couple of minutes I realized the basic warm-up was pointless. The newly formed network of microarteries was pumping oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood with such intensity that my muscle fibers and ligaments remained in a constant state of one-hundred-percent readiness for maximum exertion.

That strange sensation of being instantly ready sent me back to my childhood for a moment, to the days when Megan's first whistle was enough to send me flying off the couch, onto my bike, and pedaling at full speed for three miles to the ice cream shop whenever a new flavor hit the shelves before anyone else in town had even heard about it.

Once you're in your thirties, sudden bursts like that without any preparation are something you have to forget if you don't want to end up with a simple muscle strain or a pinched sciatic nerve. And that's not just an issue for ordinary people. Even professional athletes spend half an hour on mobility and joint exercises before every training session. To test my mechanics, I walked over to the pull-up bar beside a tall window. I did several strict pull-ups without swinging, and they were completely silent.

Direct sunlight fell across my shoulders, and I could physically feel my epidermis absorbing the gentle ultraviolet radiation and instantly converting it into a burst of bioenergy. I moved to the treadmill, set the speed to maximum on the console, and broke into a sprint. My breathing remained steady, and my cardiovascular system barely registered the peak exertion. Incidentally, the absence of my little toes had noticeably changed the biomechanics of my stride.

The point where force transferred through my foot had shifted, making the foot more springy and streamlined. After a couple more test sets and a final confirmation that my muscles were functioning properly, I decided to move on to the main phase. [Special command: Conduct an effective full-body workout. Cancel the workout when people enter.] For the first time in months, after such a long period of stagnation, the removed limit finally made itself known. The command worked.

My consciousness instantly shifted into a state of hyperfocus. It was as though I were watching my own body from the outside, operating at the limits of its kinematic capabilities in an accelerated interval routine while methodically pushing beyond the boundaries imposed by nature. A sharp click from the mechanical lock at the gym entrance snapped me out of hyperfocus. Three men in athletic clothes entered the room. I glanced at the electronic wall clock. Five p. m.

I had been under continuous maximum exertion for almost three hours, yet even that amount of work had not been enough to completely exhaust my new reserves and raise my attributes to the next level. It was frustrating to have to stop the workout halfway through, but there was no way I could keep working at that insane pace with other people watching.

Anyone spending hours lifting absurd amounts of weight without stopping for a break or even drinking water was bound to attract unwanted attention and raise a whole host of awkward questions. I set myself a new task: find a private, fully isolated gym with no staff and no surveillance cameras. Even if renting such a facility cost a small fortune, I needed to find out exactly where my current limits were. A quick shower. My T-shirt was soaked through and could have been wrung out.

After changing back into my civilian clothes, I left the building and stepped into the cool air. Halfway to the hotel, my pocket vibrated again. The same restricted Military Police number appeared on the screen. What was it this time? Had they forgotten to include the S-Armor serial number in the report?

"Hello," I said.

"Second Lieutenant Ross, we've completed the official review of your case," said Captain Hawk's same youthful voice.

"A vehicle will pick you up tomorrow to present you with a medal. Be sure to wear your dress uniform." I stopped dead on the sidewalk for a second. That was the last thing I had expected.