Chapter 66

Here's a conundrum for you. You're falling. Granted, the reality is that you're only about 30 feet in the air, and your superhero power armor will protect you almost completely from such a fall. But your tiny human brain can't process the two conflicting realities—one being a reality of serious injury, maiming, even death, as you hurtle to the ground, accelerating at almost 10 meters per second per second. The other reality is that you are wearing a suit of technologically advanced miracles that makes a 30-foot fall jarring, but little more.

My brain was very much focused on the fact that I was falling. I think maybe 1% of my brain was also startled and panicked by the fact that I had just crossed the light line barrier again. It happened so fast that the crowd barely had time to gasp. So, consider all of this, put yourself in the state of mind I was in—adrenaline, panic, urgency, and the pressing awareness that the one way to save yourself is to use AGILITY, which requires sacrificing control to the suit, to clearing your mind of your own impulses.

Explain to me how it happened, in that moment, when in so many others I struggled to give up control of my movements. Maybe I mentally quit in that moment, maybe it was despair. Whatever it was, I found myself letting go, only wishing I was still on the platform (with whatever fiend had just attacked me) rather than racing to my date with the ground.

And the suit took over. I had a momentary impulse to take control as I felt my body twist, but somehow, somehow I found the peace to let my body move on its own.

The transformation was instantaneous. My muscles, usually tensed and ready to fight against every movement, relaxed. The suit responded with a fluidity I had never experienced before.

I felt my body rotate in mid-air, the suit's AGILITY guiding me with an instinctive precision. I fell maybe 10, 15 feet before my hand snapped out, grabbing a pipe protruding from the tower. The momentum of the fall slingshot me upwards, and for a moment, I soared through the air with a new sense of power and grace. I rose above the level of the ledge I had just fallen from, catching a glimpse of the scene above.

A fiend, almost as big as a Bearwolf but with longer arms and no fur, stood there, ape-like with a gigantically distorted human-like skull and a gaping maw. It thrashed at the ledge in frustration, its eyes locking onto me with an almost intelligent rage. I saw glimpses of movement on the ledge—other contestants scrambling and fighting for position.

Gravity began to pull me back down, but the suit responded effortlessly, guiding me to a graceful touchdown on the ledge. I tried to absorb the details of this level: a narrow ledge ran around the tower, with corridors connecting opposite sides to form a crossroads at the center. Rope netting covered the 30 feet or so up to the next level. It wasn't a boon; the netting looked even harder to climb one-handed than the rigid pipes of the previous level.

I saw at least two of the fiends. The one that had attacked me was now raging at the ledge, and another was bearing down on Lauren. Flashes of energy illuminated the scene as Katya and Gideon swung their CUT attributes at each other, balancing precariously on the edge of the ledge. Lance was nowhere to be seen, and a sinking feeling in my gut told me he was still ascending, ahead of the rest of us.

As my feet touched the ground, I noticed a flicker before my eyes. AGILITY flashed on my HUD, the 1.2 fading and being replaced by 1.3. It seemed the best way to grow attributes, as always, was to use them rather than just flexing them.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The horror froze me for a moment as I watched the ape fiend smash Lauren with a fist like a mace. She clattered to the ground on her back, barely saving herself from falling off the ledge. The fiend pounced, pinning her down, its terrible distorted jaws snapping open. One disgusting clawed hand pushed her helmeted head back, exposing her throat as the maw descended.

Am I a bad person that I felt like I shouldn't intervene? Do, please, try to understand, that my whole life had been one long lesson about winning The Choosing, about seizing the suit, and those long-trained instincts told me to let the beast have her. One less contestant meant one step closer to becoming a Griidlord. I try to pass too much of the responsibility for my thoughts to my father and his cohort of trainers. As you will see later in the story, my own ambition was a force quite beyond my ability to tame.

So, especially considering what happened later on, it's hard to pat myself too much on the back for intervening in that moment. Instinctually moving to protect someone who had somehow become almost a friend should have been impulse number one, not impulse two.

Without thinking, I raised my arm, leveling my blade at the creature, and activated the BEAM. To my amazement, the energy lancing out seemed to double in size and brightness. The recoil in my arms was far greater than I felt from BEAM before. Even with the tension of the moment, I was elated at the power I felt rushing through me and out of me. I hit the fiend dead centre. The explosion of kinetic energy and heat ripped into it. Flesh and hair burst into the air. The stink of burning hair immediately filled my sense of smell.

Its mangled form tumbled from the ledge, still smoldering as it fell. It swung wildly, still bound to the tower by a chain that restricted it to the second level. The chain snapped taut, jerking the creature back and leaving it to dangle helplessly.

I barely registered the HUD update as 1.8 faded and was replaced by 2.0. BEAM had reached the second level.

"What just happened?" the voice said in my ear. There was an unexpected tone of amazement in its usually calm demeanor.

"I guess I leveled up. That's what you wanted, isn't it? What's with the tone?" I replied, trying to hide my annoyance.

"No, this doesn't make sense. It's not in the framework..." the voice continued, almost babbling.

"What are you talking about? For once, why don't you try filling me in on the details instead of just mumbling out loud?" I snapped.

"You can't do that. It's not actually something you can do..." the voice jabbered as I went to Lauren and extended a hand, heaving her to her feet. I had missed what had transpired between Gideon and Katya, but their clash seemed to have ended. I saw why. The light line had just reached the lip of the ledge below us. In instants, it would be at our feet. It was time to ascend once more. The other ape-fiend was in pursuit of Katya, which was good because I was going to be slow ascending with my bum wrist.

Lauren took a moment. There was a wordless appreciation for my intervention, then she was scaling upward. I envied her two good hands as she raced up the netting. The voice in my head never stopped.

"Nobody does that. It's not a possibility."

As I moved to the netting, this time keeping my sword in my left hand, ready to fend off the ape-fiend when it ran out of slack on its chain and decided to come after me, I said, "What are you babbling about? This is probably not the time to be distracting me with nonsense."

The voice crystalized, "Tiberius, you went from a 1.8 to 2.0."

"Yeah, that was pretty sweet. I guess I skipped 1.9," I replied.

The voice was incredulous, "Tiberius, that's not a possibility. You can't move up more than one point at a time."

"But I did."