Chương 54: Biological Overclock

I cracked my eyes open and spent a few seconds staring at the gray ceiling of the medical unit, slowly pulling myself back into reality after another training session. Without wasting time, I mentally summoned the interface and checked the numbers. S-Power: 196/196 Hmm. Only the third reserve training session, and the math was already starting to disappoint me. The increase was sixty points lower than last time. The graph was steadily trending downward, and with every cycle the curve would flatten even more.

Just the physics of the process. Nothing could be done about it. According to Selina's introductory lectures and Danny's personal observations, the growth dynamics of S-Power were highly individual. Everything depended on the energy demands of a specific ability and the age when you first awakened the damn upgrade. Danny, for example, gained forty points after his very first full depletion and recharge cycle. My body, meanwhile, produced its first pathetic increase only after forty brutal cycles.

From there, the ratio would only get worse, demanding more effort for less return. A textbook case of diminishing returns. I already had a couple of ideas for optimizing this "sleep-training" method, but the camp strictly limited S-Power access to a single hour per day. Under those conditions, there was not much room for experimentation. I would have to postpone the optimization process until better times, when I finally got out of this prison and into something resembling freedom.

Still, solitary confinement came with a few minor perks you would never get in the shared barracks. Like a personal laptop with a functioning webcam. Before passing out, I had angled the screen so the camera could capture both me and part of the floor. I wanted to see what my controlled sleepwalking actually looked like from the outside. I started the playback. The sight was... peculiar.

The screen showed my motionless body stretched across the floor with my eyes closed while the defensive dome around me flickered in jagged pulses, flashing on and off like a malfunctioning neon sign. Worse still, transparent force platforms kept manifesting beneath my feet and palms before dissolving again almost instantly. My brain, trapped inside the rigid time limit, had found the most logical way to dump the excess energy reserve growth. It had pushed both available subroutines to maximum output.

I forced myself to watch the footage to the end, then deleted the file without hesitation and cleared the cache. Useful information for the future: probably best not to turn into a glowing nightmare around children. The younger cadets were already twitchy enough as it was. If my performances started giving them insomnia, the Corps would quickly slap me with "psychological harm to minors" and issue a formal reprimand. Right at six in the evening, the lock on the hermetic door clicked open.

Selina stepped into the unit wearing a rustling protective suit. In her hands were two plastic cases, both painfully familiar. One was the standard military thermal food container. The other was made of matte medical-grade plastic.

"Tom, I've got great news," she said as she dropped the cases onto the table without ceremony.

"The center called me back. My Dengue vaccine showed a one hundred percent positive result during testing."

"Our vaccine," I corrected evenly as I pulled the lunchbox latches toward me. The room immediately filled with the thick, garlicky smell of fried chicken and spices. Real fast food, the kind that could make any normal person weak in the knees.

"So when do I start getting royalty payments?" I asked, spearing the first piece with my fork.

"When we start getting them," Selina corrected with pointed emphasis as she sat down across from me.

"In this partnership, I'm the creator and the pure genius. You're just the muse. I'm John Lennon, and you're my Yoko Ono. Clear enough?"

"Call it whatever you want. The business plan stays the same," I said, ignoring her usual arrogance as I bit into the juicy, crispy skin with genuine satisfaction.

"Any concrete numbers yet?"

"A percentage from the sales'll be transferred to our personal accounts as distribution expands," she replied with a careless wave, as though she were discussing pocket change instead of a multimillion-dollar Health Department contract.

"But don't expect quick payouts. We've still got phase three clinical trials, FDA certification, production rollout, and distribution logistics across the States and South America. Figure about a year before the first serious payments."

"That works for me. A year's perfectly reasonable for a long-term investment. The important part's making sure accounting doesn't 'forget' my share," I said, locking eyes with her.

"You understand that if you underpay the muse, she might lose inspiration and switch agencies."

"Oh, spare me the accounting paranoia. Two curious minds with our capabilities'll never be broke," Selina said as her hand drifted toward the second sealed medical case.

"Want to know what's inside this time?"

"No. And I won't until I finish dinner," I cut in, returning to the chicken. I had no intention of mixing the clean dopamine hit of real food with her virological horror stories. About ten minutes later, after the plate was empty, I wiped my hands with a napkin, carefully sealed the thermobox, and pushed it to the edge of the table. Showing too much disrespect toward my only connection to the outside world would have been stupid.

"Now you've got my full attention. Go ahead."

"We successfully completed the immune response protocol using a previously studied, classical disease model," Selina said in a dry, deliberately formal tone. Apparently my obsession with money had bruised her ego after all.

"Now we're raising the bar. We're moving on to strains modern medicine can only manage through supportive therapy and symptom control, without a complete therapeutic solution. Hepatitis B. Sign this." She pulled a thick stack of documents from beneath the case: the standard informed consent form and liability waiver protecting the Corps from legal action.

"The paperwork got about three times thicker this round," I noted as I flipped through the cover pages and quickly assessed the volume of fine print.

"What changed?"

"The difference, Tom, is that unlike Dengue, I don't have a fallback plan here. If the process goes wrong, I won't be able to cure you," Selina said, briefly dropping the mask of the cynical researcher. Something disturbingly close to ordinary human concern flickered in her eyes.

"If your adaptive system can't handle the strain, you'll develop a chronic condition and spend the rest of your life swallowing expensive pills every morning. Think carefully, Tom. Are the potential dividends worth that risk?"

"Instead of guessing, why don't we ask the original source directly? My immune system."

"What do you mean?" She froze for a second, then her eyes lit up behind her glasses with sudden excitement.

"You want to use [Special Command] to establish direct communication with your subconscious?" If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Exactly. My white blood cells and liver cells currently have a much clearer understanding of their defensive capacity than every Corps medical board combined. Either they can handle the load or they can't."

"I seriously doubt a biological compiler's capable of generating an accurate forecast from a non-invasive marker."

"We lose nothing by running a system audit." I pulled the multipage contract closer and began reading carefully, paragraph by paragraph, feeding my memory palace with dry medical facts, Latin terminology, symptom profiles, and physiological markers of liver damage caused by Hepatitis B. I needed a rigid, structured database. When I finished reading, I opened a blank text document on the laptop, placed my fingers over the keyboard, and prepared to issue an internal command.

[Special Command: generate a report on the potential for developing stable immunity to Hepatitis B] My fingers moved across the keyboard on their own, rattling off keystrokes with the dry, rapid-fire precision of a veteran typist. I barely managed to register the lines appearing on the screen out of the corner of my mind, and by the time the mental haze cleared, a finished log was already sitting in front of me.

Based on verified biometric data and the results of previous adaptation cycles involving the [Familiar], the probability of developing a complete immune response after infection is 100%. The liver's cellular structure is fully capable of neutralizing the strain without allowing the pathology to progress into a chronic phase. I let out a quiet snort as I reread the text. Unbelievable.

Apparently, when my subconscious switched into system-dialog mode, it sounded like someone had uploaded a miniature copy of Selina into my skull along with her entire medical library.

"Tom, tell me this isn't your stupid sense of humor," Selina said, practically glued to the monitor as she reread the same three lines for what had to be the twentieth time.

"Tell me your immune system actually ran this audit."

"Numbers don't lie, Selina. My body gave us a clean balance sheet. The risks're within acceptable limits." That was all it took to set her off. The excitement that flared in the fanatic researcher's eyes was intense enough to make me want to slide my chair back a few inches.

"My God, Tom! This's unprecedented! You could literally ask your liver for its exact critical alcohol tolerance right now! Or ask your knee joint for the projected cartilage degradation percentage by age forty! Or ask your spleen what specific microclinical failure caused that spasm ten days ago at exactly noon! Ask it, Tom! Right now!"

"If I start burning resources to satisfy your academic curiosity, we'll have to shut down the current protocol," I said, nodding toward the matte plastic case.

"The [Special Commands] limit's a hard resource cap. I'm not wasting the budget on trivia."

"You really are the most painfully grounded, unromantic machine I've ever met," she muttered, biting her lip in disappointment, though she didn't argue further.

"Fine. Back to business." She popped open the locks on the case. But before she could fill the syringe with whatever transparent nightmare she had brought this time, I caught her wrist, took the syringe from her hand, and activated another built-in safety function I had discovered during my first days after awakening, back when I started testing it on unhealthy food. [System risk assessment for the Familiar after infection with the specified strain] [Threat level: negligible. The Trainer's presence vector activates accelerated regeneration and minimizes the virus's latent phase.] Excellent. Another solid reason not to panic. With a passive buff like the [Trainer]'s presence, I could practically ignore most medical threats on Earth. Without a word, I handed the syringe back to Selina and exposed my shoulder. The needle slid in smoothly.

After that, the process followed the usual routine: a controlled low-grade fever spike, immediate mobilization of internal resources, antibody production, and a final blood draw for her future patents. A week passed in that rhythm. The medical unit turned into a processing line for biological threats. Selina kept bringing in new strains, and my body methodically ground them into dust while producing flawless immunity markers. Three sessions a day, no weekends, no breaks.

"I respect the hell out of your work ethic," I said lazily while rolling up the sleeve of my thick military T-shirt for another injection.

"But where's the rush coming from? According to every scientific project protocol in existence, you're supposed to spend weeks marinating each sample, recording metrics, and writing mountains of reports."

"First of all, Tom, don't forget that my specialization's [Engineer], not a theoretical lab tech," she replied as she drove the needle beneath my skin with the smooth precision of pure muscle memory.

"I don't need years of observation. I only need to see once how your immune system restructures protein chains to counter a specific virus. Once I've got the base template, I can throw together a commercial serum in my sleep. It's the FDA and Health Department bureaucrats who demand hundreds of testing phases to cover their asses. I couldn't care less about paperwork."

"In that sense, our operating methods're pretty similar," I said, closing my eyes as the familiar medicinal drowsiness spread through my veins.

"I can't optimize my training until I've collected a full set of input data either. So what's the 'second of all'?"

"And second, Tom, some major pharmaceutical corporations somehow caught wind of our closed testing program. Now they're throwing every lobbying resource they've got at the Pentagon. I want to squeeze every possible result out of your body before Washington sends an official order shutting the project down." I opened one eye and rested my chin against my hands. The drowsiness vanished instantly.

Deep inside, my inner accountant had just woken up, and someone was apparently trying to steal a massive yearly bonus right out from under her nose.

"Okay, slow down and explain that part in detail. What's their angle?"

"What do you think?" Selina let out an irritated snort as she dropped the used syringe into the disposal unit.

"Pharmaceutical giants don't want a cheap, fully functional cure hitting the market that can permanently wipe out Hepatitis B or HIV in a single treatment cycle."

"Of course not. Lifelong therapy and maintenance drugs generate trillions in clean annual profit," I said with a cynical grin, fully understanding the monstrous but perfectly rational math behind the market.

"So what now? Should I start checking hallway corners for corporate assassins?"

"These people don't have the guts to go head-to-head with the Corps and the U. S. military," Selina scoffed.

"But they've got other tools. They want to slow our scientific progress to a crawl through lawsuits and oversight committees. They'll try to bury us under regulations so these vaccines don't hit the market for another five years. Preferably ten. Long enough for them to adapt." I frowned. The idea that my future royalty checks, which I had already mentally earmarked for a nice house far away from this camp, might get delayed indefinitely burned at me from the inside.

"Can we get around the legal blockade somehow?"

"On a large scale? No," Selina said with a heavy sigh as she leaned against the edge of the table.

"We'll have to maneuver around it. The first products to reach the open market'll be the ones pharma companies don't have any solutions for, or diseases tied to mandatory government vaccination programs. They've got no counterplay there."

"Speaking of heavy artillery," I said as I stood up and rolled my shoulders. My body had already completely metabolized the latest cocktail without leaving behind even a trace of weakness.

"Did you notice I dealt with Marburg hemorrhagic fever almost twice as fast as I handled ordinary Dengue back in the beginning?"

"Obviously I noticed. Your adaptive system works like a self-learning neural network. Every new virus forces your immune system to become more sophisticated, build additional defensive layers, and optimize its response timing. Right now, Tom, your biological defenses're so absurdly advanced that you could walk into a room full of terminal pulmonary plague patients, spend the night there, and not even sneeze."

"That actually sounds pretty good on a résumé," I said, looking down at my palms while sensing a strange, monolithic density deep within every cell of my body.

"So what's next on the schedule, doc? What's tonight's menu?"

"We're almost out of Earth-based viral strains in storage. Unless something unexpected happens, we'll finish this registry within a couple more days."

"And then we finally move on to dessert? Start testing extraterrestrial pathogens scraped out of alien corpses?"

"Easy there, cowboy," Selina said, shutting down my enthusiasm as she snapped the sample case shut.

"First you're going back to the main barracks and rejoining the other cadets for regular training. If I want access to the alien strains in the restricted vault, I'll need a mountain of approvals and General Crowley's personal signature."

"But for a genius engineer like you, that's just a formality, right?"

"We'll see, Tom. We'll see," she replied vaguely before disappearing through the hermetic door in a rustle of protective fabric.