Breachers – Path of Steel
20
I
Homecoming
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Day 13
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[System activation: 100%]
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In an instant, Marcus was wide awake again. His steel fingers twitched and clenched involuntarily as a wave of Mana surged through him like a recharging current. When his vision returned, he spotted a layer of dust clinging to his frame inside the ventilator shaft. He didn’t move, not wanting to make a sound. Instead, he just looked upwards, seeing the hatch that would lead to the outside. Faint movements and voices reached his auditory sensors. A single voice caught his ear—a voice he recognized as his own.
Marcus focused on the other voices, hearing his uncle and brother. His uncle's voice seemed to swell with pride as he regaled Martin's accomplishments, prompting his young nephew to hesitantly share more about his work, touching on water purifiers, smart GPS systems, robotics, and the company’s contributions to military research and development. Following that was the ‘other Marcus’ complimenting his brother, letting him know how proud he was. Even within his steel frame, 'Marcus cringed inwardly at the sound of his own voice, stumbling through conversation with his brother and hearing him overcompensate with the praise. ‘God, I sound like a clueless idiot,’ he thought as he shifted his attention back to himself.
In his head, memories and experiences rushed in because they were less than five meters away from each other. Slowly their memories synched up, as if updating each other on today’s happenings—how therapy had gone and who had dropped by to visit. Apparently, his actual fleshy self had even managed to do some weighted leg curls a few times in a row. He knew it was an important milestone considering how long he had been in a coma, but he couldn’t shake how he had been thirteen years ago. Back then he had almost managed to deadlift and squat as much as his father could.
With a mental sigh, he collected his thoughts. Over the past couple of days, he had been in recovery mode after having nearly kicked the bucket when he had upgraded his Mental Stat by 1 point. Even now, haunting memories of that night lingered, though it had yielded the desired results. Since then he hadn’t even felt a sliver of the gnawing, uncomfortable feeling inside of him. Instead, he felt calm and clearheaded, or at least as much as he could with his consciousness spread across two different bodies. It still felt like emptying half of a glass of water into another glass, yet ever since the upgrade it felt like there was more of the water now, if only a few droplets. ‘Perhaps if I gain even more points in the Mental stat, I might even feel normal while I’m inside both bodies at the same time.’
He shifted his focus to the HUD, nudging it to activate. His attention centered on the digital clock in the corner of his display, which read approximately 9:30 in the morning. He knew this was based on an instinctual feeling and his other self's memories. Below it, in the bottom right, a Stat tab was visible, ready to expand and reveal his current Stats. His robotic HUD mirrored his organic self’s, save for one tweak. His robotic form contained a countdown timer, ticking away, displaying his remaining time—130 out of 132 minutes. ‘A single point placed in the Mental Stat bumped my total operating time up by a solid 12 minutes,’ he thought, once again reinforcing what he had concluded the last two days. Focusing on how long he could last reminded him of his time spent in the junkyard, when he had to piece together clues each time he woke up again. With a mental activation, he brought the Stats tab to life. It emerged as a transparent menu, allowing him to stay aware of his surroundings.
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Stats
Strength:
0
Endurance:
0
Agility:
0
Perception:
0
Mental
1
Vigor:
0
Total Mana
??
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His gaze narrowed on his Mana, seeing the question marks he had put there yesterday as placeholders. ‘I just know it’s linked to how long I am able to stay active. Mana is fueling this frame, I can almost feel it,’ Marcus mused, his steel hand flexing as he watched the countdown steadily decrease. ‘If the operating time improved, then it makes sense that the total amount of Mana in my actual body also increased. But by how much?’ His thoughts raced as he attempted to decipher the puzzle. ‘It doesn’t help that my math skills were already a lost cause to begin with.’
The murmur of his brother and uncle’s conversation reached him again, a hushed exchange as the alternate Marcus tried to stall them near the ventilation system. It was clear to him that his organic self intended to stay within the five meter radius for a while longer to maximize synchronizing with his robotic self. Marcus responded by deactivating his HUD, channeling his focus into deepening his connection with his flesh variant. He focused on a single thought: ‘We suck at math. Ask Martin!’
Marcus stayed focused, his mind fixated on that one thought like a beacon. On the other side of the vent, he heard his muffled voice ask Martin’s help with something. He only caught bits of it, but it was clear that it irritated the other Marcus for even having to ask such a weird question. "Martin... doctor suggested… recovery... quizzes... math... help me out... what if a farmer... had 120 apples... now 132... got one extra basket... baskets total now?” Marcus nearly slammed his steel hand against his face as he heard himself make up the vague story. He felt embarrassed by it, although his uncle seemed to manifest the opposite feeling by laughing loudly and calling Marcus an idiot.
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“Ignore uncle Laurens. Jumping from 120 to 132 apples is a 12-apple leap because of one extra basket. If you divide 120 by 12, you’ll have 10. That means the farmer used to have 10 baskets, each with a dozen apples. Now, he’s got 11 baskets.” Martin’s voice remained neutral throughout the entire explanation. “It’s good that you are doing your best to also recover mentally. Keep at it.”
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[Total Mana:] [11]
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Annoyed with his own failures at math, Marcus swiftly altered the numbers in his HUD. Memories of the alternate Marcus swept in, offering a fresh and humiliating point of view of his uncle’s laughter and his brother’s matter-of-fact explanation. A part of him wondered if he hadn’t strained his relationship with his brother even more as he heard the three of them move away from the ventilation system. When they did, it broke his connection with himself, leaving him alone with his thoughts in the ventilator shaft. He did his best to just lay there without moving an inch and doing his best to minimize his pace of Mana depletion, while mentally preparing for tomorrow.
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Day 14
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[System activation: 100%]
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With a sudden jolt of energy Marcus woke up again while his HUD flared to life a second later. He noted that the time was 23:55. Recollections streamed in, painting a picture of his activities his other self had experienced. He remembered the therapy session, his sister visiting yesterday after his brother and uncle had left. He also had a memory of himself and Felix hanging out just a few hours ago. Internally he chuckled as he recalled how his friend had handed him a taco he had snuck in. He remembered both of them laughing seeing as he still struggled with fine motor skills. The end result had been a taco collapsing mid-bite.
Marcus clenched his metallic fist, fighting to push back the torrent of memories flooding his mind. ‘Concentrate,’ Marcus reminded himself, as he noticed the countdown in the upper left corner of his HUD. The timer displayed that he only had 131 minutes left. He quickly crawled upwards before he pried open the hatch. He then slid out of the ventilation system onto the hospital roof. There, he saw himself sitting in his wheelchair, smiling and holding onto a small bundle of items.
“Ready?” he heard himself ask as the two of them drew closer. A self-assured nod was his answer as he grabbed the bundle. The second he did so, he made physical contact with himself, establishing a connection. He felt his mind and memories merge seamlessly. As it happened, he pictured the two glasses of water again as he balanced how much of his mind he wanted to leave behind. Eventually he decided to leave only a quarter to his wheelchair-bound self. ‘No doubt he’ll feel a constant daze. Still, he should still retain basic functionality,’ Marcus thought as he nodded to himself. “Best of luck,” he heard him murmur before breaking the physical connection. Seconds later Marcus took off, hearing his steel feet hit the tiles as he accelerated toward the nearby stairs.
He hurried down the flights of stairs, swiftly unpacking the bundle until it revealed a spare set of baggy clothes, flashlight, his phone that was fully charged and already showing a navigation route programmed as well as a hammer that he had discreetly taken from a closet the day before. He tucked the phone into his worn backpack, still attached to his steel frame. Next, he slipped on the hoodie over his rags and plastic covered frame and managed, albeit awkwardly, to put on the baggy pants using just one hand.
Moments later, Marcus entered the dimly lit underground parking garage, doing his best to remain hidden from any cameras there. He could still recall the picture of his robotic self that the detective had shown him and he wasn’t looking to pose for any others. Staying close to the shadows, he hurried along the rows of parked cars while avoiding a nurse retrieving something from her vehicle. Finally, as he emerged from the parking garage, Marcus set his sights on his next destination that he was intimately familiar with—the junkyard.
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A while later, Marcus finally reached the scene. The junkyard lay within a thick walled off section, housing a massive blue Sphere visible even from a long distance. The Sphere's edge shimmered with a surreal distortion, as if countless crystal fragments danced in mid-air. Now, armed with the knowledge he had gathered these last two weeks, he could finally make sense of the sight in front of him. ‘I was left to rot in that place for years,’ Marcus thought, tracing the wall’s perimeter, searching for a potential weakness. ‘Only able to wake up when an Orb activated, triggering a surge of Mana that recharged my robotic shell. Waking up only to suffer even more.’
After Marcus had survived his first point in the Mental Stat he had started preparing for this moment. Using his phone, he had read up on the junkyard, learning that the site contained a lot of debris and wreckages of nearby meteor impact sites, including parts from the former Tech-event. In dumping it all there, people had made it a fertile breeding ground for countless unclaimed pieces of Monster-Glass, which would gradually grow into Orbs over time. The site had been a hotspot of Sphere activity for many years now, where some happened weeks after another, while other times remaining dormant for months or even years.
As Marcus circled the wall, his eyes caught sight of a nearby dumpster. Pausing for a moment, he seized the object and pushed it closer to the wall, using it to gain some extra height. Then he located a crate filled with empty wine bottles nearby. Marcus carefully positioned it atop the dumpster. He then climbed onto the makeshift platform, his metal frame unsteadily teetering on the flimsy crate before he launched himself upwards and lodged his hammer in the row of barbwire on top of the wall. His frame’s pistons and motors strained as he then climbed upwards. With effort, he pulled himself over the barbwire, unconcerned about getting cut, but more so about getting stuck and wasting time. A minute later, he finally wriggled free and tumbled to the other side. ‘Oh, shit!’ he screamed internally before his face was greeted by a mud-laden landing.
Getting up slowly, he wiped the mud off his camera lens, restoring his ability to see before retrieving his hammer again. Mentally he complimented himself for ‘nailing’ the landing before he moved onwards again until he reached the next wall. It was an older one, battered and punctuated with breaches. He scrambled through one of the holes before finding himself face to face with the Sphere. ‘It’s so weird seeing those floating crystal pieces,’ he thought as he moved closer and observed the shimmering exterior. ‘The light blue hue means that this... thing... is the weakest possible Sphere, implying that tier 2 Breachers, or Beta ranks, might stand a chance at surviving the entities within.’ He glanced at the enormity of the Sphere itself as he once again reminded himself that this was a stupid idea.
Drawing nearer, Marcus applied pressure with his hand against the edge of the Sphere, feeling its unyielding resistance until he slowed down his movement and felt his hand and the hammer pass through, like sinking through a sort of crystalline gel. Curiously, he withdrew his hand, observing no signs of damage to it or the weapon. Once he was certain that everything was still working, he then retrieved his cellphone before he hid it underneath a sheet of metal just outside of the Sphere. ‘Hopefully I’ll find it on my way out.’
He then brought down the hammer with a resounding thud against the Sphere, only to witness it spring back, as if meeting something impossibly hard. ‘Guess that explains why the military can’t just bomb these things,’ Marcus mused as he tried to calm his nerves before he stepped forward as slow as he could. Moving into and through the Sphere’s outer layer, he navigated what seemed like a solid meter of floating broken crystals, although it behaved more like a thick layer of pudding all just suspended around him. The most unnatural part of it all was the sudden absence of any kind of sound.
Abruptly, he suddenly shot forward, breaching the Sphere’s outer boundary and entering its blue-tinted realm. The world around him had taken on an otherworldly hue, with vines and moss ensnaring rusted cars, and sickly yellow branches entwined around heaps of refuse. Merely two weeks had passed since his last foray inside the Sphere, yet the landscape had transformed drastically, a testament to rampant mutation that Spheres were known for. ‘It feels strange to be back here. I wonder if my trusty rusty van is still out there,’ he thought, his grip on the hammer intensifying, metallic fingers digging into the wooden grip. He extended his severed right arm, its sharp edges poised as an impromptu spear as he recalled how he had killed a monster with it before. Tucked away in his backpack was his ‘hopefully’ functional pistol, partially cleaned and loaded with two bullets. He decided against using it for now, his caution born from the fear of instantly drawing a horde of monsters to his location and getting torn apart.
After he had made sure he wasn’t about to get jumped, he tucked the hammer under his arm and snatched up his flashlight. ‘Let’s see if the internet was right about this bit.’ Every article online had explained that electronics went haywire inside the Sphere due to their unstable Mana output, but he had to see for himself. He was about to activate the flashlight, only to see its plastic casing emitting something he assumed would be a sharp, acrid odor as tendrils of smoke curled from its innards. ‘Alright… so electrical things definitely don't work here. I’m not sure why I am even surprised. Still, I made the right call in hiding the cellphone on the outside,’ he thought before dropping the ruined object and reclaiming his hammer.
‘Now, let’s see how many pieces of Monster-Glass I can get my hand on before I get myself killed or run out of time.’
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Copyright: OsiriumWrites