Chapter Two
I made it to the junk yard in a few seconds, but I had a decision to make. This building had an indoor junk yard which was only for non-perishables. Basically anything which wouldn’t do damage by sitting around in a big pile for decades was good to sit there. Not that it smelled nice. However, it being indoors made the security a bit more… tight…
“Should I just walk in?” I asked myself. One advantage of my speed was that now I had all the time in the world to contemplate my bad decisions.
If I decided to walk in and grab what I want, technically that was illegal. People did it all the time and nobody really cared that much… but also some people did care and the cameras in the building were supposedly designed to catch speedsters as well. If anything doing it at speed would make it more conspicuous.
“Ugh…” I said. I really didn’t want to do this but also I didn’t feel like it was worth it to just waltz in.
I walked up to the front counter, slowing down to human speeds. The person manning the counter was very… borged out? Was the best way to put it I think. They had more cybernetics than most, almost something out of cyberpunk, but then again I’d seen more before.
“State your purpose.” they said. Their voice was completely synthetic.
“Scavenging.” I said. I didn’t want to waste time here.
“You local?”
“Yes”. They pressed a few buttons on their console.
“Name?”
“James.” A few more, what was probably a search for my name.
“Room?”
“H6-F459-972” I was in the building registry so this should be it I hope. A moment later my suspicions were confirmed.
“You have half an hour. If you’re not gone by then there’s a fine.” There it was.
I didn’t say anything else and just left. I didn’t even bother doing so slowly, I had permission, and that means I was in the system and they checked me in. So I got to searching the mounds of non-perishable waste.
…
Finally, I found something. It wasn’t perfect, it was an old DX-300 with a USB-J type 3 connector. I didn’t have something which could connect to that but cables were basically free right now with the new laws around right to repair. Companies basically had to sell them at cost or they could get in trouble for pushing independent repair companies out of the market. Not that it stopped them from screwing over people in new, innovative ways, but I’ll take what I can get.
I left the junk yard to go to one of said shops. There was a local one near my floor which would probably carry what I needed, and I knew the owner so this shouldn’t take long.
As I left I thought about how crazy this all was. I knew people got super powers all the time, it wasn’t uncommon at all… but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew my speed wasn’t normal. I was fast. So much faster than even the fastest speedsters I knew of growing up. I knew this because… well I’ve seen a few of them since the day I got my powers.
So, all around the city are these things we all call “speedster paths”. They’re not actually called that, but it’s what we all call ‘em so it stuck. They really make things convenient, especially for those speedsters who’d atomize people if they ran too close to them. That part didn’t really apply to me, but it was still convenient to have massive tunnels I could run through with few enough people that I didn’t have to worry about running into them. Or… well… that’s the idea anyway. In truth I’ve still got that issue, just on a smaller scale.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
The first time I ran through one of the paths I was very confused. Everyone, and I mean everyone there, wasn’t moving. Well I mean, they were moving, but it was so slow compared to my “light jog” that it feels the same. I have to wait for what feels like minutes standing in the same spot for even the fastest ones to even notice me. That’s not even at my fastest! So when I saw Lightening Lord and Sanity, some of the most powerful speedster capes in the city, known for saving thousands of people, still as statues… I figured something wasn’t quite right.
At first I thought my power was selectively altering the flow of time or something like that, but I concluded that didn’t make sense. I could freely change the speed at which I perceived events, sure, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t tell what was going on even when I was deliberately slowing myself down to normal speeds. It’s hard to describe exactly what I mean, but suffice to say even when I’m being slow I’d still be able to catch a bullet… I think. Technically I have not tested that but also I really don’t want to.
So, yeah, when I say I’m fast now I really really am, and I don’t know how to feel about that.
Shaking myself out of my thoughts a few milliseconds later, I was there standing in front of… not the shop. Well, it was a shop, but not the shop I was looking for. To be fair I hadn’t visited in like, a year. But still I was surprised to find it was completely missing.
Ordering online wasn’t really an option. Package deliveries to my room were always so slow. My landlord says it’s for security reasons or some shit but I just think he doesn’t like me. Also I am convinced he’s stealing some of my packages but I don’t want to deal with that.
I looked around the plaza, trying to see over the crowd to look at the other nearby shops. I didn’t see anything, and the search index for this building has been out of date for over a decade so looking up nearby shops wasn’t really an option.
“I guess I’ll just have to look around.” I said to no one in particular. I had a day ahead of me, not that it would take more than a dozen seconds really.
I was about to start running again, better to start from the bottom and work my way down. But as I did, I noticed something that made me pause. “Is one of my commissions in that shop window?”
----------------------------------------
I was having a long day. My uncle had decided that today was a good day to do a full inventory. Apparently one of the previous temps walked away with several vinyls and the theft wasn’t caught before it was too late.
“If they took that much goin’ out,” my uncle had said, “then who the fuck knows what they took while they were here?”
I agreed with him, and I would definitely be witness to the police report that he planned on filing, but also I really didn’t appreciate the extra work.
Theft was, at the moment, at an all-time-high. A number of capes who specialized in theft-recovery were put out of commission last spring due to a cowl attack. One of the local gangs decided to start stealing as a method of primary income; something which hadn’t been done on that scale for decades. They had a powerful cowl, someone by the name of weaver… something… weaver of fate? I couldn’t remember. Anyway the big showdown ended with a number of big capes dying or being injured, and the petty-crime-prevention unit wasn’t really as powerful as they were a year ago.
My uncle walked through from the back room with a scanner in-hand. Something he picked up from his old job. “If I see that miscreant again, I swear I’ll stab ‘em.”
I didn’t think he was actually serious… but it was hard to be sure. My uncle didn’t talk much about his past, but I knew it was something dangerous. He had… a lot of knives.
I heard the door to the shop open. “One moment!” I called. “I’ll be right with you.”
When I made it to the front desk I saw a short feminine person looking at the new Cyberjunky display. They picked up one of the records to look at it.
“Looking to buy?” I asked. They looked up at me, a little startled. “Oh um… no I just… I mean maybe.” Clearly they were uncomfortable with the interaction.
“Please, take your time, there’s no rush.” I said to try to reassure them.
They started to look around the shop. Pausing at some of the music, but mostly meandering. They eventually found their way to the instruments and started looking through them with interest.
Then, another person walked through the door.
“Hello, welcome, please look around.” I said in my best customer service voice.
However, instead of doing that they walked right up to the front desk. They were very large, bulging muscles and what looked like combat cyberware. I’m not exactly sure when I realized something definitely wasn’t right, but admittedly the gun was probably a good indicator.
“Get your uncle for me, we need to chat.” they said.
“Shit.”