3.22

“Almost there. Hang on, Sera.”

— Vincent Hall, Encoded Notebook; Section 17, page 33

The blade isn’t the issue. I can deal with a slit throat. The issue is, obviously, that they don’t know that. If I break the hold now, I lose my advantage. Plus —

I turn my head slightly, gaze locking onto Gordon’s nearby. He’s frozen as well, and doesn’t seem to have registered how little danger I’m in. That’s good, in that he won’t give anything away, but bad in that —

He’s frozen, as well. If I break away and heal the throat wound, my attacker will realize that physical injury doesn’t affect me, and be forced to find an alternative method to subdue me. Namely… Gordon.

At least, that’s what I would do, in their place. I don’t know enough about these two to predict them accurately.

I sigh, and lower my blade arm slightly. “Leave me and my… associate. We can end this without anyone getting hurt.”

The person in front of me snorts, carding a hand through their hair. A voice from behind flows smoothly as the knife against my throat loosens. Seems like they don’t want a fight, either.

Still, knife-guy puts up a token effort. “You’re not exactly in a position to be negotiating.”

I go to shrug, but reconsider. “I’ve got a sniper. This guy knows,” I nod at the person in front of me, who scowls.

“Ugh, right.”

A sigh, and knife-guy relents a little more. “You’re awfully calm for someone being held at knifepoint.”

Mm. It’s probably past time to drop the charade, especially now that Gordon’s managed to quietly make a decent bit of space between us. I let my mouth stretch into a wide grin, one which I’ve picked up manages to consistently make people uncomfortable.

I lean into the blade, letting it scrape across my throat and manage to suppress a flinch. The arm holding it jerks back almost reflexively, and my captor mutters a swear as they release me. They cautiously make their way around to join their accomplice at the alleyway exit, and I’m treated to a better look at their appearance.

Their outfit is similarly ragged, with the addition of a number of colorful bandanas tied around their arm, and under the sleeves of their jacket an assortment of expensive-looking watches glimmer against their dark skin.

Something tickles the back of my mind, and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen these two somewhere. Watch-guy eyes me.

“…Doctor, right?”

I scowl. “Not for long.”

They stare for another moment, before taking their friend by the arm and marching out of the alleyway.

I sigh, letting my shoulders droop. Why is everything around here so tense?

I turn, glancing over at Gordon. He seems fine.

“You alright?”

He puts his face in his hands. “Never ask me to be bait again.”

—

“So. We’re armed, now.”

“Not yet. Still have to get the money, and pick up the actual product.”

Chloe waves a hand. “Semantics. I’ll handle the money.”

“Really?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Sure. You’ve been pulling your weight — I’ll pull mine.”

I chuckle. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how this works — but, it’d help. Thanks.” I sigh. “And speaking of pulling my weight,” I mutter.

Chloe squints. “You’re not planning something ridiculous again, are you?”

I roll my eyes. “What? No. When have I ever done that?”

“Last time you said you were gonna do somethin’, you laid down for five minutes and woke up with steam pourin’ out your ears.”

Ah. Right, that did happen. “I’m going to need more firepower if we’re going to pull this off,” I reason.

“Can you do it without giving yourself brain damage? Like you did last time?”

Probably not. “Yeah, of course,” I lie.

Chloe gives me a flat stare. “…Just so long as you know that if you turn into a vegetable or whatever, the rest of us are fucked.”

My expression softens, even as I try to reign it in. “I’ll be fine, Chloe. It’s mostly physical modifications this time, I’m not planning on doing anything else to my brain. As long as I have enough material, I’m practically immortal.”

I scowl. “Speaking of which, I need to stop by a grocery store or something, I’m out of the calorie bars. Gonna have to eat a lot.” It’s going to be a pain, but I think I can use my power to cycle food from my stomach, so it should be possible to down everything at once, even if it’s annoying. It’d be nice if there was a way to skip the ‘eating’ part and just toss everything in at the same time, but…

I frown. Maybe…?

Chloe drops her wrench back onto her workbench, and hops up from her seat. The sound startles me from my musings, and I watch curiously as she meanders towards the door.

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She shoots me a look over her shoulder. “You comin’? Figure I better come with, make sure you don’t get into any more trouble.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes again, lest I strain them any more than they already are. “Sure.”

—

Thankfully, my burner phone can access the internet. Unfortunately, Chloe’s shack is nowhere near an accessible connection. I end up having to do my research and collect material at the same time.

By the time I flop back down on the couch, though I think I have a pretty good handle on what I want to do. It’s going to be… a lot, but…

I don’t really have a choice in this, anymore. I couldn’t walk away, even if I wanted to.

And I don’t think I want to.

I let out a breath, staring at the assortment of meats and other high-calorie food items arrayed before me.

Chloe gave me an odd look when I suggested including raw meat, but I told her I had a plan for it, and she seemed content to let it go. Thinking about it, now, though, maybe it’d be a better idea to let her know. She seemed disturbed by the flesh-blade when we first met, and the stuff I have planned is only really going to get worse.

“Hey, Chloe, do we have a tarp or something?”

She eyes me. “…What for?”

I shrug. “Might get bloody, not sure. Probably going to be disturbing. I can probably find an abandoned building or something if you want the shack to yourself.”

She shakes her head. “I think I got a tarp somewhere out back, just give me a sec’.”

“…You sure?”

Chloe stops halfway out the door. She pauses, and lets out a breath. “Do what you gotta do, Claire.”

She goes to get the tarp, and I spend the time scrolling through the burner trying to brush up on the plan.

At its core, these changes are meant to be intimidating. Everything I do from here on has to reflect that. Crush made it clear that I’m not… respected by the surrounding gangs. I need to give them a reason, and while I don’t want to hurt people if I don’t have to…

They just need to think I will.

First, I need a way to consume all the food we bought quickly and efficiently. Ideally, the method that I settle on will be usable in battle, too. I’d been thinking about modifying my jaw and a number of internal organs in order to accommodate larger quantities of material, but in the end I decided it’d be too complicated. Why modify an existing organ when you can just cut the middle-man and make your own?

Plus, this has the added benefit of being creepy as fuck. I close my eyes and lay down on the tarp, activating my power. My senses remain muted, but with the neural lattice I can sense a definite awareness of my real-life surroundings that isn’t usually there, even if it feels buried under miles of metaphorical sludge. I’m pretty sure I could try crawling somewhere like this, if I had to.

I shake my head internally. I need to focus if I’m going to get this right first try. Don’t want to fuck up the tarp more than I have to.

I turn my attention to my abdomen, and immediately run into an issue. The organ I have planned is fairly large, and most of the internal space in my torso is… in use.

I was already planning on making myself a larger frame, so it’s not too much of a detour, but if I want to get it done in a reasonable time frame, I’d prefer the added benefit of additional fuel. I guess…

I’ll make a smaller version to start with, and increase the size along with the rest of my body.

I focus my power, separating my internal organs from the skin of my abdomen and creating a small, sealed pocket beneath the skin. Against the inside walls, I layer thick barriers of flesh, and start to form connections to a couple different existing organs.

[Stomach mouth, recharging pressure boosters, completed blade arms, two auxiliary arms under originals, increased height, weight, muscle capacity, possibly redundant hydraulic muscles?]

Flesh twists and dissolves, muscles forming and stretching, spikes of bone piercing the skin, blood streams out of an open wound. I’ve lost more than a little fat to this change, but ideally I’ll be able to get it back if this works as intended. I run through one last check, just to make sure nothing catastrophic has occured, and then drop my power.

I blink, sight fading into reality, and notice that the tarp’s already stained.

Oh well. That’s what it’s for. I push myself up into a sitting position, ignoring the odd feeling of weight around my gut.

“So? What kinda nightmare you got for me this time?”

I suppress a laugh at Chloe’s jab, and lift up my shirt. Set across my abdomen, held together by an array of blood-red tendons, is a wide cage of teeth. Experimentally, I flex the new muscles around the organ, and the ‘jaws’ lazily stretch into a yawn.

Chloe starts to turn green, as expected. “Oh Christ. Really? That’s — what even?”

I huff. “It’s intimidating! I needed a way to eat stuff without having to shove it down my throat all the time — this works!”

She makes a face. “It’s creepy.”

“In an intimidating way! No one’s going to want to fuck with the girl with a —“ I make an aborted motion to lean over and snatch an apple off the table when the maw abruptly snaps shut. Chloe looks disturbed.

“…Woops.”

She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something, pauses, and defaults to a weak laugh instead. “Whatever you say.”

I snort. “It’s only gonna get creepier from here.”

Chloe’s expression shifts. “Well. Guess I’m gonna have to get used to it.”

I shrug. “I guess.” I toss a couple packs of salmon into the maw, and try not to shiver at the way serrated teeth tear through meat and plastic.

Still, it works. With some slight boosts to my metabolism, the food is deconstructed in under a minute.

Now, for the hard part.

—

Even downtown, the sunset around here is always beautiful.

Not that I’d know what it’s like anywhere else, I’ve never been outside the city, but every so often you come across a photo or two on some obscure forum that someone managed to bring along while moving, or just visiting, or whatever, and I’m pretty confident that Westpoint takes the cake.

It’s the buildings, ironically enough.

Well. Maybe not ironically. They’re tall enough to touch the clouds and covered in wide sheets of reflective glass, it’s no wonder they look pretty under the expanse of orange light at this time of day. It’s just…

Recently, it’s been hard to see them as anything but grotesque monuments to the type of people I hate the most.

I still watch the sunset. It’s still beautiful. But now, instead of the nostalgic sort of peace that used to warm my core, something else flickers.

I lean forward, planting a heavy boot on the railing of the balcony, feeling the weight of my new frame shift. I keep my movements slow, deliberate, trying to adjust to the new sense of power.

Additional modifications take space, and if I’m going to be adding extra mass, I might as well add the muscle to go with it. My face remains largely the same, but I stand at around seven feet, and a number of hydraulic muscles stretch between my limbs to support the weight and boost my lifting power. Pressure boosters still sit dormant in all four limbs, as well as two additional ones set into my core where a pair of blade arms fold themselves against my torso. Now, though, the boosters are equipped with a reload function, an array of muscles that should allow them to pull in enough gas to fire in under two minutes. The cage of teeth set against my torso has been built up, stretching wider along my widened abdomen.

The body, where before it just felt like being particularly fit, now moves like industrial machinery — oily fluids shifting through artificial muscles, denser bones thunking against the concrete, hissing as pressure boosters expand and contract to account for the extra pressure.

It’s almost enjoyable, in the way I’d imagine driving a forklift is enjoyable. Piloting a heavy piece of machinery has a way of making you feel unstoppable — or so I’ve been told.

The difference is, you can step off a forklift.

I watch the sunset, and I tell myself that this machine is the same way. I’ll shed this skin once Westpoint is safe.

I take a breath, and put my foot on the gas.