The creature reached the top of the ladder and leapt at my head. I jumped backwards to avoid it and slapped it to knock it off course. It hit the ground beside me a jumped back up. I was off balance so when it jumped at me I couldn’t avoid it grabbing onto my arm and grabbing for my face. After it latched onto my face and managed to scratch me several times I pulled it off and threw it.

It hit the wall across the alley and fell ten feet before landing on the fire escape. The wounds on my face hurt, but apparently not enough to level up my Physical Pain Resistance. Thankfully I could already feel them starting to itch, a sign that they were starting to heal.

I knew I had a limited amount of time before it woke back up, so I tried to figure out how to deal with this. I had my mana bullet spell, but if I used it the sonic boom would alarm everyone in the area and the police would be called. I knew there were sub-sonic bullets which were much quieter, as they didn’t cause a sonic boom, but I hadn’t set that up yet. At best, I could dial the power down to something on par with a standard rifle. Still, I had a few moments so I might as well try.

I opened the program for “Mana Bullet” and dialed the number of nanites down to ten thousand, thus using only 1/100th of a point of mana per shot. I then instructed my Detection Field to calculate the speed of sound, and feed that data to the bullet. The bullet was then ordered to accelerate or decelerate in order to stay a few meters per second below that. Upon saving the program as “Subsonic Mana Bullet” I got a notification.

I glanced down at the unconscious monkey while asking Vera what had updated in the power, only to notice that it was no longer there. I started looking around to find it, only to get an alert from my Detection Field a split second before it grabbed onto my back. I reached back to grab it only for it to bite down on my neck. I screamed and ripped it off, pulling a chunk out of my neck in the process, and threw the monkey onto the roof in front of me. Once it impacted I immediately lifted my hand and pointed it at the monkey, firing off three subsonic mana bullets.

The fact that my neck was pouring blood meant that I couldn’t pay attention to it. I clamped my hand over the wound to slow the bleeding and created a quick program. Ten million nanites sounded good for now, so I grabbed them and ordered them to form a solid wall over where I was bleeding. I saved the program as “Mana Bandage” and turned it on. A few seconds later a mesh of nanites had formed over the wound, holding it closed and stopping the blood. I reopened the program and edited it to try and close the wound, and it went up to Level 6.

While my right shoulder, upper arm, and some of my side was covered in blood, the bleeding had now stopped. I saw that the monkey was starting to lift itself up, but I was tired of this and needed to take some down time to let the thirteen points of HP I’d lost regenerate. I sent one hundred million nanites to where it was and activated Heat 2. It instantly ignited and a two meter tall flame shot up, turning it to ash in a matter of seconds.

“I severely overdid it.” I said, then, after making sure the fire was out, I ran. I really didn’t want to try and explain why I had started a bonfire on the roof of an apartment building.

A few minutes later I was sitting in an alley watching my HP tick up and wondering what I was going to do now. I couldn’t go into any business covered in blood like this without causing massive alarm and possibly getting the police called on me. As I thought about it I realized that in a fantasy setting this would be a simple thing. Most settings had some sort of cleaning spell that could remove dirt and other things, completely cleaning an object. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could easily make a power which did that.

First I created a mass of one million nanites and a new program. I created a whitelist of objects, which I could designate as “object to be cleaned”. I then instructed the nanites to find everything that was on the surface of the object and to remove it from the surface. I saved this as “Clean Surface”, which had a level of 3. Apparently that wasn’t properly constructed, but it was good enough that after three uses the blood was off of me and my clothing and now on the ground. Checking it in a broken piece of a mirror I found nearby, one that likely had been used for drugs, judging by the tiny bits of white powder on the surface, I saw that the side of my neck looked weird, like I had tiny gray lines on the surface. Still, it was good enough that I could at least go into buildings.

I checked out several more hotspots in the city, but they were all sick people so, other than one that already had a high fever, I let the paramedics deal with them. I wasn’t going to risk getting arrested for Breaking and Entering.

By midnight I was back home and exhausted. I wasn’t sure if it was from the blood loss or running all around the city, but I could barely keep my eyes open. I checked my System messages to see that everyone had accepted my friend request, and Tim had responded to tell me that he had downloaded the Resistance package and now had a headache despite being at level 2 in Physical Pain Resistance. I told him to make sure that Vera had verified that the other powers had adapted to him before downloading the other package, lest it cause brain damage from the rejection. I would have sent him a copy of Regeneration, but from what I could tell most of his current issues were because I had given him one of my homemade powers and it was having trouble adapting to his body. Apparently I would be limited on what I could give him in the future despite the fact that we used the same paradigm.

I climbed in bed, not bothering to get undressed, and when I woke up everything looked a bit off, like it was too large or had too much detail. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was likely the result of Eagle Eyes. I spent the next few minutes practicing and when I thought I was getting used to it I got a notification that the power had increased to Level 2. I left it to be updated automatically by the system, and double checked that the Nanite Cultivation Core was finished. As I slept it had created around thirteen million nanites, an amount I would consider too small to be useful if I didn’t know that the skill associated with it was still at level 1. It would grow in time.

Things in the city were speeding up. The disease was spreading faster than anywhere else, and there were only so many people Tim could treat. There were also zombies showing up now, as evidenced by the monkey that tried to kill me last night. As I thought about it, though, I realized that the police and vigilantes could handle the zombies, but only those connected to the System could deal with the outbreak. Unfortunately I only knew three people in the city that fit that description, four if the FBI agent was still in town, though I had no way to contact him.

Now was not the time to keep this cure a secret. We needed to save as many people as possible. I opened my friends list and sent a copy of the treatment program to Wan and Father Smith, encouraging them to share it with their factions. According to the latest news, there were small pockets of survivors cropping up all across the world. Vera informed me that the System had offered it to many Healer type people across the globe, and most of them accepted it. That reassured me that this city wouldn’t be the only place humans managed to survive.

The Father sent me a message that the Vatican had already sent him a copy, and Wan thanked me and said he would share it, so that was all I could do for the moment. If I saw people in public that were very sick I would help them, but I was needed out in the city, so I couldn’t risk committing crimes to heal people.

I grabbed a ski mask from the unused winter clothing in my closet and spent the entire morning running around the city, using “Clean Surface” when I got too dirty, sweaty, or smelly, and healing everyone I saw that was experiencing serious symptoms. Many of them were scared when I dropped in from above, by quickly got over their fear when, seconds after I touched them, their fever broke and their symptoms started to go away. I did get pepper sprayed several times, but I ignored it thanks to Physical Pain Resistance. One man did try and pull a gun on me when I approached, but due to the illness caused weakness he was suffering from I was easily able to take it from him, throw it twenty feet away, and heal him. By the time he had retrieved his gun, I was too far away to shoot at and he was already getting better.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

By the time I dropped in behind a local Chinese place for lunch around 1pm, “#MaskedHealer” was already trending on several social media platforms. While most of the comments were talking about the good I had done, some uninformed people were accusing me of trying to take advantage of the situation to garner internet fame, or worse, to cover up for criminal activities or prejudice. One person pointed out that I had healed a white woman while ignoring that I hadn’t healed her black friend, ignoring the fact that the black woman wasn’t running a serious fever. Still, the rumors of misconduct would die down in time. And even if they didn’t, “good Samaritan” laws would likely protect me from the worst of the criminal charges, assuming that society survived long enough for me to be charged.

I shoved my mask in my pocket and sat down, not bothering to change clothes. If my identity went public in a few days, it didn’t matter. Internet fame meant that there was still a society to care about such things. From what I had seen on the internet, this disease had a 95% mortality rate, and no one seemed to be immune other than those that had recovered from it. Hopefully my efforts in the city could decrease that rate, but even doubling the number of survivors meant that 90% of humanity had died. Society wouldn’t survive that.

After lunch I continued my vigilante work, even stopping a few crimes that the situation had made more common. I would need to update my outfit if I was going to keep doing this. Sweat-wicking workout clothes were great for parkour, but it didn’t really fit the vigilante image.

I made it back home and dug through some old clothes and Halloween outfits. Soon I had a black hoodie and black jeans over my workout clothes, and had replaced my ski mask with a Guy Fawkes mask. As I knew it would get hot and sweaty in such an outfit, I combined Heat 2 and Cool 2 into a single power, taking the White list concept from the Clean Surface power, and ordered them to maintain a constant temperature inside my suit. I named it “Temperature Control” and it became Level 2.

Now that my new Super Hero identity was ready, I climbed out the window and leapt onto the fire escape. It just wasn’t appropriate for a Hero to go through the front door of his own house while in costume.

I didn’t get home until after 8pm, at which point I climbed through my window and collapsed on my couch, exhausted. I checked my stats, and saw that several abilities had leveled up. Heat 2, Cool 2, and Temperature Control were all Level 3, Parkour had increased to 8, and Dodge and Physical Pain Resistance had increased by a level, with Parry increasing by 2 due to the people who overreacted to my attempts to help. I contemplated making a Resist Acid power which would neutralize the capsaicin by putting small amounts of alkaline chemicals, maybe sodium or potassium hydroxide, in the affected area. That seemed dangerous, though, so I decided not to do it. As tired as I was now I didn’t trust myself to do the job properly.

I woke up the next morning not realizing that I had even fallen asleep. I grabbed a protein shake for breakfast and, after noticing that I had used up the vast majority of my nanites treating people yesterday, I opened several more containers of protein powder and drained them all of nanites. I then put my hand over an electrical outlet and absorbed electricity into the nanites as quickly as the wall could provide it without popping a breaker, something I learned to do after popping the breaker several times. Once I was done I was at 827/827 MP. That should be enough for today’s work, so I hoped out the window and went back to work.

I continued to do this all week, greatly increasing my skills, and by Friday I was the #1 trending topic on social media. While it felt good to be famous, it felt even better to help people. This week I had stopped multiple burglars, including some rioters, arsonists, two rapes, seven muggings, and 13 different zombie attacks, one of which had two zombies attacking the landlord that came to get them to pay their rent, not knowing that they had died from the outbreak two days earlier. I even used my Surveillance power to record the more interesting bits and posted the edited versions to YourTube.

I had to swing by two different health food stores this week in order to buy them out on all algae powder and whey protein in order to keep up with my nanite usage, as my level 3 recovery skill just wasn’t keeping up. This put me down an additional $2600, but that didn’t really matter. It was the 22nd of December, just 3 day until Christmas, and despite the outbreak people were still trying to arrange get-togethers with friends and family, reasoning that if they were already of it then getting together for a meal wouldn’t hurt anything.

I was just finishing up a riot outside the local PriceCo that occurred because the manager was limiting the number of people that could enter at one time, when I got a message from Wan. Someone had come to him with a request and, while it wouldn’t pay very well, he believed that I would want to be a part of this mission. He also informed me that I should take off the costume before showing up. Apparently I had treated the client in question on Wednesday night and, while I probably wouldn’t remember him, he would definitely remember the vigilante that saved his life.

I didn’t know how Wan had figured out my secret identity, but he was a private investigator so it wouldn’t have been hard for him. After getting to his place I shoved my outerware into the dumpster behind his office and entered in my workout clothes. Thanks to Clean Surface I didn’t have to worry about them getting dirty.

Once up the stairs I knocked, and he let me inside. In a chair in front of his desk sat a nervous looking man in a construction worker’s outfit. “This man here has come to me with a rather unique job, and I thought you might be interested.” Wan said, motioning to the man.

“Laugh at me all you want, but i’m telling the truth.” the man responded. Apparently he had told several people only to be laughed at.

“I’m not laughing.” I said. “Just tell me your story and I’ll see what I can do.”

The man sighed and looked at me. “Fine. My name is Mike. I work in the subways, repairing damage to the lines, tunnels, and utilities that are run down there. But this morning, when I was down there looking over an area of the tunnel wall that had collapsed, I found a tunnel behind it.” He paused to see if I was still followed. I nodded and motioned for him to continue. “Well, the tunnel looked normal enough. Partly it was a natural cave, but in spots it looked like people had done some work to it. I didn’t know about any mines under the city, but in the 1800s I doubt they were keeping proper claims, especially if it was a private claim. Anyway, about two hundred yards into the cave I found someone. Or should I say something? It looked like a man, but it smelled like it was rotten, and skin was falling off in places. I’d seen enough horror movies to know what a zombie looked like, so I ran. But when I told my boss about it he laughed at me and accused me of drinking on the job. After a few minutes everyone in the crew was laughing at me, telling me I was high, or that maybe the tunnel had fumes in it that were messing with me. But I knew what I saw. So I looked up private investigators in the phonebook, hoping I could hire someone to look into it. Your friend is the third one I’ve talked to, the others thought it was a prank or that I was crazy. I’ll understand if you think the same way.”

I looked at Wan and nodded. “Well, I have been interested in zombies for a while now, and I did run into some weird things in this city already, so I might as well take a look.” I stood up. “Just tell me where the tunnel is, and I’ll check it out. If I find something, I’ll let you know and we can settle the matter of cost at that time.”

He didn’t look too exited when I mentioned cost, but he nodded. A PI that was willing to take a chance to make a quick buck at least made sense to him. Sure, I didn’t need the money, but it would be a good cover for why we were there if Wan was actually needed. “Give me an hour. I should know enough about the situation by then to tell Wan if we should take the case.” The man nodded and went to pour himself a cup of coffee.

I went behind the building and grabbed my outfit. After a quick treatment of “Clean Surface” to remove the smell of rotten food I went to the stop he specified. It seemed the whole stretch of track had been shut down for repairs, so the subway entrance was blocked off. I jumped it and ran past the workers inside. None of them seemed to have a fever, so they didn’t concern me at this point. I did here one of them ask if I was “that masked vigilante that was runnin’ around”, but I ignored them and hopped onto the track, running down it at full speed. Hopefully seeing a super hero would be the weirdest thing that happened to them today.

Once I found the hole in the wall I made my way down the tunnel. Without the tunnel lights it was dark in here, so I ordered a million nanites to form a ball and maintain a constant light level, comparable to a low-watt bulb. I then ordered it to float 20 centimeters above my head. I saved this power as “Floating Light” and noticed that it was at level 3. It was better configured than my only other light spell, so I would have to try and optimize the other one later.

I made my down the tunnel, confirming that it was like Mike had said. The tunnel looked natural in some spots, but manufactured in others. I kept going and soon found a person standing in the middle of the tunnel. I used Appraisal on them. it said. I was confused by the asterisk, so I focused on it.

That was weird. Why would a zombie be missing most of its brain? All of the ones he’d seen up until this point were just normal people, or one spider monkey, that had been reanimated after death. I held up my hand towards it and fired several Subsonic Mana Bullets into its chest. It collapsed, but its name simply changed to . I heard sounds from further into the cave, the sound of many more zombies moaning or walking around. I could probably take them one or two at a time by myself, but any more than that and I would need help. I turned on surveillance and sent Wan a live feed along with a note about the sounds coming from further in. He asked me to finish this one and check, so when it stood back up I fired twenty more rounds into it. This turned its body to Swiss cheese and changed its name to . I ignored the corpse and walked past it. In the next room I could see light coming out of it, so I deactivated my light. There appeared to be seven zombies standing around a large room that was stacked with crates bearing some sort of logo. At the end of the room was a door bearing the same symbol. I used Eagle Eye to look at the symbol only to recognize it as a group of three Cedar trees, the logo of the pharmaceutical company from several weeks ago.

‘I think we are going to need some help.’ I sent to Wan, and he agreed. So I made my way out of the tunnel and back to Wan’s.