Jay opened the door to the security room, still in his exosuit
“Yes, I’m feeling perfectly fine! I need police here now!” the security guard yelled into the phone. Up on the computer monitors, still images of what happened in the lobby. The beam of light shooting out of Jay’s face. The creature reared up on its hind legs. Olivia standing between them
Jay extrapolated. The security guard calling for backup from the police after seeing what happened to the rest of the security guards. However, the idea of a large centipede-like creature attacking a lobby was not likely to elicit a positive response, even with crazy superhumans running around everywhere. So Jay needed to play into the side of the dispatch responder, who was probably trying to determine what drugs the security guard was on.
“Hey, calm down,” Jay said holding his hands up.
The guard’s head snapped, making eye contact with Jay. His pupils dilated and the blood fled from his face. “No, you… you were out there…” his voice shook.
“Listen, man,” Jay was annunciating as loud as he could in hopes the dispatch could hear him. “It’s okay. Whatever is going on in here, there’s no need to worry. Everything is okay.”
Dispatch was silent.
“What is going on?” the security guard asked. Jay saw his nametag now. His name was Evan.
“You’re right, let’s just talk.” Jay grabbed the phone from his hand and said to dispatch, “Hey no worries, we’re just going to talk to him. He’s not a threat to anyone. We’ll call the non-emergency number if any charges need to be pressed. Thank you.” He hung up and turned around and looked at the man. “Sorry, I wish I could give you a better explanation.”
“What was all that?” Evan asked, pressing his fingers to his temples. “What… what… like…”
Jay looked at him and said, “I’m not going to lie; I have no idea what happened out there. I’m in a suit I’m building for a military general to fight altered-humans. I’m just doing my best here. How about you go on break real quick? I just need to check out the security footage so I can do some research. You saw the police weren’t willing to respond, and it’s because they’re still stunned by the world we live in. We will need to call back just to get an ambulance out here, but I don’t think you were going to get anywhere with that dispatcher. Okay?”
“I’m… uh…”
“Hey,” Jay said, raising his hands. “I built this company. I’m not going to let it fall because some alien-looking creature attacks it.”
Evan nodded and walked forward, closing the door as he left. Jay got up to lock the door before getting back to work. Scrubbing security footage wasn’t a habit, but the exosuit made this significantly easier. He held his hand to the USB port on the computer, then extended the USB plug-in from the forearm of his exosuit. The visor flipped down over his face, and the heads-up-display came to life. AR technology showed him an interactive display, and he took control of the security footage.
First, Jay downloaded everything from the day. He found a section where Olivia and the other receptionists were typing and not doing anything particularly interesting. He looped that section and pasted it over the rest of the security footage, erasing the rest of the interaction to obscurity.
The whole process took like 30 minutes. Maybe Evan passed out in the breakroom. Jay locked the door just to be sure no one would walk in on him.
Now to check the other security footage.
The suit ran a search for images similar to the alien creature, and he found another part of the security footage. It was live. In accounting, the guy who took his papers this morning… Khaleel. Khaleel and Olivia seemed to have been talking, but she was gone. Now Khaleel faced off with this creature and… showed his powers. He had an ability too? He was hydrokinetic by the looks of it. He was able to control the water, but coffee dust sprayed everywhere.
Jay watched the footage play through. As soon as Khaleel was safe, he scrubbed that footage too. Less in regards to the alien and more so in regards to making sure Khaleel wasn’t exposed. Khaleel walked back to his desk, and Jay picked up the phone, dialing accounting - the number that called everyone in accounting.
Khaleel’s hand hovered over the phone. Oh… he just used his powers, and Jay was calling him from security. Great job.
“Hello,” Khaleel said, answering the phone.
“Khaleel, this is Jay.”
“Jay?”
“Mr. Cooper.”
“Oh… uhh…”
“You don’t need to say anything. Just meet me in the lobby. I saw what you just did, and I already scrubbed the security footage. No one is going to find out about your powers, but I need to talk to you and Olivia in my lab.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No. I’m going to the lobby right now. Meet me there.”
-------------------------------------------
“Olivia, do you mind if I speak to you?” Jay asked, still clanking around in his exosuit. He felt ridiculous, but it felt impractical to go downstairs to take it off just to come back up here. He might as well gather Olivia and Khaleel before moving downstairs.
Olivia stood up and nodded. She squeezed past her coworker, saying, “Sure, what’s up?”
The elevator opened, and Khaleel stepped out. “Good, everyone’s here.” Jay turned his head to look around at the potential people who were going to see Jay taking Olivia and Khaleel downstairs. Receptionists. Maybe camera footage if his program wasn’t working properly. His work in computer programming didn’t normally involve security cracking, so he couldn’t be confident he did it right. And… oh… a truck outside labeled AHRA. Altered-Human Response Agency.
“Okay, come with me now.”
“But…” Olivia began.
“Now, please,” Jay said more forcefully, swinging the door to the stairs open. He unlocked the door, and they took the stairs down, making sure to lock the door behind them. Jay let out a held breath when they were in his lab. Safety. He stood in front of the wall that divided his lab up. He stood just in front of his exosuits and obscured the view of the time machine room behind him. He left the door open apparently.
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“Okay, good,” Jay said, walking to the docking arm. He backed up and pressed the button to take the exosuit off.
“What is this about, Mr… I mean… Jay?” Olivia asked.
“I would like to know too,” Khaleel added.
“Okay,” Jay held up his hands. “So we got a monster in the building right?”
“See?” Olivia looked at Khaleel and pointed at Jay. “He knows.”
“I know; I’m sorry. I saw it too. It was after you left,” Khaleel backed up and shrugged his shoulders together.
“And we’re all altered-humans,” Jay butted back in.
“Ugh… I hate that word,” Olivia said, grimacing and shaking her head.
“Right, so we need to fight this monster,” Jay annunciated, slamming one hand into the other. “I’ve already gotten rid of the security footage that incriminates us. So we’re clean so far. And…” Jay turned around, noticing something unique about these suits.
Now he realized why they looked strange. The heavy lifting suit was taller than it was before. And the particle exchange suit was shorter. Neither had been used in a couple weeks.
But at a quick gander, they seemed to fit the heights of Khaleel and Olivia respectively. “I will fix these suits to compliment your powers and hide your faces to make you stronger, well-armored, and socially safe. The creature already attacked my exosuit, and it didn’t pierce the metal. That doesn’t mean it can’t, but it will protect you. What do you say?” Jay turned around.
Olivia’s mouth hung open. Khaleel backed up a few steps. Not usually great signs. Olivia was the first to speak between them, “You have to promise that we will try to reason with the creature first.”
“Yes, definitely. I’m just worried that it will not quite be an effective solution.”
Khaleel took another step, “I’m not really good with my abilities. I don’t want to practice them, and I don’t like to fight. Can I say no?”
Jay shrugged, “Well… I would let you, but it appears I’ve already been back in time to modify one of my exosuits to fit you. I haven’t done that yet, which means it’s something I’m going to do right after this conversation. So can we just skip to the part where you say yes?”
“Wait, what? What are you talking about?” Khaleel stuttered, making hand gestures to convey he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. “Time travel? Is this just something I’m supposed to know about?”
“Oh yeah! I have a time machine. It’s what I’ve been working on for roughly ten years down here. It was originally just for fun, but I figured I could use it to fix this whole… you know… superpowers situation.”
“You mean like… take them away?”
“Yes!”
Olivia raised a finger. “Is the time machine related to the creature?”
Jay opened his mouth, ready to retort and assert his innocence… then he realized he couldn’t. “Yeah, I mean there seems to be a correlation. I haven’t identified a cause yet.”
“We need you to tell us a little more.” Olivia crossed her arms.
“Yeah,” Khaleel nodded, “how do we know that you know what you’re doing?”
Jay took a deep breath. He hadn’t slowed down enough to process and analyze the situation. Information and emotions and thoughts bounced around the inside of his head. They seemed to focus on the rear of his head, or that’s where he got his headache anyway. He needed to walk it through by talking out loud.
His heart sped up a little at the thought of talking to himself in front of them, but he needed to, so he went ahead, “Okay, well I went forward in time, saw that weird person, came back. Creature was here, but it didn’t resemble the person. I didn’t see anything else, but everything was just…” he raised his hands and widened his eyes.
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.
“Oh it was… I mean... not super important.”
Khaleel tilted his head, “It sounds important.”
“I literally can’t figure out how that creature got here,” Jay dropped his arms, hoping they’d drop the question. “It doesn’t make sense. I thought earlier that I could just go back and fix the superhuman thing, then tell myself not to travel to the future, which in itself is potentially a way to break reality. I don’t know. I really need to look into that. But I don’t know if this is just something that happened because I time traveled. Maybe it has nothing to do with where I traveled to. Maybe it’s like an interdimensional being a let into the world. Maybe it’s whatever destroyed the world in the future, and it hopped for a ride. Either way, I know this is the first problem I have to tackle.”
“Did you say destroyed the world?” Khaleel asked. His shoulders sagged, and his standing slouch became less pronounced. “What are you talking about?”
Jay shook his head. Now that he’d run through his thoughts he felt helpless for the first time in a long time. Since he developed the fusion battery and started this company, he’d not once been out of control of anything. Since stepping down and building the time machine, he was still always in control. This room and its concrete floors, slick walls, grease stains, and tools lying everywhere but the sink – this was his domain. And his time machine worked, and he understood the science behind everything in this building. But now this thing was here, and Jay didn’t even have an elementary understanding of what it was.
“Jay, what’s wrong?” Olivia asked. She uncrossed her arms and stepped forward.
“It was my parent’s house,” Jay responded quietly. “That’s where I went… it was just… gone.”
“Maybe you should call them.”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I guess I was caught up with my new problem.”
Khaleel sighed. “You guarantee the suits can protect us?” he asked.
“I can’t guarantee anything. But I can modify them. I can go back in time and work on them. I can fortify them and add attachments. It looks like I designed your suit,” he said looking at Olivia, “with the exosuit I used for containing and transferring particles that I needed for powering the extra-dimensional drive. I assume your powers work using some sort of pheromone, maybe brain waves to a degree. I’m not really a biologist, so I don’t know how that works, but… I have all the time in the world. Then I gave Khaleel the heavy lifting suit, probably so it could carry water stores around without compromising mobility. That would allow him to keep a reserve of ammunition – so to speak. I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe, but I can use these machines to give you armor, identity protection, and bolster your powers.”
Khaleel nodded slowly.
Olivia raised a finger. “Make mine pink,” she said.
“What?” Jay asked.
“I’m in. Just make mine pink.”
“Oh um… I’ll have to remember to put some spray paint in one of my drawers,” Jay’s mood picked up a little. “If I go do it in the past then you won’t ask me to do it, and that would create a paradox… so I guess that settles that thing from earlier…” Jay rubbed his fingers against his temples and said, “I literally only wanted this for one reason. I had a very closed loop of events I was going to go through.”
“Hey it’s going to be okay,” Olivia broke up his line of thought. Then she tilted her head and said, “Just remember that if they have any like sparkles or shimmer spray, can you get that too? I know you want this to be a battle suit, but if you’re going to ask me to go in against an eldritch monster, I just want a custom-designed suit.”
Jay chuckled. “Um… yeah, I mean, it’s only fair.”
Khaleel smiled and said, “I’d like for mine to be blue. No sparkles needed.”
Olivia smiled at Khaleel and they both set back on their heels, relaxing. Jay’s heart slowed from an uneasy pounding to a more rhythmic beat.
“Just one more question,” Khaleel said. “If you’re not sure about time travel being the cause why go back in time to fix the machines and risk it?”
“Two reasons,” Jay said, already having run this through his mind twenty times since he put the dots together. “Reason one: I need these suits ready right now. Reason two: I’ve already done it. That’s the past, and I can’t find any evidence of a creature like this existing before then.” Jay paused and looked at his computer, “Bonus reason: that’s how I get the paperwork done because I cannot remember doing that paperwork. I must have done it when I traveled back in time. And maybe I can get the first good night of sleep I’ve had in a month. I can go back in time and do it all, then be back literal seconds after I left.”
The thought put him completely at ease. Sleep, a shower, and time to do the needed work would be a huge relief.