It was never a good sign when they sent an agrav VTOL to pick me up for work.

I received dirty looks from the other residents of my apartment complex as the VTOL touched down in the courtyard. The thrum of the gravitational engines made my teeth chitter and my inner ear do somersaults, and prompted one of the more intrepid seagulls to squawk and then faceplant into the sidewalk as its vestibular system was scrambled.

I waved at the the elderly couple next door, and then boarded the ship, settling in as the internal fields neutralized the graviton flux and left me feeling strangely floaty.

Which was a good thing, as without inertial dampening, the maneuvers that the VTOL pulled as we raced would have made anyone with a conventional inner ear sick, and I hadn't had reason to upgrade mine.

The bay stretched below us, rough and rocky, the freshly excavated mud and gravel still unweathered by the sea. Inland, terraforming was well underway, and lush moss, lichen and small shrubs dotted the hills, giving way to young growth forest where more progress had been made. I settled in, and decided to login remotely, given that it would still be a while till I reached work.

Good morning, Doctor. Would you like to view a comprehensive or summarized digest today? You have (18) pending messages..

I chose the comprehensive view, and groaned as a selection of penis enlargement pills and super serum ads flooded my inbox. I fucking hated the new Technomancer derived spam bots, they evaded anything but the best filters, at least until I could OTA another patch. I hadn't had time last night, what with the obscenely expensive call. Shame, I believed that they had a new security patch ready to deploy.

Instead, I swapped to the summary view, and looked at the list my favorite GPT derivative generated.

1) Updates on performant Homeomorphic Encryption Algorithms, and applications in circumventing clairvoyance and hypercomputation-based decryption technologies.

2) Dolphins on Europa: Comparison of Applied Greensmithing techniques, and performance characteristics of conventional bioengineering versus tinker-made constructs.

3) Evaluation of x-risk from Centauri RKVs: Options for increasing societal robustness to the targeted or indiscriminate destruction of industrial centers.

4) Defeating Hackerman: A novel ML technique for real-time detection of parahuman probability manipulation in online games.

5) A comparative evaluation of orbital launch loops, space hooks, and space elevators in the context of telekinetic augmentation.

Interesting stuff, but I wasn't going to be able to read anything truly classified until I got to my destination, the risks were truly too high.

Hmm.. They'd managed a 50% performance increase on the previous state-of-the-art for homeomorphic encryption, which took the computational requirements for any real work from ludicrous to merely staggering.

I couldn't care less about dolphins on Europa, I had lobbied against the proposed uplift program; we had enough problems dealing with aliens, parahumans and even run-of-the-mill transhumans without worrying about even more novel cognitive architectures running around.

Now, a superpowered dolphin with their usual rape-y tendencies that would be a sight to see.

I sighed while perusing the sims for RKV damage. I don't think the gigantic blemish on Uranus from the last diverted impactor had faded, and I wasn't being puerile for once. I decided to read up on how doomed we were when I was too drunk for it to depress me further.

The last time I'd played video games, a 12 year old from China had dunked on me so hard that I had given up, what made it worse was that the little shit hadn't even had any enhancement work done beyond the usual CRISPR. I would settle for co-op, I really couldn't keep up anymore and getting reflex augments would just kick me up to another league.

I didn't bother reading the specs on the proposed megastructures, I was about to visit one myself.

And there it was, looming like a skyscraper had a growth spurt, nay, developed outright gigantism.

It stretched up into the stratosphere, an improbably thin spire that even my limited knowledge of civil engineering screamed out as being infeasible, unless you were using graphene. And floating on top, a gigantic orb, almost like a middle finger stuck up at the heavens, with a basketball spinning on top.

Thankfully for the structural integrity of ATLAS 1, my workplace didn't really rely on mere compressive strength to keep it afloat, nor anything as unreliable as agrav.

It was an active structure, a space fountain, not relying on tensegrity like most you might have seen did. Tons of material were magnetically accelerated every second upwards, to be deflected by the base of the ball, embuing it with their momentum before heading back down to close the loop.

It seemed precarious, but I'd seen the simulations, even with complete loss of power, there would be enough momentum in the closed loop to allow for a relatively graceful landing. I still subconsciously counted the escape pods, just in case.

A coterie of drones intercepted us on the approach, scanning my ride's hull for unwanted hitchhikers. Broad-spectrum scans checked for anyone using known forms of optic camouflage, then lasers swept within millimeters of the hull, powerful enough to cut through anything, likely metahuman, that could avoid the former. A shower of nanite dust was sprayed over the ship, to detect truly invisible entities, and a gravitational scan checked for mass anomalies.

None of this was nearly enough to detect some intruders, I was painfully aware, but it at least raised the bar to state-level actors, the Centaurs, or truly Class 5 or above supes, which was as much security as was practical.

I hoped the laser turrets and missiles were less twitchy today as I disembarked on an external landing pad, but I knew the drill and didn't make any sudden movements as I walked into the decon facility.

"Morning Doc, what can I get you today? Invasive rectal scan, genuine human finger up the bum?", a man's voice asked over the intercom as I began stripping down in the entrance room.

"That joke was funny the fifteenth time Sam, but if you really have to, then at least use the pinky." I said, already pining for my morning coffee.

"Lots of activity today eh? You want me to give you the full speech, or you planning to waive it?"

I felt the thrum of more VTOLs, and even the distant thump of helicopters forming a queue outside, some of the heavier ones struggling in the thinning air, so I flicked through the waiver form as fast as it would let me and confirmed my acceptance.

Yup, neural lace unlocked for external audit, I didn't remember drinking anything laced with unverified psychoactive nanites, but depending on how much of a good time I'd have been having, I wouldn't in the first place.

One minor positive to my minimal augments was that they didn't subject me to an MRI scan, but first I stepped into a standard high pressure shower.

After being practically exfoliated, I was dried off with hot air, and then strode into the next chamber.

A manipulator handed me a vial of gloop. This was by far my least favorite part of the job.

I held my nose, tossed my head back, and swallowed, doing my best not to gag.

The concoction tasted vile, it practically slithered down my throat instead of doing what an honest fluid would, and left my guts feeling queasy.

I allowed the manipulator to jack in directly to my fiberoptic occipital port, and tried to distract myself from the ever more queer sensations from my intestines, which loudly protested the intrusion by the hunter-killer nanites.

Images flashed through my brain, an AI evaluating the tamper seals and running checksums. For a rough idea of what that felt like, imagine looking at a Rorschach blot while on drugs.

And then, I felt a mounting headache, and flashing lights in the periphery of my vision. I couldn't help but sweat, and if the deep clean hadn't already made me nauseous, this certainly would have.

FML, they'd decided to subject me to a random Basilisk probe. I didn't think I'd pissed off any of the local probability manipulators, otherwise I'd keep drawing the short straw far more often than the RNG warranted. I resolved to actually read that white paper on detection of more subtle probability manipulation.

WARNING: UNHANDLED EXCEPTION CODE 6AE32 CYAN

Stabbing pain shot down from my eyeballs, and I reeled and would have fallen over if the manipulator hadn't grabbed my shoulder and steadied me.

TRIPWIRE TRIGGERED: BASILISK ANOMALY, CLASS ĤĒƘǠߙᏋ.

SEVERITY: ORANGE

PLEASE STANDBY

There was a toilet, meant for disposing of the nanite slurry once it was done, and I staggered over and sat on it, and just in time, because I felt something akin to all my internal organs deciding to strike out and see the world for themselves.

DISPATCHING DECON TEAM

PLEASE STANDBY

Another manipulator arm zoomed down a rail, and I let myself go slack as they cradled me in place.

"Jesus, you ok Adat?", I heard Sam's voice again.

"It's a cyan, I'll hang in there." I said, trying not to pay attention to the things that squirmed at the edge of my vision.

NEURAL LACE REINITIATED IN SAFE MODE

Geometric patterns swarmed my vision like fractal flies, doing their best to break up the patterns that threatened to fry my brain.

I heard the sound of the decon team running over into the room adjacent to me. The wall shimmered, turning transparent to show them setting up their tools.

"Dr. Sen, take the amnestics, let me know if you're experiencing nausea again." I looked up blearily at my colleague, Dr. Smith, handing over pills to another manipulator, which swiveled over the divider over to me.

I took them in hand, trying to suppress the tremors, but didn't down them right away. "What am I going to lose this time?", I queried, staring at them.

"Your short term memory, and maybe anything that hasn't settled in since last night. I take it you have backups?"

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

I nodded back at her, I wasn't happy about forgetting my last chat with my wife, but my lace had been backing most of it up, assuming it survived a mandatory Basilisk purge.

I swallowed, and within a few seconds, I felt myself loosen up, some of the anxiety fade. That would be the benzos in them kicking in, and I hoped whatever else was in that witch's brew would be just as effective.

"I've got a clairvoyant and telepath here, you'll get through this Adat, just sit tight." She said, and I looked over at the others in their decon suits, who raised their hands in acknowledgement.

After a quick wash by another manipulator, I was cleared to enter their room, and half walked, half stumbled into their midst and the waiting bed.

"How bad is it? You don't have to sugar coat it Lily." I told her, and she nodded, brows furrowed.

"Mild severity. There's a 2% chance of irreversible personality loss in a purge, do you consent to continue?"

I nodded grimly. With the quality of medical care on-site, I was exceedingly unlikely to truly die from the cleanup, and even if I did, they could likely revive someone.

Notice that I said someone, and not me, because there was a pretty high chance that by the time a metahuman Healer could regenerate my damaged neurons, their information content would be truly scrambled. Someone else would wake up again, and he wouldn't truly be Dr. Adat Sen, and we had the maths to prove it.

The Clairvoyant, Senna, might be able to help, but on such a microscopic scale, it would be infeasible for her to individually assess millions of neurons and guide the Healer to fix each one, and by then neuroplasticity would ensure that the rest would be updating in response.

"Do you consent to a telepathic neurological examination? We can't MRI you."

I nodded in response and settled back.

Gary was one of those pretentious supes who insisted on a cape name, in his case 'Farseer', entirely incongruous in my opinion, because he a range of five meters on a good day.

And he also happened to be 12 years old.

Lacking any real medical training, and with the nonviability of having a lace guide him, he usually relied on another trained doctor in his presence to provide the medical knowledge for examinations.

In this case, I was the doctor in question, so I desperately hoped that the Basilisk hadn't fucked up my dim memories of med school neurology.

He strode up, looking baggy in his oversized hazmat suit, and touched my skull gingerly.

"I don't bite, kid." I told him, and tried my best to refresh my memory.

Normally, he'd have made a fuss about not being a kid and demanding that I call him Farseer, but he was being less of an asshole as the severity of the situation leaked out from my mind to his.

"Multiple punctate hemorrhages, primarily in the occipital lobe, elevated CSF pressure, but that's being handled by the lace and the standard shunt. Minimal ischaemic damage, no immediate need for invasive neurosurgery." He intoned, and it was eery, the way he took on my (admittedly lacking) bedside manner. I gave myself a pat on the back for remembering the absolute basics, as a few more tests were run on me.

"Right, we're going to reboot and debug your lace, you'll be awake within an hour." Lily assured me, and squeezed my hand once as everything slowly faded into the void.

I awoke two hours later, if my internal clock was anything to go by.

I actually remembered something about 6 hours later, once the amnestics were flushed and the rest of the Basilisk screen was completed. A further battery of tests (which were initially designed by yours truly) absolved me of lingering psychological triggers, and my lace was brought fully online a few minutes later.

I spent a while chatting with concerned colleagues, but nobody really had too much time on their hands, and once I felt mostly normal, I went over to the meeting room.

I'd missed the original time, so I browsed the minutes to get up to speed.

It seemed there had been an incident in Hawaii, a surfer had triggered, and developed Class 4 Hydrokinesis.

Unfortunately, he had been high as a kite on LSD, and had the mother of all bad trips in the process.

Even less fortunate, for the people on the island he'd been near, was the tsunami that had provoked.

Casualty figures were grim, at least 2000 irrecoverably dead, or as we in the business call it, dead dead. As opposed to mostly dead, when a Healer or a very good emergency medical bot can sort of drag something like you back to life.

I had been assigned to the containment team, but my absence had been moot, I wasn't quite sure what a field psychiatrist, even a cyborg one with military experience, was supposed to do with someone throwing around 20 meter tall waves while on an LSD trip.

I decided to do another aspect of my job, power assessment, while I waited for the team to return. It was obvious that he'd be at least a Class 4, loosely defined as someone who was a regional threat. The hydrokinesis was apparent, not only were no seismic events recorded, but the waves had been rather.. trippy to say the least.

I searched the Aegis network for satellite footage, and it seemed that while the initial trigger hadn't been recorded, someone at the NSA had diverted a spy sat when the anomaly became apparent.

I saw it with astonishing clarity, I knew the new sats were good, but I could read the open book that some lady had left on the beach. It began with waves becoming larger and larger, nothing too astonishing at first, but then beach goers began backing off and more crazy surfers began rushing in to catch, as I heard from an audio recording, "those fucking huge waves duuuude".

The new supe was already in the water, and the sat was angled enough that I could see some of his face. He was crying, tears streaming down his cheeks, and in response, the waves became ever more wild. All of a sudden, the full breakthrough occurred, and massive surges burst forth, sending people flying.

He vanished under the surface, and as his power pushed him out in a plume of spray, there was a massive ripple, and then a series of waves that could only be further referred to as tsunamis burst forth.

That was when the code red had been triggered, by multiple neural laces screaming in alarm as their owners drowned. The signal was processed by one of the Watchers, to eventually result in my team being called in for deployment.

I scrubbed forward, watching a massive chunk of the island wiped out as he spiralled went out of control.

Based on the origin, the waves ended up wreaking havoc all over the Pacific coast, but by then early warning sensors had alerted population centers, and evacuations had been largely completed before they struck. The seawalls in California, Japan and China dealt with the worst of it, as it seemed that he didn't sustain the waves for particularly long after they'd spawned.

I decided to check the gravitational observatories, both in orbit and on the ground. It was extremely important whether he only had the ability to control existing water bodies, or could synthesize new water ex nihilo. The latter might be enough to ramp him up to Class 5, at least in terms of utility.

Bingo, there was the unmistakable signature of new matter spawning into existence, made easier by the sheer volume of it. It was too hard to detect something like a cloner or small scale self duplicator, but something this big? Easy.

OK, put a tick on the synthesis box.

I assessed his fine control over his powers, including the ability to rearrange the waves in whatever shapes his twisted psyche desired.

Fine hydrokinetic control, check.

He'd ended up submerged for a few seconds, but not long enough for me to decide if he had the ability to breathe underwater too, so I put that into the assessment box for later.

I downloaded the chemical scans of the water he'd generated. Shame it was just pure H20, if he'd had the ability to synthesize arbitrary solutions that would have made him Class 6 easy.

He'd raged away for several minutes before a drone was diverted from a nearby naval base, and a provisional ID was made of the target, as opposed to other people in the water nearby. He was susceptible to tranquilization, that was reassuring, and they ended up bagging him a little later, at which point the disturbance subsided, albeit gradually.

Latent unconscious control? Investigate later.

I settled back and began checking my other work, even if my team got to him in time, it would be a jurisdictional nightmare to get him into custody. I could only hope that the US Navy and their Coastguard would be too busy tussling with each other, and we humble UN folk could poach him while they weren't looking.

Now that I was in a controlled environment, I could access classified information. ATLAS 1 was as locked down a place as you could get, at least while still on Earth, and the odds of enemy surveillance were small. But never zero.

I underwent biometric and psychometric verification as usual, swallowed a delayed action amnestic and logged in to the system.

CLEARANCE LEVEL ULTRAVIOLET APPROVED

DISPLAYING ONGOING PROJECTS

1) Memetic engineering of trigger events, and their relationship to the beliefs, adjustment and mental state of affected individuals. Status: Simulation running, provisional report available.

2) Identification of Centauri sleeper agents in the field, without access to extrasensory personnel. Status: Proposal stage

3) Deriving power laws for the appearance of metahumans, and their distribution on the McKinsey-Wanton Power Classification Scale. Status: Ready for publication (quarterly update of existing work)

4) REDACTED: Project ### has been escalated to XRAY eyes only. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I scratched my head, what had number four been? I must have been involved in some capacity if it was on my work list. There was a reason I hated amnestics, even if they'd potentially saved my life today.

At any rate, the benzos hadn't entirely left my system, as I fell asleep dreaming of my wife, holding hands on a beach. Had the waves always been this rough?