CHAPTER 16

They were on level three, with the huge open space above them, but Daniel’s eyes dropped lower. He needed to get as close to the edge of the building as possible. Then he could get a conduit across to his main construction and go from there.

He looked at his companions, Carly and Iris. Iris couldn’t physically clamber over the piles and Carly was good as blind in the limited light coming from the sky outside.

The moon was out, which meant he could see almost as well as if it was daylight. But Carly’s sight was not augmented like his own. Then he focused once more on the path to the hole in the wall. Even with his vision it was clearly going to prove difficult to traverse. Jumbled debris mostly consisting of building rubble blocked the way in uneven piles. There was evidence of the materials that filled the floor spaces as well. About half-way to his destination, he could see a fridge poking out and there was glittering metal all over the place the remnants of both fittings and computers.

“I’m going to have to carry you.”

Carly frowned.

“It’s that or you create light but given the croldlics that’s a bad idea.”

With a sigh, she climbed onto his back and he grabbed Iris and then with only one hand free he picked his way across the piled mess. Everything that had originally been on a floor above had been down to pile down here. Up and down, while making sure his footing would not give way when he put weight upon it. After traversing the debris, Daniel got close enough to the edge of the building that he could form a connection with what was left of his queen trap.

The moment he did his mind flicked through what he had available and where.

He sighed in relief.

Providing there was a solution to allow him to thin out the wood, then he didn’t have to worry about flies. There was sufficient wood to build the five stories of stairs required to save the kids.

Till he determined how to mimic the wax, he would restrict his building activity to only thickening the wood already in the trap. Because it had been built to stop the flies, it was over the four centimetres of thickness which was necessary to dissuade the flies, which meant there was no risk to the structure being broken by rogue attackers while he worked.

His energy flowed out to kick off the growth process. With the link to the trees below him, all that he was missing was the sun and his magic made up for that absence. While his magic went to work, he considered the strange substance that the flies used to make their support appear stronger than they were. If they couldn’t solve the problem, then they would need to bring the kids down in pairs. Tie them to Carly and Iris and then lower the group down. Rinse and repeat until all of them were cleared.

It actually wasn’t that bad of a solution. Rising than many people would be a nightmare, but getting them down only required them to be lowered on a big rope.

While he built up mass, Daniel began his experiments. He extracted substances from the wood to see how the silver flies would perceive them. Sap, wax, bark, heavy bark, infusing it with extra water. He only needed a combination that partially worked, then he could focus it further.

Carly did not react once even though she was watching everything he did.

“It’s not working,” he declared finally.

“What do we do?” she asked worriedly.

“Downstairs?” Daniel suggested back.

Carly nodded thoughtfully. “It won’t hurt to give them an update, anyway.”

The trip over to the emergency stairs and down the intact three levels to the basement was uneventful. They knocked on the door and Alex let them in.

“And?” he seemed anxious.

“About thirty to rescue. Currently, they’re safe.”

The other man sagged slightly in relief. “Thank god. They’re not behind you?” Alex pretended to look past them and up the fire stairs.

Daniel snorted. “Because it’s that easy.”

“Well, for you, it seems to be.”

He winced at that. None of it had been easy. Lucky for sure, but sometimes he wondered how much of what they were experiencing was luck versus Ivey directing things more than she should have had.

“Well?” Alex demanded.

“I need help.” Daniel answered the other man produced the piece of wood with his sample of the substance that made the flies think their supports were more solid than they were. “I have to work out how to make more of this.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t have said I needed help.”

Alex smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He appeared exceedingly stretched.

“What’s up?” Daniel asked in concern. “Was there another attack?”

“Yes, and we repelled it. I think they were just probing. Though we would all rest easier if you did some more work on the garage door.” Alex plucked the piece of wood out of his hands. “I’ll look into this.”

Daniel went over to the car exit and winced.

It looked like the structure had been hit repeatedly by full on battering rams. Cars had been piled up, but they had since been shifted out of position. There were signs of metal having been melted. A chunk of concrete larger than him had been gouged out of the wall and there was a single body of the creature that had attacked.

It was insectoid and kind of crab like at the same time. It very much was like a thickened praying mantis whose torso was a little smaller than humans. Daniesl was conscious of the fact that it was wearing makeshift armour… Which terrified him. It did however lack a visible weapon, which was a small blessing through its ten-centimetre-long claws meant it didn’t really need them.

“It’s as bad as it looks,” Tamara confidently informed him.

“Intelligent?”

“Maybe not quite as bad as it looks,” she corrected. “But almost. They are called croldlics as you know. That means they’re a named species, which is always dreadful news. If an animal gets a human style name, they’re less dangerous. If they keep their racial names.” She shook her head. “Bad news. They’re also high level Richard pinged them at the equivalent of level twenty.”

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“All of them.”

“Eight attacked. Between the barriers and our diverse skill set, we were able to repel them.” “

“And not intelligent?”

“Not Sapient.” Tamara corrected. “But that’s the only good news available.”

Daniel studied the damage that had been done to the barricades. Almost everything moved had been already shifted back to its original position with the restraints obviously remaining broken. He walked along the stacked cars, assessing in more detail.

A car was out of position and he got ready to shove it back in place. Tendrils extended from his club to prop behind his feet and provide extra support.

Strength.

Power filled him, and then he shoved. The wood he was standing on, which despite being designed to prevent slipping slid slightly under the pressure and the downward slope. The unexpected movement was slight, and he mostly held his position. It didn’t move, but he still had a lot more to give. The metal he was pressing against deformed, the entire frame of the car crumpled slightly and then with a groan it moved. With a creak, the car shifted and in doing so had a cascading affecting of pushing everything tighter together.

He released the ability and was only a little puffed. It wasn’t a micro use, but it was close with him only holding the building while he was actively pressing.

The car still wasn’t quite in the right spot.

Strength.

He shoved again.

Metal groaned and twisted, and this time he left visible handprints on the deformed metal. It was absolutely magnificent. “I assume there were injuries,” he half asked, stated even as he mentally seized control of the wood throughout the barricade courtesy of his early efforts.

Sluggishly, everything began growing again as he repaired the wooden links that turned the barrier from a heap of junk into something that would be weather multiple croldlic strikes.

“Surprisingly few.” Tamara answered after a moment of thought. “But it was closer than that implies. If we didn’t have such a good choke point or if they had come with one or two more. Anyway, if you’re not here, we need this wall.”

“It’s growing,” he told her.

For ten minutes they stood facing the garage door as Daniel reinforced it.

Richard and Alex came up.

The older man held the wooden sample he had brought over. He waved it around. “Alcohol.”

“What?” Daniel asked in confusion.

“That’s the key ingredient.”

“What?”

“Unfortunately, Carly is upstairs, so we haven’t completed testing.” Richard continued.

“Why is she upstairs?”

“Oh, I suggested she could get her flies patrolling around the building to prevent the croldlics from approaching.”

“That’s smart.” Daniel said.

“I thought so too.” Richard agreed with a smirk. “But the knock on from that decision is that Carly isn’t around to check my results. But I’m confident. The tests are accurate. The primary ingredient is alcohol, but there is also a carbohydrate that encases each alcohol molecule that may be what tricks the flies. I can’t tell without her.”

Alcohol was a key ingredient? It made absolutely no sense to him. “That’s stupid.”

Richard shrugged. “Not so much. If the new laws of existence enable an insect to both generate alcohol easily and sense it magically. Then you could see evolution taking some hives in this direction. It’s not like alcohol makes the supports stronger they just act to signal the fly.”

“That’s great.” Daniel licked his lips. The lecture on evolution was not something he wanted to get involved in. “And you can tell all that without a chemistry set?”

Richard shrugged. “A few skills, scientific knowledge, the ability to create heat, electricity and freeze things and some interface gifted information and yep, we can perceive a lot. We don’t know if the alcohol is the primary signal carry, but it’s in the substance, so we figure it’s important.”

“So what do I put, starch or something around alcohol and then I’ve mimicked the wax?”

“You’ll need to test.”

A man came up struggling to carry what was clearly a heavy box. “We found some.”

A huge grin split Richard’s face. “You found some.”

“Back of the third storage. Cases of wine. There are four in total.”

Daniel took the offered box and placed it down next to him. It contained twenty-four bottles of wind in it. Pre-event, he probably would have felt the weight but not sufficient to struggle with now it might as well have been an empty box. “Thanks. I need five minutes to finish the barrier and if Carly’s back after that we’ll do some tests..”

With that, he turned to face the barricades and kept working. Under his power, the vine structure he had created hardened transforming from pliable vine into a type of light wood that would let it absorb the maximum amount of blows before failing. Having seen the strength of the monsters who were attacking Daniel had added extra loops this time. Between the improved wall and Carly changing the patrol pattern of the flies, he was confident that they could hold off the croldlics while he saved the people upstairs.

By the time he stepped away from the garage door Carly was waiting for him. She had Iris and a single fly with her.

She held her pet up, straining slightly under the weight. “I hear you need to run some experiments.”

“Yes.” Daniel held up a wine bottle. “Does the worker fly see this as solid?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t check.”

“No, I did when I got back from setting up the patrols. You were busy. About two millimetres of wine is enough to appear solid. We poured it onto a tray to test.” She clarified at his surprised look.

“So all I need to do is concentrate it and then turn it into a wax.”

“Pretty much.”

A thought occurred to Daniel. He didn’t necessarily have to go down the wax route. There were faster methods. “Carly, I want you to watch everything I’m doing and report anything you see no matter how minor the detail might appear to be.”

He opened a bottle of wine and a root grew into it and then started to greedily drink the contents. It swelled up and then he created leaves.

“It’s working.” Carly told him in excitement. “Usually, plants are sort of this translucent stuff but that solid… well the leaves aren’t there yet but they’re more solid than normal leaves.”

“Is any leaf better?”

“These two.” She pointed.

Daniel actually froze in surprise. The first was expected as it was a triple thickness variety, but the second was a normal. It was one of his control leaves while he varied alcohol concentration. “That one?” he confirmed.

Carly nodded.

“Any others?”

She gestured at two more. “They’re far weaker than the first two, but a little better than the rest.”

Daniel shook his head in confusion.

“What’s up Dan?”

“I was running a test to see if concentrating alcohol had an impact, but apparently it doesn’t.”

“Did you check all concentrations?”

“No.”

“If you dilute them, then…”

“Already checking.” Daniel responded while looking at Carly for confirmation.

She pointed at the two leaves closest to the base of the plant. “They’re translucent.”

“Five percent.” Daniel muttered. “It kicks in at five percent. But why is that leaf different?”

He focused on the leaf that Carly had first identified. He had been growing a variety of fresh leaves basically borrowing different genetic imprints. Leaves for drought, winter, low nitrates and various other stress conditions, the one he had grown had been a version that grew when essential minerals in the soil were low. The question was whether growing similar but slightly different leaves would let him find a more effective growing method than cloning.

Curiously, Tom created more of them, only tweaking the input conditions slightly. Carly quickly identified the ones that were working.

And Tom grabbed the strongest one and used it as a template once more tweaking various bits and pieces. He didn’t know what made a good leaf or bad and he didn’t have time to find out. There did not seem any rhyme or reason to what was happening.

“I think that’s enough.” Carly said finally. “You haven’t improved them for three generations.”

“Will a leaf by itself stop a fly from attacking?”

Carly shrugged.

“It might surprise you, but that’s a surprisingly unhelpful response.” Daniel told her with a smile.

The poor girl looked exhausted, but she was pushing through. “It’s borderline. One is probably enough, but two almost guarantee it.”

Daniel thought for a minute about the construction that was being planned. There was no increasing concentration because five-point eight percent seemed to be the sweet spot. While he could go higher, there were no additional benefits and alcohol was limited in its availability. If one was almost good enough, then two leaves exactly like the one that he had created would work. Or he could thicken the existing leaf.

Daniel did both. “Will these repel rogue flies?”

“They all work.” Carly confirmed.

Daniel sighed in relief. It was the solution that they were after. He could build and then create a layer of flimsy leaves over the construction which would protect him from the dangerous flies. “I think we should go up and check on the group upstairs and tell them the good news, and then go ahead and save them.”

“Great.” Carly muttered at some point she had sunk down and sitting on the concrete.

“How long will it take you?” Tamara asked.

“Most of the night, another two hours, but probably four. I’ll be finished before morning.”

She nodded. For a moment she went forward, and he thought she was going to kiss him but something held her back at the last instant. Instead, she rested her forehead on his. “Be safe.”

“I will.” He whispered.