Chương 246: Chapter 245 - Over the Hill

[STATUS] Alexander Rooke | Alias: Machine God | Guild: Grimnir (Leader) | Alliances: The Royals (Defensive, Formal) | Throne of Scales (Defensive [Partial], Formal) | Designation:???

| Bounty: 5, 150, 000 → 7, 930, 000 credits | Rankings: Universe_1: 23 → 21, Unified: 312 → 282 | Evaluation: Tier 2 (45% → 51%) — Class A ASCENSION POTENTIAL INDEX (API) Physical Attributes | Strength — 83% → 87% | Endurance ✧ 160 → 176 | Constitution ✧ 144 → 158 | Dexterity — 96% → 98% | Agility — 88% → 94% Cognitive Attributes | Intelligence ✧ 185 → 192 | Processing Speed ✧ 161 → 169 | Perception ✧ 167 → 170 | Focus ✧ 170 → 176 | Willpower (Ambition) ✧ 200 (+14) Divine Fragments | Sovereign Blood Power Manifestation Machine God (Technopathy) | Class S, Tier 1 | Efficiency — 100% | Control — 100% | Output — 86% → 89% | Adaptation — 98% → 99% Electrokinesis | Class B, Tier 1 | Efficiency — 98% → 99% | Control — 95% → 96% | Output — 100% | Adaptation — 84% → 88% Metallokinesis | Class B+ → A-, Tier 1 | Efficiency — 94% → 97% | Control — 94% → 99% | Output — 85% → 97% | Adaptation — 76% → 82% Animachina | Class S, Tier 2 | Mastery ✧ 90% → 94% Cultivator's Core | Class B+, Tier 1 | Refinement ✧ 85% → 93% Techniques | Blackout | Ensoulment | Soul Circuit Skills | Hyperawareness | Multithreading Achievements | Origin 0 Soul | Continue the Dream III | Divine Slayer — The door pinged an entry request.

Alexander dismissed his status screen.

"Come in." He didn't look up. The orb sat between his thumb and forefinger, held up to the light. Smooth and featureless and completely impenetrable to every power he had. He'd been sitting on the workshop sofa for the better part of an hour, turning it over, reaching for it with Technopathy, Metallokinesis, Animachina, and Electrokinesis in slow rotation. Each one confirmed what the others already had. Something was there. Nothing could tell him what. He'd changed out of the underlayer at some point.

Jeans and a loose shirt. His ribs ached when he breathed too deeply, and the nanites had only just started on the nose. He could feel the cartilage shifting in tiny increments, each adjustment accompanied by a faint itch he couldn't scratch from the outside. Augustus stepped into the bedroom and paused. He'd found the bloody clothes on the floor. Then he continued, stopping at the workshop threshold. He stood there for a long moment, his gaze moving across the room.

The vacuum-sealed bags containing what was left of Gabriel Santiago, stacked neatly. The row of cleaned and stripped cybernetic components laid out next to the body parts. Alexander had scrubbed the workbench and floor, but the faint smell of metal lingered. Or maybe that was just in his head. It was hard to tell. Augustus leaned against the doorframe. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Alexander kept his eyes on the orb. But the corner of his mouth lifted.

"You draw the short straw?"

"Rock, paper, scissors, actually." Augustus folded his arms.

"And I won." Alexander looked up at that. Met the older man's gaze. Read something there he hadn't expected. Understanding.

"You wanted the position of therapist?" Augustus smiled.

"Annie probably would have patted you on the back and told you that you did a good job. No idea what Carmen would have said." He paused. Then sighed.

"But I suspect I know what you're dealing with. Part of it, at least." Alexander turned back to the orb. Then he tossed it across the room. Augustus caught it one-handed.

"What's this?"

"No idea. Machine God can't tell me anything about it."

"You mean your Technopathy? Is it not a machine?" Alexander leaned back into the sofa.

"It's definitely a machine. All of my powers agree on that much. But I can't get past the surface. It's a complete blank." He grinned.

"I ripped it out of Santiago's skull." Augustus fumbled the orb. It slipped through his fingers, and he caught it again with both hands before it hit the floor. He straightened, glared at Alexander, and held the sphere at arm's length.

"I trust you washed it first." Alexander shrugged.

"I don't think we can get sick anymore, Auggy. Not from basic bacteria, at least." Augustus tossed it back. Alexander flicked a finger and caught it mid-air with Metallokinesis. It floated toward the workbench, where it took its place among the rest of the components.

"It's the principle of the thing, Alex." Alexander chuckled.

"I'm just messing with you. Of course I washed it." Then he reached out and seized a different component, yanking it into his hand and holding it up.

"This is just as interesting."

"And which organ did it come out of?" Alexander didn't dignify the question with a response.

"This thing shouldn't even exist. It's impossible tech." Augustus frowned.

"You mean it's more advanced than ours?"

"No. I mean, it's literally impossible as far as I'm aware, and I'm comparing it against the alien tech I saw on the Nexus, too."

"What does it do?" Alexander poured his powers into it. The device drank greedily from all four. Then a shimmering field of blue flashed, gone instantly, taking him with it. Disorientation hit as reality warped, his eyes suddenly seeing the workshop from the stool at the other end. Augustus jerked upright, arms unfolded, as his head snapped around to locate Alexander.

"What the hell was that? You can teleport now?" Alexander stood and made his way back to the couch.

"It's a short-range, contextually autonomous, instantaneous phase-shifting device." Alexander sat.

"I'm calling it the Skipper." Augustus raised an eyebrow.

"The Skipper."

"Exactly. It can sense your intent, but you can't control exactly where you go, and it skips you from one place to another. What else would I call it?" He shrugged.

"Oh, and it takes almost a quarter of my reserves. There's no way someone like Santiago should have been able to power it. Just one more mystery, along with weapons that don't have ammo feeds or energy sources."

"That's still incredibly useful." Alexander shook his head.

"You're not wrong, it's just…" Augustus waited.

"I think it's System-tech. The orb too. It's the only explanation that makes sense. I think it evolved Santiago's cybernetics, just like how our powers grow and change as we try to develop them." Augustus tugged his beard.

"Makes sense. But why does it matter?" Alexander raised an eyebrow.

"Have you forgotten it's almost killed us? More than once. Which is at least two times too many for me to trust anything." He flicked the Skipper back onto the workbench.

"What if it phases me into a wall? Or another reality." Augustus nodded.

"That would be inconvenient, I admit. But you can't underestimate the value of anything that might save your life."

"I know. Though it didn't save Santiago. Maybe the System gave it a cooldown or something. I'll have to run more tests." Alexander fell silent. He could feel Augustus watching him. Letting him deal with things at his own pace. But he knew he wanted to talk. Probably also meant that they'd be talking about it whether or not he wanted to. And he didn't know if he wanted to. It was confusing. The mission had been a victory. Radiant was defeated.

The flickering sparks were probably the beginning of a proto-domain, though he still didn't understand the mechanics. Any step forward mattered. Any scrap of insight could matter later. Alexander sighed. Even his mental threads were betraying him. Changing the subject in his own mind to avoid examining the problem.

"I feel empty and I don't understand why. I love all of this. The mystery. The danger. Fighting. Seeing aliens and other planets." He leaned back again.

"The world I came from was boring. Or I was boring, more likely. Every day here has been… fun." He glanced up at Augustus. The old man was just listening, arms folded. Patient as he always was.

"Coming here and getting superpowers, meeting Annie, and you, and Talia, is the best thing that ever happened to me." Alexander exhaled.

"If people knew that part of me is excited to see what the cataclysm brings, they'd think I'm crazy. Or a monster. Or both. Of course, I don't want it to happen, and I'd stop it if I knew how, but I am excited. I want to face more challenges and grow stronger. I want to find the System and pull it apart and work out what makes it tick. But after killing Santiago, I just…" He trailed off. The sentence had nowhere to go because he didn't have the words for where it ended. Augustus was quiet for a while.

Then he pushed off the doorframe and crossed the workshop. He pulled the stool from the workbench, set it across from the sofa, and sat down.

"The Orbital Rangers call it the Wrong Drop," he said. Alexander frowned.

"The what?"

"When a Ranger deploys, the drop is everything. Months of preparation, training, logistics, all of it compressed into the moment you leave the ship and fall toward whatever's waiting below. The mission becomes your life. And when you're on planet, even the quiet days are part of it. You're always on the clock, always operating, because the battlefield doesn't stop being a battlefield just because nobody's shooting." Augustus leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees.

"Then the mission ends. You ship home. Operational leave. And suddenly there's nothing. The focus, the purpose, the clarity of knowing exactly what you're supposed to do and why it matters? Gone. You've still got things to do. Groceries. Laundry. Taxes. But none of them are the mission." He paused.

"And all the intensity you built up to survive it turns inward because it has nowhere else to go." He met Alexander's eyes.

"The Rangers call it the Wrong Drop because it's the one that takes you away from the fight instead of into it. It's the dropship back to Earth instead of the pod into battle. The shrinks had a much fancier name for it. Something with 'post-operational' and 'dysphoria' that none of us could ever be bothered to remember, because we were all too busy pretending to be fine so that the operational leave didn't become extended medical leave." Alexander sat with that for a moment.

Turned it over the way he'd been turning the orb. Looking at it from different angles. Checking if it fit. It did. Augustus let the silence hold. Then he spoke again, quieter.

"But I suspect yours isn't quite the same thing. Because you're also dealing with a difficult truth." He held Alexander's gaze.

"You said it yourself. You love all of this. The danger. The challenge. The chance to become something extraordinary." A pause.

"In a way, Santiago was the grindstone that made you who you are. And you just killed him for it." Alexander stared at Augustus for a moment.

"Fuuuuck." He grinned.

"Santiago was my daddy." Augustus gave him a flat look.

"I'm going to let you have that one. It was mildly amusing. And now, I trust you're done." Alexander's grin faded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I am." He sighed.

"How do you get past it without expensive and highly emotional therapy?" Augustus straightened.

"You can afford it. But if you think you're okay, really okay, then it's time to choose your next mission."

"The cataclysm?" Augustus shook his head.

"No. That would be a mistake. The cataclysm is too broad. You need to treat it like a… hill blocking your view. Set your sights on something beyond it. It needs to be a tangible goal with a specific objective."

"Some hill. Sure it isn't a mountain?"

"That's exactly why you can't choose that. You're picking a mission, not trying to bring about world peace. Things like that will bog you down. Keep it specific." Specific. There were a thousand specific things that needed doing. Flashpoint was the obvious choice, but it felt insignificant. Important, sure, but easily solved. Santiago had been a challenge, and he'd have settled for just running him off the planet. Until ONI handed the man's location on a silver platter.

But every other idea related to the cataclysm or its aftermath. He frowned.

"Thought of something?" Augustus asked. Alexander nodded.

"Yeah… the weirdos who grabbed the Nakamura twins and tried to take Talia and Annie. They wanted my attention." Augustus studied him for a moment.

"Sounds like they got their wish. How unfortunate for them."