I stared numbly at David’s corpse. It had slumped completely to the ground. This was my fault. I was the one that had kept the tracker until he got here. I felt his death was much more of a loss than Paul’s had been. Is it because I liked him more, or perhaps because David had a promising power?

The silence lingered in the place like a wet blanket. The Dawnbreakers standing like ghosts in the middle of the soldiers. Payback was down, LED was down. Spotlight was down. It was up to me and Spyglass to fix all this.

I couldn’t feel anything as my matrix spun and spun, my body moving as if on autopilot. We had to evacuate the place or the effect of Spotlights' power would run off. Thankfully LED’s buffs didn’t disappear even with him unconscious, but they shouldn’t have much time left as well. I moved to get LED putting him over one of my shoulders, still holding onto my battle form.

Spyglass stared at the body while I collected Payback, and with one man on each shoulder, I heavily moved away from the scene in a slight jog.

Arriving at the front of the fallen house, I saw the cars the military had used to get here, still parked where they left them. I checked that the closest still had the keys, sighing in relief at seeing them in the ignition. I strapped the unconscious men in the back seat, leaving space for the last one.

Back at the battle scene, I carefully lifted Spotlight in my arms. Spyglass had gotten up but was looking around in a bit of a daze.

“We need to go.” I urged.

Julie and Robert didn't move to investigate the bodies of their colleagues, both of them only discussing while Robert laid on the ground looking tired.

She nodded at me. And I jogged away, her following behind.

I strapped Spotlight with the other two. Their beaten forms hanging limply, barely secured with the seatbelts. It would have to do.

I took the driver’s seat, finally letting go of my mutation. The ability snapped away forcefully, staggering me for a moment.

Spyglass mutely took the passenger seat while I recovered. It didn’t take long, and I quickly turned the car on and drove out of the place. Turning in the direction away from the city.

“Do you know where LED was going to go?” I asked her.

She shook her head in the negative. I kept the car going, deciding to get far enough away. And wait for LED to wake up. They were all breathing when I took them in so they would hopefully all live.

I focused inwardly, seeing my matrix, so much bigger in a single day. So much that I had gained over the blood of an innocent man.

Didn’t I want a country where people like him didn’t need to die to gain powers? Shouldn’t they also not die because they gained powers?

Shouldn’t they not need to die because of my desire for power?

The spinning in my matrix was from Robert’s power, I figured. The effect that dissipated emotions. So, I just felt a hazy objectivity, or more precisely, numbness.

It was absolutely my fault. And yet there wasn’t any of the crushing guilt I expected. One more time, I was the one to survive. One more time I would need to make that worth it.

The times of fun and freedom I expected in being a powered never came. They couldn’t come because of the state this country was in. A country where I might live for a long time now.

I thought again at my realization that I was playing on another scale; Almost unkillable, an undetermined life span. What would I become if I only pursued power? The hungry beast in my dreams?

What I needed wasn’t more power. It was a purpose. The gravity of the situation had finally revealed itself to me.

I couldn’t feel the emotions I knew I was keeping away because I had to get my team to safety. But I would use this opportunity to decide finally on how I should act.

I remembered how I admired the director of the school I taught at. How he had a purpose that he could devote himself to. And how I had compared myself to him, even if my purpose was much less noble.

Where was that purposeful man that had spent 20 years grinding in the minuscule hope of gaining power?

What did I, Joseph, believe in? What would I want to accomplish as Matrix? It wasn’t to just explore my powers, to just grow without a goal.

What could I devote my life to?

The answer was obvious this entire time. I was half-heartedly following it, even.

I felt angry and disappointed with myself. For allowing my childish wonder at the powers to keep me distracted for so long.

To reach the heights I wanted, I couldn’t follow a road that led to nowhere.

“We should’ve protected him.” Spyglass said. “it’s the entire purpose of what we do.” her voice pulled me out of my musings that I had gotten caught up in, absorbed by the silence of the driving.

It was true, but the one who failed at that was me. I felt my matrix still with the composition of Robert’s power and I undid it.

The guilt slammed into me. A chill went down my spine at the calculative way I was thinking before. I didn’t disagree with the conclusions though.

What I needed was to put my everything into overthrowing the regime for the people who couldn’t. So that people could gain their powers and use them without fear.

That was what would keep me grounded. And when completed at last, I would be stronger, more well acquainted with my powers and with the powers of a lot of others.

I would have the possibility of visiting another countries for more research or to have a dedicated lab for myself. And all that, hopefully, without losing myself in the journey.

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“We’ll talk about it when everyone is awake.” I told Spyglass she looked at me, frowning. I would tell them my mistake. And they would decide if I could still be part of their team. I doubted that some of them would want me to, though.

After an hour of driving with no destination, I saw a big gas station that had an adjacent restaurant complex. Deciding to park there, I stopped the car in the parking lot. Empty in the late afternoon, there was a vast space of unoccupied area around us.

Thankfully, the car we had taken from the Sulphals was a normal black car. A police car would call more attention, but I couldn’t count on this car not having any form of tracking system. Should I just take another person’s car? It’s for a good cause but very gray morally.

“LED, are you doing fine?” Spyglass’s voice interrupted my musings about morality. I turned to look as well, seeing that LED was stirring awake.

Led looked around, stunned, putting a hand on his head where there was a lot of dried blood.

“What happened?”

“David’s dead” I said Spyglass only nodded grimly.

LED sighed. “We knew this time the target was bigger; I didn’t expect them to be so strong, though. It might’ve well had worked if it wasn’t for me."

“Why you’re apologizing, it wasn’t-”

“As the leader of this team it falls under me to plan this wisely,”

“I could’ve-” Spyglass started saying but LED raised a hand, stopping her argument.

“Everyone could have done better. But it’s my job to put each of you to good use and I failed at that.” He stayed silent for a moment. I kept my silence still, opting to reveal my failures when everyone was awake.

“We need to go. Is this car one of theirs?”

Me and Spyglass nodded quickly. He looked around the parking lot, seeing the few cars around us.

“We’ll have to get one of them,”

“Isn’t that a little wrong” I asked, somewhat uncertain. Although I had decided to give the operations my utmost focus and ability, I didn’t expect the first one to be stealing cars.

“We do what we must do.” LED said seriously. I nodded, face grim.

“Sadly, Spotlight is the one who knows how to ignite them without the keys. So, we’ll have to get a key.”

“I can do that,” I said. Nodding again to spyglass and LED, I stretched my hand to Spotlight’s face.

The blood was dry on Spotlight cheeks where it had run its course from his eyes. I touched a finger to the coppery substance. While the DNA was intact, it seemed to be possible to establish a connection. So, I made the tether.

His matrix was now in grabbing reach of mine. And I scoured over it, my mind swimming through the incredible landscape of fractals. Matrices were always spherical. Transparent, showing a bright spot in the center. Like suns involved in a glass labyrinth, made of layered constructions, its walls carved in infinitely branching fractals.

The shapes differed from power to power, and somehow; I could understand them. Read the language that defied reality. Read might be overconfidence or optimist though. I could gather what a group of shapes meant and instinctively reproduce it, manipulating my matrix.

My matrix seemed to be fluid, differing from the others that felt solid. I could change the shape like molding water. I still didn't know if that was a characteristic of shapeshifter powers or if it was from the capability for change mine had.

After getting David's power, the act of copying the structures became trivial. And now with the tether I just needed anyone’s blood to imprint on me their powers. It still seemed to be highly inefficient, and it heavily impaired my mutating power.

Now, absorbing Spotlight’s power, I could feel my matrix expanding to its limits. There’s a definite pressure like trying to put too much water into a bottle, to continue with the water analogy. And much of it seemed unnecessary, maybe covered by my power? Or others. It was certainly different from the clean feeling of creating a new structure with a combination of improvements.

The closest I could describe it was like putting a piece of some another brand with different sizing into a machine. It still worked, but it didn’t fit really well.

I opened my eyes. Seeing the attention of Spyglass and LED on me, and various other beams of all different colors going out of them. They appeared, and moved about or stayed put, going toward something close by that the person was clearly looking at or towards undefined things; the beams reaching far into the distance. They disappeared again not long after, only to another one to take its place.

“I got Spotlight’s power.” I told them with a nod “I’ll go grab someone's keys.”

LED nodded back at me, his face serious and jaw tight. Guess he didn’t like the situation as well, or it was about losing.

“Put the keys to this one with them.” Spyglass suggested, handing me the Sulphal’s car keys.

“Good idea, I’ll leave a note.” I smiled, a little amused with the idea of the owner just finding that someone exchanged their car without them realizing.

I went out of the car and into the restaurant. There was a woman manning the entrance. This restaurant ran the usual setup for travel stops with you taking up a leaflet as you entered, the staff could fill in with what you bought, easing the payment and better keeping track of everyone who went in and out in an effort for people to not just leave with whatever they wanted.

For that purpose, there was an entrance separated from the exit. In one they gave you a leaflet and in the other they required it stamped by a cashier. It didn’t much account for a really evasive powered. The attention of the woman on me was not only just visible as a beam of light, it also felt like a physical poke.

It seemed Spotlight used his eyes to manipulate the lights. The system was in place in my matrix and I could feel vaguely how it would work. Intent was more important than understanding to the activation of powers. As much as that irked me a bit and I wanted to know more, it was much more convenient that I could actually use the powers.

I didn’t want my eyes shining even if people wouldn’t remember me; the cameras didn’t have any attention to be manipulated after all. But as I did other times, changing my matrix was no challenge, and I simply moved the structures that manipulated the lights from its cozy place from the whole of Spotlight’s matrix and put it onto the tentacles I created from mine.

With this my feelers, or meta-power hands, had now the capability of interacting with the lights. And I used them to brush the beams off me. I expected it to be like putting a mirror in front of it but it had much more impact than that; feeling like diverging a current instead, even if it visually behaved like water, reflecting instead of diverging.

More than that this kind of semi solidity made it that the feelers could shatter it. Or more like scatter. I deduced that was how spotlight made people be incapable of focusing on a target for a while.

I wrapped my matrix tentacle around the beam of attention, scattering it in every direction. Then I just squeezed it. The scattered lights danced, changing shape wildly until the pillar of not light exploded whole like tempered glass.

I entered the place unimpeded. More attention beams focused on me, but just in passing, and I left them for now. Around me I could see all the food stands cafeteria and access to more fancy dining room and towards a souvenirs shop. It was a big place, and it was also practically empty. I counted only two families, a couple and a lone guy.

The lone guy was having a coffee sitting on one stool in the cafeteria, facing the bar. He was on his cellphone as it charged. That would have to do. I approached him. He didn’t pay any mind to me until I sat by his side. The stools weren’t that close together, so he just eyed me briefly and went back to his phone. His attention on me now. Staying on me, even with him not looking. It wasn’t just a visual thing then, even if the lights going far away, clearly out of view, already proved that.

I pretended to look through the menu while taking hold of his attention with my matrix not long and I destroyed it. His alertness dropped as for him it was like there was no one on his side now. I took one napkin and went through the guy’s backpack, looking for a pen. I found one thankfully and just wrote on the napkin.

‘The Sulphals confiscated your car. In exchange you can have the one this key unlocks,’ I wrote on the paper.

There, an equal exchange. I used the key to poke a hole in the paper and searched the guy for his keys; they were in his jacket pocket. I exchanged it with the one I had and silently went out of the building. Going for the exit to not have to shatter everyone’s attention, as every second I manipulated someone’s attention, it used my energy. And it took at least a couple of seconds to shatter someone’s attention. I just used it again on the man looking through peoples leaflet for the stamp. Getting out in the open with the new keys, I went to my group, still in the Sulphal’s car.

I took the new keys and shook them for Spyglass. “Mission accomplished.”

“That’s great, you’ll have to help me move them.”

“I can move by myself,” LED complained with clear exhaustion on his face.

“No, you can’t.” Spyglass admonished “Which car does it open Matrix?”

I shrugged, clicking the unlock button on the alarm. A car to our right, one of the few five on the giant parking lot, beeped in response. It was a pickup truck.

“Well, lucky us.”

“Let’s go, Matrix” Spyglass urged, and I got moving as we were on a clock to get away after all. I felt satisfied with my discoveries and new mastery with the powers. It had come at great cost, though, something that probably didn’t need to happen or could’ve been dealt with more smartly.

I never even asked for the mission details, where it would be, and escape plans, happy to just follow along. That ended now, though. From now on, I’d give it my all.