3.1

“Blood is… redder than you would expect. Against the white tile, it looked almost cartoonish, a wash of stark crimson against a faded backdrop.

When the droplets started to cloud the water, that’s when it started to feel real.

I remember fading, slowly encroaching darkness, and then —

A dais. A large, stone dais, stained with liquid gold and littered in black feathers, surrounded by an expanse of flat, dusty rock in all directions.

Something about it felt almost familiar.

I’m beginning to suspect this experience isn’t exclusive. They don’t tell us much about how people get their powers, and what little exists is difficult to find, but superpowers are not random occurrences, not really.”

— Vincent Hall, Encoded Notebook; Section 1, page 3

It’s not exactly subtle, the huge vehicle with a giant USMW logo tacked onto the side barreling down the highway, but Clockwerk (Chloe?) somehow makes it work. She drives like she expects the other cars on the road to simply move out of the way, and more than once she seems to confidently swerve into oncoming traffic just for the fun of it.

Nobody honks, or anything, who in their right mind is gonna honk at a certified government vehicle? We quickly make out way downtown, and with an unexpectedly small amount of hassle.

Clockwerk parks the truck near an abandoned parking lot — I can tell it’s abandoned just from the cracked concrete and exposed drainage grates, the heaps of gravel strewn everywhere, the general state of disrepair. Clockwerk immediately locates a spot at the back, sandwiched between a couple buildings, and effectively invisible from the main road.

She parks the truck and violently yanks on a rusty metal rod that I’m just now noticing, jammed haphazardly into the ignition.

The rod shrieks as it grinds against the truck’s metal chassis.

I wince. “Is that safe…?”

Clockwerk rolls her eyes. “Fuck no. Get out, we gotta get moving.” She gives the metal staff one last pull, dislodging it and shoving it into an oddly specific pocket in her pants.

We hop out of the truck.

“We’re just leaving it?” I ask.

Clockwerk stares at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“You want to keep an extremely expensive piece of USMW equipment? Where? In what world does this not get me arrested immediately? They track that shit, y’know!”

“It just feels — I dunno, wasteful, to leave it!” I protest. “Think about how many, uh, like, heists you could do with this thing!”

Clockwerk scowls at me, wiping a thumb across her cheek. “Is that what you think I do all day?”

“I’ve talked to you like three times max, and the first time you literally were.”

She huffs. “God forbid a girl have hobbies.”

“Look,” Clockwerk starts. “I get the urge, I really do. But I need to be keeping a low profile. If they start sending the heavy hitters after me, I’m actually fucked.”

She twirls to look at the vehicle, and I watch as her gaze turns analyzing. “…I’ll have to come back and disable the tracker tonight anyway, so we don’t have to roll it back up to them on a silver patter or anything, but I am not keeping the thing at my house. ‘Kay?”

Clockwerk’s eyes turn back to me, and they’re oddly paralyzing.

I sigh, and force myself to perform a nod.

She squints, and her eyes dart over to my arm. “And anyway, we really should get going, I’m worried you’re going to keel over.”

I blink, and glance down. The blade is still extended, and I think a large portion of the nerves in that arm have been destroyed. A thick film of organic matter coats the center wound, so I’m not bleeding out or anything. The remaining arm sort of feels tingly, with a backdrop of intense burning pain and heavy aches.

“I’ll be fine,” I reply.

She snorts, and unties a cardigan wrapped around her waist, moving to cover my arm. “Sure you are. Don’t make a scene, we’re taking the back alleys.”

Clockwerk guides me through the back alleys of the downtown area.

The buildings here are just tall enough to be claustrophobic, but they seem to be in a constant state of construction. Exposed beams, partially-layered concrete, bundles of material line the grimy sidewalks and exposed stretches of cracked tarmac. Every so often we pass by, or under, in one case, a mover. Usually, they prioritize the richer areas, but there’s always one or two active farther downtown.

No one bothers us. In fact, most people seem pretty twitchy about our presence, for the short time we remain in one place.

Eventually, we reach a large metal shack, constructed from what seem to be flimsy sheets of aluminum placed right on top of an empty stretch of broken concrete.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Clockwerk quickly herds me inside. The interior is… homely. Surprisingly.

A small collection of furniture occupies one side of the shack, obviously built from scrap wood and salvaged metal, but nothing overtly dangerous, and everything is layered in a sturdy covering of plushy fabric. A small couch with clean, if patchwork cushions, decorates that end of the shack, adjacent to a contraption that looks like it really wants to be a television, and a thick block that seems like it should be a cooler.

A thin, modest carpet covers the floor in that area, which looks as if it’s been shored up my a number of well-placed sheets of plywood.

The rest of the shack is littered with… mechanics. Gears, rods, coils, bits of scrap metal, all piled up in a random array of miscellaneous salvage, with only the hint of a sturdy metal desk peeking out from underneath.

Clockwerk grabs me by the shoulders and sits me down onto the couch, careful to position the cardigan under my arm. I think she’s trying to make sure I don’t stain the couch with any fluids.

That’s silly. I’m sure I completely sealed that wound.

She’s muttering to herself now, and pacing across the room.

“Insane fucking wound, I dunno how I’m gonna pay for that… might have to amputate if we’re going to a conventional surgeon.”

“It’s fine,” I comment. “I’ll repair it. Just takes some time.”

“…You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Couple hours, probably.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah. We’ll talk in a bit, then. You, uh, want somethin’ to eat?” She shrugs.

I slip another calorie bar out of my pocket and scarf it down.

“…Nevermind,” she mutters.

I lean back on the couch, and activate my power.

The constant trickle of information flows through my mind, almost soothing in its completeness. I don’t actually retain any of it easier than I was, but the river itself feels wider, almost.

First, I get to work sealing any internal wounds, repairing basic muscle and bone structures, and healing minor wounds. There’s a lot to do, so while I’m making sure everything else is in order, I do a background analysis of the extended blade.

An over-sized shard of bone, chipped already from use and attached via a web of tendons and exposed muscle. It’s safely held in a slapdash layer of hardened organics — basically anything I had on hand, blood, pus, phlegm, compressed into an off-yellow shell around the wound.

Kind of gross. I finish up the basic repairs and start deconstructing the blade and moving the material back into the bones in my arm through the inside, being careful to make sure all of it is inert and stored somewhere it won’t be a problem.

As I get to the base of the blade, I start using my power to peel off sections of muscle, sealing any blood vessels along the way, and stitching together the larger wound. The makeshift organic seal is easily destroyed and recirculated, and I manage to finally close the wound with little mess.

The nerves are difficult, mostly because I don’t really know how they work. I guess I could just mirror the structure of nerves in my other hand…?

Sort of. The issue is my capacity to retain the diagnostic information that my brain gives me. The records stream past my consciousness like a fast-moving river, it’s difficult to retain large amounts of information for longer than a couple seconds. I’m having to switch my ‘perspective’ between both hands constantly, and I’m not sure I’ve gotten everything exactly right.

But my power is telling me it’ll work, or at least that it won’t fail catastrophically.

I resurface, the thin red film sliding out from behind my eyes and thrusting me back into reality.

The shack doesn’t really have windows, just a couple of slits near the roof from which beams of clouded sunlight would filter through, but now even those have gone dark. A small lamp lights the corner of the shack, casting a warm yellow glow.

Clockwerk looks to be tinkering with something at her table, under a harsher desk lamp. The muttering and occasional metal clanking is oddly soothing.

I slump, moving my gaze up to the ceiling. I hadn’t realized I was so tense.

Without all the heavy emotions and constant adrenaline, my situation is starting to rear its ugly head. I’m going to have to find somewhere to stay the night, and then…

Ugh. Maybe Clockwerk will give me some tips on supervillainy.

The longer I think about it, the worse it gets, too. What the fuck was I thinking? All my shit is back in my room — my guitar, my computer, my fuckin’ posters. And my friends — I’m pretty sure we were friends, but at this point it doesn’t seem super likely it’ll stay that way, what with us being on opposite sides now, and — oh my god I’m gonna have to fight them, right, because I decided it would be a fantastic idea to try to break a registered supervillain out of the USMC headquarters —

Not that it mattered, anyway.

Ugh.

“Watcha’ thinkin’ about?” Clockwerk comments. I turn my head to see her peering over curiously.

Does it show on my face?

“Did you make this place?” I deflect.

She shrugs. “It’s just scrap metal and a hijacked power line. Stuff breaks all the damn time, but it’s somethin’ to do, so, y’know.”

Her gaze slides back over to me. “Or, I guess you wouldn’t, Missus Superhero.”

I snort. “You don’t have to rub it in.”

Clockwerk rolls her eyes. I think she does that a lot.

“Whatever. Listen, you can crash here for a little while you figure your shit out — just don’t touch my junk and we’re good.”

Oh. That’s nice of her.

“…Thanks.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then, a clank as Clockwerk puts down her tools.

“Hey… you didn’t do all that just ‘cuz I told you to, right?”

I blink.

“No, you’re not that special, sorry.”

She flips me off, and I find myself chuckling.

“So. Why did you do it?”

“Ah…” Slowly, I reach into my pocket and pull out Vincent’s notebook, and the broken necklace tied around it.

‘Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing — with wavelengths, just as light and sound have’. That’s what it was, right?

I wonder if he meant for me to use a dash or a semicolon?

“You know, when my friend died, I thought she’d left me with nothing.”

The necklace glints in the soft lamplight, casting a sharp glow across the notebook’s black velvet surface.

“I’m beginning to think she left me everything.”

I pull myself up and lean forward, resting my forearms over my knees.

“Hey, I hear you have a pretty serious drug problem downtown,” I comment. The pieces are slowly starting to fit themselves together in my mind.

“What the fuck d’you know about it,” Clockwerk waves a stray screwdriver in my direction.

“Not much,” I shrug. “But — the stuff that Cook makes; Stew, right? Hallucinatory, heavily addictive. No known treatment.”

“More like no attempted treatment,” Clockwerk mutters. “Millions of dollars in ad campaigns and still not a single clinic. You’d need to contract another super just to…”

She turns to stare at me.

“I know you said you want to keep a low profile,” I smile, “but what do you say we make some waves?”