ARC2/C29 – Tracked

Sam didn’t outright mention the name of the ability but he might as well have…

“Is this a hoax call! If you think I have time to waste then you are very much mistaken”

The line was disconnected. Clearly, the Traksis’ ability was more than just super rare. It was so rare that it was a closely held secret and not anything Sam would be able to easily find out about.

If he had mentioned the skill he would more than likely have more than just the Seracians after his blood.

After talking with some other clients in the bar before he got a message that his delivery had arrived. He found out a few interesting things, one of which was that the Seracians had had some success in cloning cores. This opened up so many possibilities to Sam not least of which that they would and could just kill him to get at his vore core and skip any experimentation on him.

He also got some information on commonly used abilities which were the bread and butter to a lot of Psionics. Some of the self armouring abilities particularly interesting him especially after getting blasted out of the sky by the Seracians back on Earth and seeing how impenetrable Traksis looked these days.

But he hesitated as he had hoped he might acquire a similar skill of his own through evolution, as he made so much use of psi-bubbles to cover and protect things.

Some people bought these high tier abilities however as even without levelling them they could provide life saving protection in a time of need. There were also technological equivalents made by the Seracians.

After his total failure at finding out anything about Traksis’ skill, he was glad to find his attempt at intel harvested something useful. He managed to find out that there were many abilities linked to sensing cores and other things of a psionic nature in general.

The ones he found listed were [Psionic Sense] and [Psychic Sense], both Tier-F and [Psionic Vision], Tier-E. And lastly, [Psionic Surveillance], Tier-D. Could he even use a Tier-D skill? He had no idea. But as Tier-D cores sold for around half a million credits each. He thought he’d just buy the Tier-E one [Psionic Vision].

This meant it had now been over an hour since he entered the core marketplace and Sarah was already expecting him back. He could understand there nervousness as a Seracian attack could come at any time. He just wondered why everyone else was as jumpy too.

Picking up the suits and armour he tried out his new ability [Psionic Vision]. Similar in nature to his other high level skill [Absorbtion] it was much more sophisticated. It showed his surroundings in highlighted colours giving an overlay to his real world surroundings, like a fancy headsup display.

It showed a lot! The ability was tricky to get used to as he seemed to be picking up a lot of information from his environment as well as the things he was trying to inspect. He guessed he would get used to tuning that kind of stuff out soon enough.

The materials the suit was made up of had names he had never heard of before. Unsurprisingly he guessed this was another universe after all. But regardless of the name, the materials had a Tier rank which meant he didn’t need to bother to find out. As soon as he saw Traksis again he would be able to inspect her, this interested him far more.

Taking the goods that had been delivered he made his way out of the building, wondering if they had invented some kind of storage device they have in all good fantasy novels. But as with healing some things about this world were seriously lacking.

For a moment he stopped to wonder how he’d got several hundred cores into the hotel then remembered how they had a big depot for depositing them outside. How he could have forgot that he didn’t know? He guessed he had a lot on his mind right now.

Back at the resistance temporary base he looked at the suits and armour. There was information that came with them but annoyingly he couldn’t tell there effectiveness by just looking at them. They might be high grade but what could they actually protect you against? According to the information any non-psychic attack of Tier-F would be nullified. Wearing Armour on top of that made able to absorb the brunt of a Tier-D attack.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

He felt he needed to urgently get these to Sarah and Maria recalling that they could be attacked at any time. How could he have been feeling so relaxed? When they needed him.

Exiting the hotel quickly he got into the first available cab to take him to the resistance but then stopped before giving the directions. Wasn’t it better that he just leave this place altogether? Didn’t the Seracian attack in the MR show that they could detect his presence there and that he was just putting all those he loved in danger.

Like he had put his father in danger, like he had put his mother in danger. Sam’s heart began pounding and he felt like his head was going to explode.

Then the pressure seemed to drop away and he felt peaceful. Why did he feel peaceful he needed to get away! He was going crazy.

Telling the driver to head to the nearest MR he set off resolving to protect those he loved in the best way possible. By keeping them, well away from danger. Well away from him.

---

Hiroma had tried contacting Sam to try and locate him. Sam had left the MR saying he was going to try and raise some credits. But it had been well over two hours now and with the current situation Sam was the only one who seemed powerful enough to stop the next inevitable wave of Seracians.

Sam’s AI had responded on Sam’s behalf which was strange saying that Sam had spent his remaining credits on some equipment and was now drinking in a bar. What the hell?! At least Hiroma had a location now. The guy had clearly had some kind of break down. It wasn’t like Hiroma hadn’t seen this before, especially with people new to the multi-verse.

But what made no sense whatsoever was why he hadn’t taken all the cores with him? If he was going on a spending spree wouldn’t he take his spoils with him? Instead they had all been left in the MR. You’d think he would have at least taken some, granted he couldn’t really take them all. There were hundreds. In the end, Traksis just absorbed them all using her new vore powers. And even gained a new ability from her absorption ability reaching threshold.

[Evolved Fusionism - The power to evolve one's fusion/fused form]

Hiroma had looked it up and found some records existed of an ability of a similar name but it was Tier-C, so he had no clue how she’d got that. Vore’s were mysterious beings.

When Hiroma checked with Velta about Sam’s disappearance but she could detect nothing strange going on using her precognition. Either way he needed to get Sam back and safe.

Getting to a seedy looking establishment, he found a person fitting Sam’s description had left only a few minutes earlier. Hiroma tried contacting Sam again via his AI and got another message.

Sam was heading off world via the MR.

Hiroma quickly contacted base to tell them to send out a party. Previously he had been told to not alarm anyone about Sam’s disappearance but now they needed everyone available. As he could be going to any of three MR nearby.

Traksis was sent in the group heading to the nearest MR but soon changed direction. She still had [Pursuit] marking Sam. It wasn’t something she ever planned removing.

By watching his change in direction she could tell where he planned to end up. So she headed there far faster than any cab could move. She didn’t know much about her boss but she knew his tactics.

He always used himself as a decoy whenever there was a threat. So she presumed that Sam had decided to fight the next wave of Seracians himself and didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.

She could of course take care of herself after absorbing almost a thousand tier-F cores. Although she didn’t get to decide where her free points went. This just made her ability all the more mystifying.

She however saw that she had accumulated at extra 1.6k distributed stat points.

Name: Traksis Level 28

Health Points: 10245/10245 Skill Points: 205/205 Stamina: 1800/1800

Vitality: 331 Strength: 321 Endurance: 380 Agility: 656 Intellect: 59 Perception: 55

Acquired Path: PSI Strand: null

Abilities: [Pursuit Level 186] [Psychic Energy Absorption Level 112]

[Tier-F abilities [Energy Drain Level 63] [Absorbing Regeneration Level 104] [Psi Shadow Level 36]

[Tier-E Evolved Fusionism Level 1]

She felt almost indestructible compared to before and some how new that her new ability would only make her stronger still. But then she remembered how easily Sam had taken down whole flightships along with about five hundred drones with his combined abilities. Whereas she had managed about a hundred drones.

Arriving at the entrance to the MR she waited at a respectable distance from the others from the resistance group, none of which she knew other than by sights but they made acknowledging nods on her appearance.

Sam came into view running, though his gait was still unsteady from his earlier injury on Earth. Why was he not using [Flight]? He attempted to breeze straight past them, as though he couldn’t even see them. Of course Traksis, was having none of that and entered the MR space.

Inside was a very large cityscape, which seemed quite alien to all the worlds she’d seen before. But what caught her attention most was a disturbance to her [Pursuit] ability.

She could detect the usual tendril of Psi-energy but then it seemed to disappear several meters from Sam’s body. Somebody was tampering with her ability. Instinctively she used, [Absorbing Regeneration] and picked up energies from a life form that wasn’t Sam.

She used [Absorbing Regeneration] to remove it and at exactly the same time Sam fell to the ground. Traksis thought she had injured him somehow and flew over to pick him up but he sat up looking right as rain though possibly disorientated.

“Traksis, where am I? I seemed to blank out there for a minute” said Sam in an unusually faint voice.