The man, laughed, cackling as I paced around the room.

He was a creepy fucker, I won’t lie, but he was a person, not a shrimp, not a dog, and so I let him.

No matter where I was, I swore I could see him out of the corner of my eye.

He was protective of whatever had crucified him to the thing in the middle but was amused at the very thought that I could do anything about his situation.

I first went to the big guns.

“Lilly, can you see the wound? Any good point to grab at? A convenient handhold? An instruction manual tucked in this things butt crack?” I asked her.

“I can’t see much of anything,” she said, a little confused, “The surfaces of stuff make sense, but it's like it just extends into a nightmare of tangled gibberish… Well, everything but you, you’re fine.”

That was incredibly unfortunate, but with the big gun out of the way, the small gun came out.

And by small gun, I meant poking and prodding it until it revealed its secrets because while it wasn’t the panel of a cockpit, it was still something complex. What was the worst that could happen?

Well, I knew what the worst thing was, but that required effort.

I continued my pacing, my eyes tracing along the thing, and I poked around, metaphorical tongue in cheek, looking for teeth.

To make sure it was tactile, I went up and plucked at the strand that seemed to pass through the mans ankles. The edge of the wound, like the string of an instrument, vibrated when plucked, making a noise like a doorstop and gently buzzed down.

It was tactile, alright, very tactile.

Good job me, now, how to remove it from the man, without closing it so I didn’t get stuck in here.

I circled around some more and paid attention to the way it wove through the two figures.

It looked, keyword, looked like it never even touched the guy, and yet it held him in place. That didn’t make sense, but then again the giant house sized things that moved like they were lighter than a feather also didn’t make sense, and yet they were.

I suppose an innate understanding of materials and their tolerances and properties just meant nothing while dealing with superordinary bullshit. Pinky’s claim of magic had never made more sense.

Considering the things involved, I had to wonder if it would just be more effective to pull the guy off the thing the hard way and stim him.

In theory, it might be more worthwhile, but at the same time, his body was resisting the wound, and the wound was tensed like cable. It should clearly tear him apart like a cheese cutter, but it didn’t.

Based on that alone, I doubted I could just pull him off.

I scowled and took a drag, pondering the esoteric crime against life that was the sight before me.

Perhaps whatever the red was in it held a clue, but I had no handle on what it could be. It gave me no recollection of anything beyond it being ‘red.’

I checked the wound for anchor points, too, just to be safe, but it was like it had none.

“How did your hand stick you to this,” I asked the madman, borrowing his phrasing to hopefully knock some memories out of his smiling face.

“How would I know?” he asked, confused, “the hand is mighty, so much so that its ways are above us fingers. They are more, and we are less; it is that simple.”

“So you don’t know. Fantastic. Well, good job. I suppose you don’t care enough about your hand to pay attention,” I told him, leaning into my form's manipulation. “If I were in your position, I would have paid a little more attention.”

“What?” He gasped dramatically, “How could you say that? I do. I do I do I do I do!”

“Oh yeah? How is this thing keeping the wound open? Do you even know that?” I asked him.

“Of course. It does it the same way anything does anything,” he proclaimed straightforwardly and without explaining himself.

I nodded a dumb little smile on my face.

“Well, gosh, oh golly. Thanks, professor; I didn’t realize you did things by doing them. I mean, how is it doing that? Smart ass,” I mocked.

“It… It just is?” he said, as if I were some kind of moron.

I glared at the man. I understood that he was just some guy; his poor, addled brain was probably holier than Swiss cheese, an old sock, and a stack of religious texts combined, but I had kind of hoped that I could get him to explain something.

It appeared that the blade of magic cut both ways. How did it work? Magic. How was it done? Magic. If you could dismiss the migraines you got from trying to puzzle out how it worked, you could dismiss how it was done as well.

There were no anchor points; there was no explainable method and no means.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I tisked.

The who and when were unimportant. What, Where, Why, and How were the only applicable ones? The How was the thing, the where was non-existent, the how was magic and the what was incomprehensible.

The why, then.

“Why are you up there anyway? Huh? Did you piss off your hand?” I asked.

What dastardly reason could anything have to hang something to that thing?

I thought he would give a dumb answer like, ‘It was an honour to be crucified here by an alien creature,’ or, ‘I’m here as a reminder to others of their supreme power,’ or something else equally moronic, but he just hung his head a little.

“I don’t quite know. Why would a hand tell their own finger why to bend?” He said.

There was a confusion on his face; something about it kind of sad. He was a person, but he was also a mentally broken person. His head had been bent into a shape that cast being kidnaped as a good thing, his tormentor as a great being, but he could not put reason to it.

Perhaps he had been grabbed at random. Perhaps it was some stupid esoteric thing.

“Lilly, is this guy vibrating or something? Anything on that front?” I asked her.

“Everything vibrates; that’s what energy… Oh resonance. Umm. It’s a bit hazy on account of everything vibrating, but I think so. He’s kind of resonating. Actually, he’s resonating just like the monolith… thing? Amplifying or transmitting it? I can’t quite tell.”

That… That checked out. He wasn’t a doorstop; that was the thing he was pinned to. He was a radio antenna.

Lilly had called talents bio resonant. Some kind of biological equivalent to the magic bullshit signal garbage the humans tech worked on. For example, when you feel someone watching you, it is a signal receiver.

A receiver… or a transmitter.

The difference was mostly in the extra tech. Both used an antenna.

Whatever his talent had been, he had probably been a page or something. Just instead of receiving a signal, he was being used in reverse to amplify whatever the thing was doing. How you even did that was so far beyond me that I couldn’t understand it. He was being used like a comm ring.

A comm ring?

“Lilly, could we cancel him out? If he’s projecting, could we project the talent… alien thing? Fight his whatever with the comm ring?” I asked her.

“Hmmmmmmm,” she humed. It was a humy hum, the kind that was full of thought. It was also immediately followed by “No,” which crashed my hopes.

“Damn. Thought I was onto something there,” I mumbled to myself.

“Huh? Oh, you are,” she said casually, “It's just that the comm ring isn’t picking up whatever it is. It's like a radio; it can’t go past radio waves. But… If you could get a sample of him. Blood or skin, anything living, I might be able to add it to your cells. Then you could act as the antenna instead of using the one in the comm ring.”

“I am?” I asked, a little too much surprise coming through before, “Oh, yeh. Of course, I am.”

Smooth Bandit. Real smooth. Nice save.

It was a bit of a gruesome idea, but it wasn’t so much so that I wouldn’t do it. It was for the best, even if it wasn’t something I would do normally.

I turned to the man.

I could just take it, obviously, but that felt like a shit thing to do.

“I would like to ask something of you.” I told him seriously.

“Oh?” he asked, pulling himself from his daze.

“Yeah. I’m going to need to cut you,” I told him.

That freaked him the fuck out.

It freaked him out a lot.

“No! Not cutting! No, going inside of me!” he shrieked.

“Relax,” I told him, fishing around for my pockets but then going for the pocket box. I was sure I could get a little blood easily enough on something, Maybe one of Pinky’s stims.

“No! Stop!” he said, half berserk.

I tutted.

There was a dilemma in that. It was for his own good, but he would not consent. Would I violate his autonomy for my own sake? Did saving him change that outcome? He was an innocent! However would I reconcile my moral compass and the actions I needed to-

I crossed over to him, quickly going for a stim and pulling the cap off it and approaching my stationary target.

He was bellowing, ‘No,’ over again, somewhere between fear and anger, his body shaking like he was in the middle of a seizure, frothing at the mouth and animated.

And while he did, I pushed back his clothes and gave him a little poke.

Just a little one. The poke didn’t even draw blood.

I stepped back as the apoplectic figure and just asked, “Is that good?” to Lilly.

“Yes, the needle will be contaminated. Poke yourself, if you will, this will take a moment.” She explained calmly.

The figure calmed as I backed away, staring at me, his visage grave, but I just did as she asked and poked myself on the arms, holding his gaze all the while.

It was a little pinch, and then it was over, I stored the stim, slipping the cap back on. My movements smooth, as if practiced.

I puffed out a little smoke, and let my companion do her thing, whatever her thing may be.

Lilly started mumbling stuff, more to herself, along the lines of ‘transform,’ ‘vector,’ and whatnot.

All I felt was a tingle and a slight itch. Lilly borrowed a little power as she mumbled, and then the itch accelerated. Accelerated, and started spreading. As it spread the itching slowed and was followed by an ache that faded in turn. It rolled through me like a ripple across a pond.

It reached up my neck, and there was a small zip of energy at the base of my skull that quickly bloomed into heat and a tiny amount of pressure, light as a feather but new enough that it hadn’t faded into the background.

I felt at it, and it felt like a lymph node. Smaller even, though that would be a close thing. An iddy biddy bump.

My own personal transponder.

It was a little fucking creepy that I could do that, but it was what needed to be done, so I would do it.

“Oh, kay. How do I do this? Shouldn’t this come with the know-how to use it?” I asked her.

“I only copied the transceiver. You’ll have to puzzle it out on your own, just like when you ate a glowing rock… You freak,” she replied.

I nodded and started feeling around, trying to pick up on how to fuck around and find out blind. I flipped through metaphors but realized that I had one already, and a perfectly apt one at that.

A radio.

And with that, I closed my eyes and imagined myself in my cockpit. Siting on the familiar chair I reached over to the radio, flicking on the power and opening a channel. There was a screech of static, but I ignored it, my hand reaching for the dial and searching for a pattern in the madness.

At first, it was so quiet that I couldn’t sense it. Then there came a light pulsing, then a series of pulsing that further clarified into a clear series of tones, a slight hum similar to when I had swallowed the glowing crystal, threaded through with other tones. Far from then, they felt far from heavenly. Instead, they held more along the lines of a tone I could only claim was a quiet dread.

It was unwelcoming and oppositional, dragging instead of transcendent.

I tuned the radio and then did my best to copy it.

My nodule buzzed in my head, and the feeling of great pressure set my teeth to ache. I was being pushed, and so I pushed back, taking the microphone and tapping the tone right back at it.

I could feel a headache beginning as I did, but I pushed back, shoving out from myself, the hair on my neck raising as the two tones matched and began to drown one another out.

The pressure and buzz lightened, and I opened my eyes.

The man looked like he was three inches from, exploding it terror, the bindings loose.

They looked very similar, only they were wrapped around the man, his form and the line slackened, as if the tone hand pulled the rope tight, or shrink the distance of it, contorting the bindings to appear like he had been spiked to the place.

“Well then,” I said, “What was that about hands? Because I’m feeling rather handy right about now.”