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Logorinth
Ch.7 - Class

Ch.7 - Class

“Lay it on me, Rhodes.”

I didn’t realize how much an unforced smile could mean to me until he grinned from ear to ear. In retrospect, the last few days had been a rush of terrifying event after terrifying event and I’d largely been coping with it all by just staying as small and harmless as I could. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. I’m not going to cry. I won’t let this place make me do it.

“Golly, it’s good to hear you talking again, newbie.” He replied. His hand rested between my shoulder blades as we started pacing cripplingly slow laps around the small room. “Truth is, we don’t rightly know what happened to you. You climbed in the class pod fine, but were in there much longer than most people take. That’s usually a good thing since it means rarer classes. Then you stepped out and just started… shaking?”

I nodded. I vaguely remembered it before waves of alien, impossible, terrible feelings. I shuddered and the big guy mistakenly tried to stabilize me.

“I kind of remember that. How did I get here?”

“Well, after you collapsed we had a tense evac with you and the others from Minos’ team. No more detours and straight to Respite. Samfo was the closest so we took you here.”

“I appreciate that. I saw that you registered Cal Mephis as my finder.”

“I Oathed I would.” Rhodes replied, a little heat in his voice.

“I get that. Not your fault. So… what am I supposed to do now? The one guy from Orientation who was supposed to make all this make sense was an ass the moment he puckered up. I’m pretty sure Mephis told them something about me because he was asking weird questions and skipped all the ‘safety’ steps.”

Rhodes stopped and a thunderous expression crossed his face. I could see the red start at his ears. “What was the guy’s name?”

“Archer, I think? Look, Theresa let me browse the ReNet so I filled in a few gaps and figured out how to get a new guy from Orientation but I trust you Rhodes. What comes next?”

I think he heard the pleading at the edge of my voice. I hated how vulnerable all of this made me feel. A few more tears leaked out and I rubbed them out before more tried to follow.

“Yeah, okay.” He paused and collected his thoughts. “The clinic will check you over and monitor for a few more days. Every Crosser gets here pretty malnourished. We think something about Crossing sucks you dry. If they don’t see any red flags, they’ll release you and Orientation will give you a stipend and hook you up with a few leads for housing and either a Crafts placement, a Guard recommendation, or a Scrapper trial. You don’t have to accept any of those but… it’s hard to convince people to give you a chance at anything else when nobody knows you.”

I took a few tenative steps and Rhodes followed my lead. My whole body ached but that felt like a good thing. It was something to ground me. Something I could fix.

“Okay. What about the class pod thing? How do I figure out—”

[You have twelve notifications about this pending, would you like a review synthesized from all twelve?]

So you’re just scanning my thoughts nonstop, huh? I asked in my head. As usual, no answer but the tone of these new orange messages was somehow more… personal? More pointed. I was pretty sure the color seemed to be connected to those entities I saw and there was definitely a personality attached to each. Sure, bring it up.

[Class Overview]

At the direction of an administrator, a custom class has been created for you. This class represents their evaluation of your potential and your purpose within the Logorinth but remains yours to apply productively.

Base Class Name: Corruption Accumulator

Base Class Evaluation: [Unstable] Substandard

Administrator: 6.U.447

Class Description: As an anomaly, you are statistically likely to self-destruct. This class attempts to leverage that for maximal benefit, enhancing your identity matrix and nanite load for attracting and absorbing potential at the expense of personal safety and health. A set of features allowing for this have been installed.

[Continue to Class unctions, Class volution, or Class lerts?]

I stared at the description and held back from cursing. That red motherfucker really did try to set me up. Despite the very clear indication that it’d built this class to kill me, the description of the class was full of useful clues. Potential and corruption seemed to be synonyms? I’d thought that the potential was some kind of experience system before and maybe Overseer 3 locking mine had been a punishment. If I read this right, it sounded like people could only process so much before it started eating away at them like cancer. This class was built to set me up for exactly that. Big Blue must have shielded me from it happening when I killed the Endovore.

“Bit of advice, kid.” Rhodes quietly interrupted me. “Only Crossers zone out when they stare at their menus.”

I blinked twice and realized we’d walked a whole circuit in silence.

“My bad, just a lot of stuff, you know?”

“No, I don’t. I’m not going to ask what you see and others shouldn’t be either, but you need to be more careful. Most of us see a wall of useless junk. You spend too long staring at your screens and you don’t look confused enough. That’ll make a lot of people wonder what you’ve figured out.”

The blood drained out of my face as I stared back at Rhodes. I tried to think back on if the first team to find me might have caught that. I didn’t think they’d seen me really studying any menus but all of Rhodes’ crew had to have noticed I spent a lot of time staring into space.

“Relax,” He added as he caught my alarm. “Nobody on my crew is going to rat you out, but you need to get that under control. Take a good look at your menus now and start practicing looking through them like a Native. The System can give you the gist of a lot of it without you staring at the words.”

“I’ll try that now.”

I concentrated and pulled up the functions with a thought. The orange window that popped up was translucent enough to see through like Rhodes said and I tried to occasionally stare through it and pay attention as we did our physical therapy.

[Class Functions]

(Unique) Corruption Attractor [Rank I-1] (Ongoing)

Facet Description: Your very presence serves to attract threats carrying potential. Threats will detect your presence as a directional irritation which increases by proximity. Maximum distance and severity of irritation scales directly by relative threat levels beyond your own.

(Unique) Absorb Corruption [Rank I-1] (Directed)

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Nanite Load: 10 NU/sec

Stamina Load: 1 MU/sec

Description: Creating a conduit via touch or integrated System technology will allow you to absorb potential from targets. Unintegrated Potential may be taken from any living threat which does not deny an affirmative request. Integrated Potential may be taken from any nonliving material without permission but will destabilize the material.

(Unique) Adapt [Rank I-1] (Automatic)

Nanite Load: Varies

Potential Load: Varies

Description: Your standard potential integration has been modified to allow involuntary adaptation based upon immediate threats. When confronted by danger, you may apply stored potential to immediately adapt solutions. Repeated adaptations will result in advancement of Threat Level. Likelihood of adaptation scales directly by stored potential.

* WARNING: This is an unstable class and use of class functions may lead to undesirable outcomes such as permanent corruption, incompatible mutation, loss of sentience, and death. All of these outcomes appear likely if any class abilities are used regularly.

[Continue to Class volution, or Class lerts?]

First, Rhodes was right. Each of the functions gave me a vibe beyond the words. I knew that corruption attractor felt like nails on a chalkboard to hostile threats. I knew that absorbing corruption could be done through any weapon I manifested, not just my fingers. I also knew that adapt was designed to kill me. Something about it felt malignant, like a tumor waiting to burst. Absorb might overload me with potential if I wasn’t careful, but Adapt was custom-designed to flood me with potential at the worst possible times. It was a ticking time bomb and every drop of potential that entered my system was keyed to shorten the fuse.

“You still with me?”

“Yeah, I can see what you mean. Even if I don’t understand it all, there’s definitely some kinda extra information the system is slipping me.”

“Yeah, though that varies.” He said giving me a hard look. “Listen, I’m going to go investigate this Archer guy and see if I can’t pick you up a new Orientation Agent. I should be back in an hour or two. Why don’t you rest and let the medic look you over and I should have some answers soon.”

“You sure, Archer? You aren’t even my finder,” I half-joked. I could tell he was being too nice and I felt guilty.

“Maybe not on the forms, but I got you newbie.”

He walked me back to the alcove and stepped out of the clinic with a wave. I dove back into the menus while my medic worked in her little office. Okay, tell me about my evolution.

[Class Evolution]

At the personal direction of an overseer, your custom class has been evolved. This class represents their reward for your unexpected successes in abnormal circumstances. Unless otherwise stated, all modifications and functionality of your previous classes remain.

Base Class Name: Anomaly Hunter

Base Class Evaluation: [Unstable] Elevated

Administrator: 3.O

Class Description: What better way to detect, investigate, and eliminate dangerous anomalies than to repurpose an anomaly for the task? This evolution modifies your base class to provide greater levels of self-determination and usability to your interactions with corruption and natural sources of it. While still inherently unstable, careful effort has been placed on creating functions capable of accumulating, processing, and discharging potential.

[Continue to Class unctions, Class lerts?]

The tone of the evolution was surprisingly positive. While I couldn’t say that I loved the idea of being used as some kind of mutant catcher, it certainly beat being a timebomb. The feelings off this text box were less clear. It felt like balancing on a knife’s edge to be honest. I moved on to see what these new functions held.

[Class Functions]

(Unique) Anomalous Presence [Rank I-1] (Togglable)

Nanite Load: 10 NU/min

Facet Description: Your anomalous nature can be used to interfere with System-regulated detection systems. While active, any indications about your presence which are communicated through System interactions will be blunted and diffused. Severity of effect scales inversely by severity of detection ability.

(Unique) Anomaly Mimicry [Rank I-1] (Directed)

Nanite Load: Varies/Varies

Potential Load: Varies

Slots: 2

Description: After studying the nature of other anomalies, you may reproduce specific anomalous characteristics at a temporary cost of nanites and a permanent cost of potential. You are limited to maintaining up to two (2) characteristics. Mimicking characteristics significantly beyond the scope of your own potential may produce unintended or even hazardous results.

(Unique) Investiture [Rank I-1] (Directed)

Nanite Load: Varies

Description: You may temporarily transfer anomalous characteristics from yourself to other vessels organic or inorganic which you are in contact with. This transfer is temporary, irreversible, and will result in the loss of the characteristic and the invested potential from yourself. This may produce unintended or even hazardous results for the vessel and anyone around them during transfer, during usage, or during characteristic destabilization.

(Unique) Anomalous Acuity [Rank I-1] (Ongoing/Togglable)

Nanite Load: 100 NU/sec

Description: Your ability to perceive symptoms of other anomalies has been augmented by specific System-designed substructures. When operating passively, all senses will demonstrate mild alterations when perceiving another anomaly. When active, your senses will be filtered through an intensive process highlighting anomalous feedback. Passive and active accuracy scales directly by Cognitive Processes.

* WARNING: This is an unstable class and use of class functions may lead to undesirable outcomes such as permanent corruption, incompatible mutation, loss of sentience, and death.

[Continue to Class lerts?]

It took me a good five minutes of reading the text and considering to recognize what Big Blue had done to me. Instead of just being an accumulator, I’d been turned into a dowsing rod. The sensations from Anomalous Presence made it pretty clear that this was intended to temporarily reduce how much my Corruption Attractor irritated the creatures around me. It wasn’t a perfect solution as I’d apparently have to pay nanites to keep it going Even then it’d simply make me harder to pinpoint and a bit less obvious.

Mimicry sounded like it could be a dud or it could be a life saver. It was a way to get rid of potential without having Adapt trigger on me. The only problem is that I didn’t really understand what ‘anomalies’ other than me were. Were they other people? Twists? Did I have to dissect them or just look at them. A lot of question marks.

Investiture was similarly promising and equally confusing. It was temporary but irreversible, so every time I used it I wasn’t going to get anything back. The sensations I got turning it over in my head suggested it wouldn’t be instant so it wasn’t necessarily meant to be a weapon. The bit at the end made it sound like it could literally blow up in my face. I could see why these were all marked as unstable. This was less of a death sentence than I started with, but maybe just as lethal.

Lastly, Anomalous Acuity was bizarre and I was itching to activate it but without knowing how many nanites I had, how easily I could replace them, and what happened if I ran out I didn’t want to risk experimenting. Sure would be nice to have someone whose job was to answer questions like this. I grumbled as I kicked the wall.

“You okay out there, hun?”

The medic popped her head out and smiled at me sympathetically. I fixed the best fake smile I could on. “Just… just getting through it all.”

“Okay, well if you need someone to chat with I’ve got a bit of time left in my shift. I can write these same reports out there.”

“Thanks Theresa, I think I’m just going to go on the ReNet and see what else I can learn while I wait for my friend to come back.”

I picked up the pad and spent the next hour searching to see if anybody had an explanation for any of this.