Seeing the modified matrix construct imputing its commands, I could tell it would probably work. His core that until now was a perfect black marble pulsated, releasing tiny sparks, as if filled with trapped fire, struggling to get out.
With each beat, cracks ran all along the surface of the orb, light shining from inside the countless fissures. It didn’t take long for it to shatter.
The energy trapped inside erupted like a supernova, breaking the matrix constructs and the tether I had to it in the explosion’s wake.
I could still see his core- no, his power now, from afar, even not being directly connected to it, and it was a budding tree, spreading arms and infinitely many roots all around itself, constructing a newborn matrix.
So that was how they formed, I mused. The sight was beautiful; the fractals formed on their own following unseen rules as they wrote the means to bend reality with curves and branches.
I nodded at the success before coming back to the real world.
Victor was just standing, looking at his bare palms, speechless.
Everyone around him waited in a mixture of confusion and expectancy.
“So, did it work?” Swordjuice asked anxiously.
“It did, I can feel it, it fucking worked!” Victor proclaimed, shaking from the excitement.
Everyone commemorated. LED and me patting each other’s shoulder at the feat.
“Come on, show us what it is,” I told him, smiling with an antsy curiosity.
Victor concentrated, extending his arms around him.
Slowly, beads like those of dew started emerging from his skin. They looked exactly like mercury, flowing down his arms like ball-bearings falling over his fingers and continuing into the air where they stopped a couple centimeters from his palms, hovering in place as more and more shiny liquid metal accumulated into silver blobs.
The researcher opened his eyes, a silly smile taking his entire face as he admired the gravity defying liquid. he moved his hand minutely, turning it palms up and towards himself. The mercury followed his movements, floating towards his hands flowing over his skin.
“Woo, you control mercury, then?” Swordjuice asked.
“I don’t think it’s actually mercury,” Victor said.
“Is it a material that doesn’t exist? Most powers create those,” I said, leaning forward to better look at the flowing metal.
“Yea, but I can feel there’s so much more to this power, it’s hard to explain… i just know it.”
“can you feel anything specific, like what it does”
“I can feel its desire to learn, to comprehend, and to improve.” Victor made a knife hand, the metal surrounding it extending into a spike along with the movement. “It’s a weapon, all of them.”
“All of them? It can transform in any weapon?”
“Thats my guess, at least.” Victor shrugged, “it just has to learn how to go about it first.”
“Interesting how you ended up with a power that learns, remind us of our other growing beast there.” Spotlight said, grinning at the new powers.
“Yeah, it doesn’t really compare to yours though, Matrix. It can only learn from weapons. But I feel a lot safer with it, thank you.”
“It’s okay, growing you strength is growing our strength after all.” I said patting his back, “and besides, don’t sell yourself short, you just got your powers.”
Victor smiled, nodding at me. “You’re right, there’s so much to test and experiment with.” his smile slowly turned into a grin, which I mirrored in my face, understanding the feeling completely
“Oh yeah, there’s something else too.”
“What? even more capabilities?” Payback asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Sorta off. It comes with some ways of changing whatever it learns."
“To make the weapons more powerful?”
Victor hummed in confirmation, closing his eyes to better focus on his power. “But not only that, it has other options to make them more versatile too. I think I can empower something, delay an effect.” He frowned, concentrating more. “Hmm, also scatter an effect over an area and invert an effect. That one seems the craziest.”
“Interesting, but it needs more testing to gauge what you’re capable of now.” LED said, nodding in approval.
“So, what do we call you? Mercury?” Swordjuice asked excitedly.
“That one’s a staple already, though.” Glassmetal argued back.
“Truth, what about Quicksilver? still misleading, but it is what you create.”
“I don’t think I should just take a nickname like that.” Victor said, not agreeing to any of the ideas.
“What do you mean? Everyone has one, and don’t even come with everyone already knows your name. We all know Matrix’s name as well.” Swordjuice quickly shot down his excuses.
“Okay okay, sure.” He said, accepting it all with a sigh. “I won’t even be able to enter the team anytime soon, though.”
“It’s the spirit of the thing that matters.” She said with finality, smiling in victory.
“Ooh, I know a good one.” Payback said, a boyish smile on his face.
“What?” Victor asked with another sigh.
“Silver bullet.”
“Ooh, seems fitting,” I said, entering the conversation again. “If Victor’s powers work as I’m thinking, he’ll be able to create the perfect weapon for any situation.”
“Its uncanny how that fits your personality and aspirations.” Glassmetal commented, impressed.
“Yeah, what were you thinking about in there while your power formed?” I asked.
“Hmm, I did as you told me. I concentrated on why I wanted power, in what I wanted too, what power really meant to me. And I’ve been working on building weapons for most of my life. I think it just came naturally then.”
Victor looked at the flowing metal that was still levitating around his palms. A look of contemplative awe on his face. “I felt it… How do I describe this… Taking pieces of me, building my power from what it encountered in my mind.”
“So yeah, of course it would fit me,” Victor chuckled, raising his head and panning his eyes on his allies gathered around him, landing them on me. “It was made from me, for me.”
“I think we might have done something really important here today.” I said, facing the implications of today’s events. “If this method of creating powers is replicable, then we might have just created a gigantic advantage over the government.”
“Why would it be such an enormous advantage? they can create powers too. It takes training and luck to get powerful ones.” Payback said.
“That’s the thing. He could focus on what really meant being powerful, in a calm situation,” I said, looking at everyone gathered around the new powered.
“And I suspect something else, too. Victor, can you feel your power and through your power?”
He frowned. “I mean, I guess, it’s just like an extension of myself.”
“If I’m not wrong, that directly results from the type of connection I put into your bedding matrix. It’s a two-way connection that leads to a more direct link between the user and the power.”
“It lets you sense things through your powers. I suspect they also become more instinctive and there’s much more feedback coming from your powers, which means it becomes a little easier to master and to improve.”
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
“Hmm, I see. You might be right there Matrix and we can choose people with strong wills, people who want to fight against the regime. They’ll be willing to train and fight to stand with us.” LED said, making a fist.
I nodded at that. It would be work intensive and require lots of focus, but we could improve the way we did it too, gradually.
After the excitement died down everyone stayed curiously talking about the event or Victors powers as he showed it off and tested it a bit, I asked him if I could borrow him the other day to get a look at it and see if I could take anything from my own creation.
I’ll need to be careful to not get an even bigger ego from this.
Everyone went their ways to go to bed only victor going straight down to the lab to spend the entire night testing his new powers. I could understand the excitement.
----------------------------------------
I encountered with Spyglass at the breakfast table the other day, rubbing the sleepiness out of my eyes. I sat by her side
“Going for another full day of training?” She asked me.
I chuckled. “Yeah, it’s been crazy, but I’m all for it, you know.”
“I can imagine, I can see the happiness in your face everyday now.” She furrowed her eyebrows just a bit. “I worry tough with you growing so fast...”
“Hm, I understand, but it’s okay. After thinking a lot, I came to terms with the levels I’m going to get to.” I said, thinking back to the realization that I would probably live fora very long time now. “I’ll have even more things to figure out about my life after this whole revolution business is taken care of, but that’s for the future.”
I took some bread from the table, spreading butter on top of it.
Spyglass eyed me, nodding. “That’s fine. With the speed you’re growing, you really might overthrow them.”
“Yeah, I was meaning to ask you, Spyglass, could I have a look at your matrix?”
“Oh,” she seemed a little surprised, but gave me a smile. ”Of course I thought you never asked because there’s nothing to gain from it”
“No, I only interacted with it briefly. Now I can really see what’s up with it.”
“Okay, sure, you’re going to do it here and now?”
“Yeah, if that’s okay,” I said, stuffing more bread into my mouth.
“No, you can go right ahead.”
The process was so easy at this point that I just kept having breakfast, filling a cup with coffee while I connected with Spyglass’ matrix
Spyglasses powers were a bit confusing to me, as I never really specifically asked her for the mechanics, I only saw her using it actively, knew that her eyes glowed when she used them and that she could get information from faraway places and specific things from people close to her.
Instead of only speculating, I can ask her to tell me. It’ll help identify what each part does in her matrix instead of deciphering it from the ground up.
“So, spyglass, what does your power do, exactly?”
“Aren’t you here to see just that?“
“Yeah, but you telling me will help speed things along.”
“Hmm, okay sure.” She gathered her thoughts for a second, “well I choose that name for a reason, I can make inquires in my mind about things I’m seeing, or about things I have seen, it can be locations, people, anything that is an information.”
“I don’t really know the limits of it, information powers can vary a lot into that, my power work weirdly, the closer I am to something the more information I can get, if I have a line of sight I get more information, if the question is more specific I get more information.”
“The amount I know about something also contributes, so ill get more information searching for anything in a city I know well against a city I just arrived in.”
“Ooh, a very complex power, with various layers,” I said, now even more excited to take a look at her matrix. “I can probably discover for you what are the exact qualifications and the actual mechanism are.”
“That’d be great. I can make even more accurate questions then.” Spyglass said, a melancholic smile overtaking her face, “not that ill use it much more going forward.”
“Hey you can still help if you wish. The Dawnbreakers must have an intelligence gathering division.”
She looked at me doubtfully but before she could say anything I added; “And if they don’t, I’ll create one”
Spyglass laughed. “What, you’re trying to become the leader now? Your ambition is boundless Matrix.”
“We gotta aim for the stars,” I said, smiling at her and moving my focus to her matrix finally.
Having everything she told me to go on, I had a foundation to draw upon in understanding her power in its entirety.
Her power treated information as an eye treats light. It can absorb it all around itself, absorbing and then interpreting it, giving the processed and deciphered information back to spyglass. It’s an intensive process as there are infinite amounts of information on the world
There is information about everything. In every level of existing size and specificity, spyglass powers gave her only what she asked for and instead of just bombarding her with infinite amounts of information, it filters almost everything out of the non-specific questions.
It needs specificity to protect her mind from being completely overrun with information; it controls the rate of absorption as well, if the power let all the information a broad question implies enter her mind Spyglass would be rooted in place getting her brain bombarded by endless information about the position and velocity of every atom for the rest of eternity.
So, everything is information and her powers limits that existential law by controlling the amount of information it gets from question, lessening the filters it puts on her powers, the more she is specific in what she’s asking.
I dived between the architecture of her power, slowly interpreting how everything worked in the minimal details, I had compared it to an eye and her power had the capability of absorbing information from all around her, but it wasn’t that straightforward, even more so with the limitations imposed upon it.
A sonar could be a better analogy for it. Her powers picked up on the information waves that existed, just like spotlight’s power could see attention as beams of light, Spyglass’ power could detect information being formed, experienced, and or shared.
Information itself is so vast that it’s mind boggling. It’s very fortunate that her power regulates itself, imposing a need for a filter to be put on what information it would translate to her.
It created a net to catch that specific information, that things being on eyesight or close helped seemed to do with the information her actual body could experience absorb and interpret, if her sense were also working on the information, it was much easier for her powers to pin down and focus on what was actually being asked of it.
it gave off an urge to know from her matrix, that driving force that invites people to look closer to uncover the truths of the world.
So the way my powers first started interacting with other powers was through passively gathering the information that everything gives off, including matrixes. It probably identified that Spyglass was getting the information from my matrix and reacted by blocking it from happening and adapting to be sensitive to other powers around it.
That’s my guess, at least.
I concentrated, searching through the various senses I had gained along the way for the same type of information oriented one that my matrix possessed, eventually finding a version of it that was still very different. My powers could adapt things on its own, all the transformation it went through even before having David’s and the tracker’s powers added up to create a very different beast from what it might’ve once copied from Spyglass.
Now that I know how her powers woks and where they are in my matrix, I can much better guide it or find it to mess with if I need to. And now that I can actively copy parts of her powers, I’ll take the information ‘sonar’ that seems extremely useful.
It will stay inactive until my powers need it, for now at least. As soon as I can get a more active transformation method, I’ll be able to use it at will. The problem is that I didn’t add any type of filter, but I’m not too worried if what happened with spotlights power is anything to go by. My matrix will adapt as soon as some backlash occurs.
Finished with my analysis, I refocused. Spyglass was looking curiously at me. I noticed then that I had frozen mid eating, the bread halfway to my open mouth. I finally took the bite, quickly swallowing before addressing her.
“I copied it in my matrix, it functions like a sonar that gathers all information passing through it”
“But yeah, you don’t get everything transmitted to you. It’d fry your brain, so there’s the filter mechanism that makes you able to adjust the sonar to only get what you want exactly.”
“Hmm I see. I mean, that’s how I was using it already, but interesting to know how it actually works.” She shrugged.
“But then you can’t use it yet?” she asked me, a complicated expression on her face.
“Yeah, but don’t worry, it won’t take long for me to find some power that lets me control the transformations more actively.”
She nodded
“And if I really need to scout somewhere, I can always put as my central power for a moment and then change back. I’m planning on doing it so it can fix itself from the backlash”
“Backlash? I don’t get backlash.”
“Yeah, that’s because of the filter I told you about. I didn’t get any filter.”
“What the heck matrix, why’s that? I know you’ll heal, but that’s no reason to hurt yourself on purpose. Where will that end up?”
“Oh, chill. It’s just the quicker way. It’s more practical, and I don’t even feel pain from these things most of the time.”
She shook her head, exhaling, but gave me a smile in the end. “I’m glad my power will keep helping the team, though.”
I nod at that.
“Even coming from a complete lunatic”
I frown at her, and she laughs. “But I mean it matrix”
“What, me being a lunatic?” I say, giving her a smirk.
“No,” she chuckled, “about the team. It was for a short while, but I’m glad I was part of it. These friendships helped me keep going.”
“I know what you mean. It could’ve ended up way worse for me.” I said, thinking back to everything that could have gone wrong in my pursuit of power.
“Yeah, I’m sad that I can’t help anymore. I can’t see more people dying, and really,” she hesitated, looking down. “I’m too scared to die as well.”
“It’s okay, everyone should be. And I think you could still help Spyglass.”
“How so?” She asked, her voice lacking any hope. “I’ll leave the team.”
“Didn’t you ever thought it’s weird that they put everyone with such different powers in the same teams?”
She frowned, not really seeing where I was going with this.
“My theory is that they only put everyone on these fighting teams at first to weed out the lackluster and the spies.” I said.
“And an actual spy you are not. I think you could help from inside a base somewhere, with your powers.”
She looked up at me. I matched her gaze, nodding at her.
“I’ll try to Matrix, I really will.”
“That’s all we can do, really.” I said, patting her back.
We set out to eat the rest of our breakfast in an amiable mood. Spyglass even had a bit more of a life to her, seeming to consider my theory and my proposal.
“Do you know if Victor is still in the lab?” I said, remembering my plans for the rest of the day.
She nodded. “Yeah, LED, Swordjuice and Glassmetal are there too.”
I shook my head. “He really is excited with his new powers.”
Spyglass nodded along, “it’s really baffling too, how you just gave him powers like that”
“I mean, it’s nothing that wasn’t done before. And besides, I had LED’s help with it.”
“But yeah, it is pretty wild. What wouldn’t those people in the Sleepwalkers forums do to get in contact with me now?”
She chuckled, “don’t go giving powers to everyone you see on the street.”
“Relax, I’m not quite there yet,” I laughed as she looked at me amusedly.
“You going to be on the level of the mysterious Araphel in no time, Matrix.” Spyglass commented. Looking me over, I nodded. “just don’t lose sight of what really matters.” she concluded.
“Don’t worry Spy, I’m well aware of what I should do.”
She nodded at that, “I’ll be going down to the lab then, I’m curious to see what his powers ended up being and what I can steal from it” I said with a smile as I got up from my seat, waving at Spyglass who laughed as she waved me off as well.