Chương 8: 9. Beyond Humanity

There were mercs in the sky, clinging to the pristine upper levels of the skyscrapers like geckos who'd attended too many corporate seminars and decided that invisibility was the logical next step. They had the camouflage technology to back it up. They also had the budget—someone's budget, anyway. Kelly tapped her temple. Her ocular lenses flashed, connecting with her goggles, pulling the distant invisible figures into perfect focus, and the sky abruptly filled with things that technically weren't there.

They hung there like patient vultures that had somehow acquired middle management experience, invisible to the creatures that flew around them. Augmented to the point where their reflexes probably had their own reflexes. The same ones who'd killed her nine times, which seemed excessive until you realized it wasn't—it was just nine times of being slightly not quite fast enough, which in the mercenary business was the difference between a strategic victory and a parking ticket.

In her first run on the building she hadn't even seen through their camouflage until it was too late. They'd materialized at very close range, introduced themselves through her ribs, and she'd learned the hard way that invisibility plus patience plus augmented reflexes equals a situation where 'we can work this out' doesn't apply. A problem you couldn't brute force your way through, either.

These mercs had less equipment than the ones that fought the troll—they were leaner, lighter—with less mechanical reinforcement, fewer cybernetic seams, less visible alterations, none of the high-end augmentation signatures that screamed "walking war machine" she'd grown to associate with the corporate mercenaries that prowled the city. That meant they had more organic, genetic modifications. Which meant money. A lot of money.

They'd cut her down every time she tried to breach the building—too fast, tough, and too well-trained. She'd been gunned down mid-step, even had her ribs caved in by a single punch, again and again, until the loops had burned their movements into her memory. But after enough loops, she caught the sleek insignia stamped onto their gear—DNA strands coiled into the shape of an ouroboros.

"GeneCorp," Kelly muttered, "Vaughn Industries' direct competition. Genetic augments, top-class bioware—the whole nine yards." A leader and developer of genetic augmentation and high-end biological enhancement. Their market niche. Kelly watched one of them sink his fingers into a reinforced panel, metal buckling like wet plywood.

"So. If they're here, it's to steal, sabotage, or both. And with finger strength that could pull secrets out of a metal vault and moans out of a saint? Plenty of reasons to believe they can pull it off." The first few loops in the Lab run had been trial and error, death by invisible mercs, but then she started paying attention. In the loops, she learned their movements, their formations, the way they coordinated without a word. It wasn't that they dodged her bullets—the ones that went after hadn't been that fast.

But it was worse. They reacted. Instantly. Like, they'd fought her before. Like they'd memorized every twitch, shift, and every microscopic tell before she even pulled the trigger. It was probably how it felt for everyone else fighting her. So she was adapting. Ditching the gun as a main weapon and keeping it secondary, while programming a new unpredictable shape into her molecular weapon. Kelly ran her tongue over her teeth, already thinking through the next attempt. They were in her way.

The final wall between her and the secrets buried in her lab—the status panel, the portals, the nature of magic itself. They were better, sure. Stronger, faster, smarter. But so was she. The loops were not a curse. They were the best goddamn learning tool in history. If they thought they could keep her out forever, they were underestimating the hell out of her. They could kill her a hundred times, a thousand, it didn't matter.

She'd keep coming, keep trying, keep clawing forward until she cracked reality open with her own two hands. Jackhammer—another Vaughn employee stuck outside—gestured at the mercenaries.

"You want to help me clear them out? Normally I wouldn't put you at risk, but after seeing what you can do, it would make things easier. Split their numbers. Everyone inside's already followed protocol and headed to the safe rooms. It's just us."

"First of all, I work alone." Kelly, still sprawled on the ground, squinted at him.

"Second of all, I have a 2. 84 EQ, Jack. That's barely above 'breaks doors on accident' levels. Those guys are walking Tank divisions, and the other four are Thresholders, I think one of them is an Elite. That's barely even a fight, it'll be a physics demonstration." She could kick a door off its hinges, vault walls with ease, and outsprint or react better than trained baseline athletes. But that was where the perks ended. Above baseline.

No superhuman durability, no tearing through walls, no crushing metal with her bare hands. Being stronger, having 284% strength, above baseline, sounded good on paper—but in practice? It just meant she had to fight smarter. Jackhammer folded his arms.

"Bullshit. I saw you carve through those goblins like you were filleting fish."

"Yeah, because goblins have an EQ score of 'dies when you look at them funny, and theirs hardly ever fluctuates." Her ocular lenses had analysed the goblins' movements and biological feats, returning an average score of 2. 0-4. 0 EQ, they were only between twice-to-four times as strong as the average human—usually—which was probably why they always roamed in packs. Where Kelly could easily lift a loaded motorbike, they could lift a car.

Where she could only dent a thick composite steel baseball bat with a powerful squeeze, fingers barely digging into the metal to deform it like hardened clay… they could completely crush reinforced human skulls and with some effort, bend high-carbon composite steel, which was more durable than regular steel. But with their strength it would only bend, not break.

Overall, it wasn't that big of a difference; like a guy who lifted weights twice a week going up against a full-on bodybuilder; if the weaker guy was an immortal, battle-trained fighter who knew every move in advance, the bodybuilder might as well be a really meaty punching bag. Kelly tapped her temple, pointing to the mercs in the sky.

"Those guys? At least one of them is sitting at a solid above-60 Enhancement Quotient. Maybe two of them. Six-thousand percent stronger than baseline and everything in between. Trust me, I checked." Enhancement levels were divided into clear groups. Baselines ranged from 0 to 1, the ordinary population. Enhanced ranged from 1 to 6, people with mild augmentations. The Superhuman Threshold started at 6 and went up to 20, and anyone in that range was called a Thresholder.

Experts sat between 20 and 30, specialists whose EQ—Enhancement Quotient—made them masters of their fields. Tanks filled the 30 to 60 range, heavy and built for endurance or force. Above 60 were the Elites, few in number and nearly untouchable. Beyond them existed another class altogether, so far beyond reason that people called them the upper echelon, or demigods only half as a joke. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Baseline humans were walking obituaries—too slow and weak. Too easy to turn into a red mist. Most people were born at the peak of baseline if they had health insurance. But even at the peak of what a normal human could do, even an EQ at 4. 0 meant punching through concrete and catching knives mid-air just to flex. At 4. 0, dodging mid-sprint was a reflex, and running fast enough to crack pavements was just a commute. By 12. 0—or even 6.

0 if your score was lesser, or they were perception specialists—you would need predictive targeting to even stand a chance, high-speed drones got torn apart mid-flight like cheap toys, and small vehicles weren't so much "durable" as they were "waiting to be rearranged into modern art." At 30. 0, footsteps shattered the ground, movement blurred past most sensors, and a solid hit could fold reinforced plating like tinfoil. Anything past 60?

Even the best tracking systems available to civilians were second-guessing reality, and the strongest non-military armour was just expensive debris waiting to happen. Against a lesser opponent, a six at the superhuman threshold could dodge most turret fire by relying on speed, reaction time, movement unpredictability, and simply watching your wrists and trigger finger to predict your firing trajectory, which made them a nightmare for anything that wasn't smart enough to improvise.

Railguns, AI-predictive turrets, and high-density kill zones, though? Those were a different story. Even a six, or a twelve, needed ground to stand on and there were only so many places to run when surrounded. Her lab was on the tenth floor, suspiciously free of hypersonic railgun capabilities, unlike the lower, more well-protected levels, which seemed like a questionable design choice.

Maybe the architect assumed no one could make it this far wearing bulletproof armour resistant to near-sonic impacts, or maybe he figured the company's most valuable on-planet building would never be left abandoned, deprived of high-EQ executives of their own. Aside from Jack, almost every civilian above 30EQ had bailed to off-planet shuttles. Still, it was a foolishly overconfident and arrogant design choice. But, honestly?

If you got paid to turn a skyscraper into a corporate murder temple filled with superhumans, you'd probably think you were untouchable and cut corners on the budget too. 6. 0 EQ was globally considered a turning point. It was the gateway to something superhuman. A threshold—the first true step into post-humanity, where people stopped being people and began to resemble forces of nature given humanoid shape. They could outrun an explosion, sprinting ahead of the shockwave as flames and debris struggled to catch them.

Their footfalls hit the ground in a blur, crossing impossible distances before the brain could even register motion. Then there was their reaction time. That was what made them terrifying. Reflexes sharpened to the point of precognition. You could fire at them, watch the muzzle flash, only for them to raise a blade and deflect the rounds like it was an afterthought. It wasn't luck. It wasn't training, either. It was something beyond even the best human instincts.

That was what came after the human threshold—strength, speed, and reflexes where the laws of common sense had to scramble to keep up. Where Kelly could rearrange furniture with ease, they could go toe-to-toe with a pair of trolls.

"6. 0-to-12. 0 EQ? Four of them? And the rest are over 30? And an Elite, like me?" Jackhammer exhaled, rubbing his face, then giving her a long, tired look. His expression didn't shift, but his voice carried that familiar edge of Kelly's-talking-nonsense-again.

"You can't possibly know that. Your scanner doesn't work at that range." Kelly waved a lazy hand, too comfortable to respond, as she put the final touches into her blade's newest form. Nine loops had ended the same way—she'd make it inside the building through a heavily fortified security entrance, using Jackhammer's security clearance, but they always followed them inside. Every time, they probably 'let' them both enter just to get inside the building.

Once inside, she would race to the lift leading to her lab, supported by the building's advanced defences, and Jack would head to the control centre where he would be untouchable. Once she reached her lab, she would begin to experiment while the building's army of Droids and interior weaponry kept the intruders at bay. She'd even started carving pieces of the troll before she'd arrived, dissecting and breaking down its make-up.

But it never lasted long, she wasn't in a safe room, and while the rest targeted Jack, the one person they sent her way always made it to her lab without fail—she died before the fabricator was even up and running—cut down, crushed, or outpaced before she even got close. The first time, she hadn't even seen it coming. A flicker of movement, then nothing. The second? She caught the blur, the shift of weight, the moment they decided to strike. By the third, she managed to raise her blade before they reached her.

It didn't matter. Not yet. But that was the thing— yet. Failure wasn't the end. It was a data point. A chance to improve. She learned. Every time, she learned. Each attempt, she adjusted—small things, minuscule corrections, shaving off milliseconds, pushing her reactions further, squeezing every inch of advantage from the loops. The first time she fired, she died before she could pull the trigger. The next, she got a shot off. A waste. A miss. The third?

The merc's blade was already there, deflecting her bullet before it even had a chance. But now she knew—that was the speed she had to beat. And with a portion of the building's weaponry supporting her, she lived a little longer than she should have. She couldn't match them. Would never match them. But she was making progress. Once she made it to her lab, assuming she survived, she'd have less than 24 hours to research any anomalous materials she had on hand.

Even a fraction of a second gained was another step forward, another inch closer to her discovering the secrets behind her status, to the fabricator, and to answers. Death was proof of concept. She had never made it past them before, but she had never made it this far either. That meant one thing. She was getting closer. Her weapon clicked into a new form, its edges finally setting into place. At first glance, the Chainblade configuration looked like an ordinary sword.

But the moment Kelly triggered it, the blade split into segmented, razor-sharp links, each driven by high-pressure hydraulics that moved so fast they blurred together in a smoking, distorted arc. She could flick her wrist, and it would twist and crack with multiplied speed on its own.

Its purpose was to give her an edge against stronger, faster foes by keeping them off-balance, off-script, dragging every fight into a mess of unpredictable swings, bad decisions, and pure survival instincts—the kind of brawl filled with nothing but chaotic exchanges where the rules didn't matter. Kelly activated it with a thought and the chainblade flexed, shifted, and reconfigured mid-motion, as if it were arguing with itself about the best way to hurt something.

"Status," she murmured. [Name: Dr. Kelly Voss. Race: Human Title: Rank: F- Traits: Absolute Mana Incompatibility (EX), Skills:]"Tenth time's the charm," she muttered to herself, rising to her feet, eyeing the building some distance ahead, the superhuman mercenaries clinging to the skyline like camouflaged geckos, and the floating figure conducting the destruction of her world. They couldn't break her, and she would never yield—the thought was laughable.

If it came to it, she'd burn, learn, and come back sharper, because pain was just free research. They would be the furnace that would forge her into something that could stop the end of the world, close the portals, and end the loops. Kelly bolted for the entrance, boots slamming the cracked asphalt.