Jack headed directly towards the edge of the shell and leaned over the side, it was impossible to see the bottom from his position.
Jack continued his lap around the rim. Dim darkness filled the surroundings.
He heard something slap onto the lip near him. Something yelped and he brought the Toothpick down. A head popped out next to the creature’s grasping claw and Jack fell backwards as the head, and hand, retreated back below the edge.
The yelp he heard from whatever that was, it sounded Human, the claw also looked suspiciously like a hand now that he had time to digest the vague image.
Still, he couldn’t be sure. It could be brain-crab, half-crab, or some sort of terrible hybrid. After all, he was standing, or floating, on a giant crab.
The hand-claw became visible again, Jack squinted and took a step back. It had something in its grasp. Some sort of device.
Jack brought up his hand in reflex as a series pressured water beads drilled toward his face. An instintual flinch and the buckler saved his eyes.
That didn’t seem like a normal, whatever that word meant, crab-attack, “What are you?”
“I’m Human," the voice paused, "can I get up now?”
“Depends on how many times you plan on shooting again. Besides you could be a crab-man,” her voice was husky. It could go either way, “or crab-woman.”
A surprisingly soft laugh floated up. “Did I hit you?”
Jack felt himself over, “You didn’t.”
“Not once?” Why did she sound disappointed? “Are you sure?”
“You did not.”
“Can I come up?”
“Are you going to try to shoot me again?”
He heard the suspiciously recalcitrant potential crab sigh, “Well definitely not now.”
Jack deliberated, the voice sounded familiar but he couldn’t place it at all, “Come up, slowly.”
One hand followed another, Jack squinted.
No crab-claws. So far. Then a face and the rest of her. She was tall. Taller than him. She was heavily favoring a leg, the other one looked swollen.
“Who’re you?”
She looked at Jack. Did the man really not remember?
“You honestly don’t remember me?”
He looked at her closer, squinting again.
“Nope,” he studied her again, “you’re really tall, I’d recognize you. We’ve never met.”
“Listen here, we’ve definitely met. Your name is Jack. It doesn’t suit you by the way.”
Considering he harbored similar thoughts her final words annoyed him a fair bit. “No, you listen lady, I don’t know you and who knows how you know my name. Probably heard it over the intercom.”
Was he supposed to be joking?
Jack walked away from her. She trailed his path and was forced into a half-skidding stop. He had prepared his blade.
“Don’t walk behind me, either walk next to me or go a different direction.” She didn’t move, readied her pistol.
“Well," She heard him take a shuddering breath, "you can walk next to me or I can send you back over the edge in pieces.”
She walked up next to him. She was keeping him between her and the edge.
Jack rolled his eyes and continued his sweep. Where was she from? They had met? Maybe she was one of those Monitors from the Clan.
“I think I remember you now.”
She was the one who got electrocuted. “You’re the woman who got electrocuted, the Monitor.”
After an extended silence he looked over to her. She looked like she was having some sort of internal crisis. Fair enough, he couldn’t blame her, he had some bad experiences with electricity himself.
----------------------------------------
Tule and Jonah were sitting next to each other, looking into the gloom.
“Can you explain him?”
Jonah thought, “Let me cover what we know. He’s wildly unfamiliar with any Lab customs, he doesn’t have a portable, although he could have lost his. Even so, he didn’t seem familiar with mine or Yumata’s.”
“Perhaps he found a Heritage?” Tule had come across many with his Lord.
Jonah scoffed, “That had an AI in it? Beyond unlikely.”
“True. He also uses Pure Medjel as if he has no conception of its true value.”
“I’ve seen… his use of Medjel. Besides, you are correct, any Heritage he would have found would have mentioned that, and more. He also seems to know little to nothing about Nano-”
“Yet he’s strong, and very likely Newly-Awakened. Though, I don’t know how much to credit his strength to his Shield.”
Jonah saw his point, there were other things he was interested in discussing, especially from a member of a wandering group. “What about the crabs? They’ve been swarming every single Cryo-Bay for years now.
“BladeWorker, when is the last time you managed to… rebirth,” Jonah disliked that word but he knew these classic types liked that sort of language, “someone from a Bay?”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Tule wanted to respond but, lost in memory, he ended up just nodding.
The embers of their conversation died as footsteps approached. Jonah fumbled for his Wrist Rocket.
“Jonah relax, it’s just me.” As Jonah heard another throat being cleared, he pulled down his goggles and kept himself loosely ready. “Oh yeah, and this woman. She’s probably not a crab. She’s the Monitor who got electrocuted when we were under the Pods.”
Jonah’s put up his goggles and eyebrows followed, “Sentinel?! How are you here?”
She gave Jack a look, he missed it. He had a lot of things to think about but he found it difficult to keep himself focused and not just generally flitting lightly over each of them. They felt distant, he felt distant. He would figure it out eventually but his compartmentalization had an effect, it was difficult for him to focus deeply on something that he wasn’t forced to by critical circumstances.
Jack tuned back in at the end of the Sentinel’s brief story that included her ‘no Member left behind’ and she was the last to retreat. It probably wasn’t that grandious but when 50% of everything said had to do with crabs or crab-loving SI, he really didn't care to hear about it.
Jack had a confused look on his face, “Wait, you got electrocuted then were ‘last off the crab’? That doesn’t make any sense; I could sense you, you were well-cooked.”
A niggling itched over his scalp. It wasn’t the usual “Medjel time” itch, felt more like a crab-itch. He couldn’t be sure, yet.
Jonah finally hopped in, “Why do you keep saying she was electrocuted? She never got shocked, that was, that Monitor. Oh I don’t remember her name.”
Jack studied the woman’s profile then shook his head. “Was she with the Clan Head?”
At both of their eager nods, “Nope, nothing.” He shook his head.
The “Sentinel” was eyeing him, “what’s your Allo EQ?”
“Allocation? What’s yours?”
“9. What’s yours?”
“…2. Maybe, might be lower now.”
The Sentinel dropped herself onto her butt as one of her legs stopped supporting her weight, she was thrown onto her back. Jack studied her, her position sparked a memory. “Oh yeah, Leanne, the uptight one who Yuma zapped on her ass.”
“You can refer to me as Sentinel.”
“Not gonna happen Lea.”
Her face twitched, only Tule caught it and it looked like he didn’t care.
They sat there in silence until Jack heard Leanne’s sharp intake as she tried to stretch out her leg.
When he remembered, he tried to use his decent IQ Allocation to objectively think about things he had said. Nothing came up as too bad.
If the patient isn’t talking… “Bothering you?”
“Broken, badly, I…think.”
“How have you been walking on it?”
“Adrenaline, pain limiter,-”
In a rare show of sympathetic muscle, Jonah whispered to Jack, “its a Nano construct in the brain that intercepts pain signals for a period of time. Eventually the Nano in your brain will override it and the pain starts coming through again. Costs Nano to use.”
Jack wasn’t sure whether to be weirded out or grateful. He settled on nothing and so, did not react.
“-I’m also burning Nano.”
“What’s burning Nano?”
Everyone looked at him silently, Tule and Jonah shared a look.
Tule broke the silence with a cough, he explained, “Burning Nano is when you overcharge, then overtax and destroy your Free, Allocated, or Bound Nano. They will die to make you temporally stronger.”
“Allocated is easy enough to understand but Free Nano? Bound?”
Tule coughed again and laid back. Jonah picked up the slack, of course, he started from the top.
“Free Nano is the easiest to burn and has no downside to doing so but can only be replaced when you breakthrough in one of your Allocation Benchmarks.”
Jack had never heard the term ‘Allocation Benchmarks’ but he already had an idea what it meant, “5, 10, and 20 right?”
“Yes, those are Benchmarks or Allocation Marks or Marks or AlloMarks, it seems that everybody has a different name for them. Each time you do so the Nano in your body rearranges to operate at a higher efficiency. Some of the old Nano is removed and replaced. It is no longer necessary and then can be burned off.”
“Makes sense, you only get more when you Allocate to the next Benchmark.”
“Precisely, then there is burning Allocated Nano. For instance, to keep up with everyone on the Run, I had to burn Endurance and Agility Allocation. That semi-permanently affects the corresponding Allocation Level or ‘Stat’ until you reach a Terminal and replace it. If you burn Allocation below a Benchmark it can cause serious problems.”
“So ‘Benchmarking’ a Stat gives me Free Nano, but it also reduces the amount of Allocation I can burn for that particular Stat? So at 20 Endurance I can’t burn any before falling below the BenchMark. But at 19 Endurance I can burn 9 Endurance before falling below a BenchMark. What happens if you fall below?”
Jonah smiled, “Good! You learn quick. Significant pain is the generally the first effect. You will also have inconsistent performance from that Stat. Drain too much Endurance? Maybe your heart decides to take a break for a minute or two while you’re fighting a crab. Strength? Maybe this portable becomes too heavy for me to lift for a few seconds. Peculiar reactions, and combined with the pain, it’s just best not to do it.”
Jack realized that a young woman that he had performed open heart surgery on within minutes of meeting, who couldn’t talk for half the time he had known her, had been his only source of information. That, and a computer that was very much ‘need-to-know’ with how much it decided to tell him. And it would only talk to him if his hand was trapped against it. Definitely not a level playing field. Here? Here he would take this opportunity to answer more than a few of his questions.
“Did you already burn through your Free Nano, is that why you burnt Allocation?”
“No, I chose to burn Allocation instead of Free Nano.”
Just as Jack was about to ask ‘why?’, Jonah continued.
“Free Nano can also be used to augment Skills and Mods.”
He waved his fingers, “See these? With Free Nano I’ve replaced each of my fingers with Free Nano-Constructs.”
“That easy to do?”
Jonah looks offended, Tule shook his head.
“It’s incredibly difficult! I’ve spent every scrap of Free Nano in my body to construct and integrate them! They’ve been confirmed by a Terminal many times!”
If it was something that would take a lot of time it wasn’t something he was planning on doing.
Before Jack could respond Jonah’s voice grew slightly louder, “There are also certain Mods and Skills that can burn or use Nano in specific circumstances-”
“Ok, what are Mods?”
“Active Skill Modifications; Skills have passive effects or activations, Mods are active effects that you trigger.” At this, Jonah’s remaining fingers sparked odd and foreign energies.
So that was a Nano Construct that was also a Mod? Sure, why not, that sounded right.
Jack nodded as he thought further about it, he got it, his Bash and Hack were Mods then, not ‘Skills’ like he had been calling them.
Jonah continued, “Where was I?
Leanne provided, “You covered Free and Allocated Nano, Bound Nano is next.” Jack could see why she was the Clan Head’s right hand… Sentinel?
“Right… Right! So Bound Nano, or Base Nano, is the Nano you have from advancing your Personnel Level. It’s fully integrated with your body and Constitution Tier.”
Jack interrupted, “Leveling up, right?”
“Your Personnel level is displayed first but it is actually the last thing upgraded that integrates your choices after you Allocate Nano to your Stats. How much Allocation you receive is determined based on how much Nano you’ve submitted and cross-compared to the requirements of your Constitution Tier. The stronger your body the more Nano you need to ‘level up’ and thus, gain more Allocation. Well that is the working theory at least.
When aspected Allocation Nano is layered in you, some of it is used to fundamentally change you on a deep level. This happens moreso at BenchMarks, that is ‘Bound Nano’. The Nano that is displaced, or replaced, during that process becomes ‘Free Nano’.”
Jonah held up a broken finger, a surprising structure and organization was present in the cloud of Nano floating above it.
Jack was trying to understand it, it made sense but as he thought of it more and more, he started to confuse himself.
“Soooo, I put in Magno-Tubes full of Nano.”
“Correct…”
Oh no, Jack wasn’t going to try and keep it all straight with Jonah popping in on the background. He held up his palm, “if you don’t mind Jonah, just tell me if I’m wrong.”
“Then the Terminal aspects it to my Nano and then I choose where to Allocate it. During the process whenever my Allocation hits 5, 10, 20 or ‘BenchMarks,’ I gain a lot of ‘Free Nano’ which I can use to burn. To become temporarily stronger.”
“You build up your store of Free-Nano when your Bound-Nano is stripped and replaced by aspected Nano from a Terminal."
“So Free Nano is like a power battery.”
“Well you could say th-”
“What about burning Bound-Nano?”
Jonah shook his head. “No, well, yes it is possible, but actually, no, not possible. Too dangerous. The likelihood of tearing your body apart is too high. If you burnt one too much or in unbalanced amounts you could tear your body apart simply by running."