The half-finished residential and storage levels of the New York base left behind, my escort and I walked through the cavernous power training level. Metal walls that had not been there before gleamed in the gloom and flared oddly in my Force Awareness, apparently only as heavy as water yet tougher than the toughest steel I'd ever seen. The material itself simply broke down into a fuzzy mess when observed at a microscopic level, more the result of a lasting power effect than conventional physics.
"It was an interesting puzzle, trying to build something that could stand up to superpowers" Liz said from my left, her hand caressing the metal wall. Where she and the metal touched, electromagnetic forces were twisted into impossible configurations before being absorbed by the wall, fractionally strengthening it. "There are so many different powers, so many possibilities, that trying to ward against them individually was a fool's errand. In the end I went for simple resilience, both physical and metaphysical."
"I'd ask why you didn't collaborate with other supers in this, but..." I shrugged. Security was obviously a major issue.
"That is need to know," Agent Stone told us apologetically but firmly. "Unless you fully join the Project, you do not need to know."
"Play the grunt for the military? Pass."
The statement effectively killed that line of conversation so we walked in silence until we reached an enormous, vault-like door that was thirty feet wide and fifteen thick, a solid slab of bronze-like metal that repelled my Force Awareness even better than the walls. It wasn't the only thing that did. On either side of the door stood gigantic humanoid statues of dull green-black alloy, in the shape of bulky, heavily-armored knights. The top of their faceless helmets almost touched the ceiling as they stood looming before us, the air heavy with their presence.
"Let me guess; if someone attempts to force their way through, the statues come alive and fight off the intruder."
"That is also need to know," Agent Stone immediately said.
"But you could try to force your way through and see what happens," Liz added, rather hopefully.
"Just give her the evaluation, Warden," Stone insisted, glaring at both of us. His lack of trust was... OK, it totally made sense. Liz and I were not exactly friends.
"Spoilsport," the older brunette muttered, then touched the vault-like door with one finger. The bronze-like metal glowed an eerie emerald green before sliding down into the ground with an enormous grinding sound... the ground where no place for it to retract into existed. It literally faded into the floor, absorbed by the metal plating there like so much water poured on a desert dune.
My Force Awareness strained, delving into the material with effort. Call it curiosity, call it stubbornness or not liking having my senses blocked, I persisted until I found where several thousand tons of metal went to. The floor across the whole area had become denser but not heavier, toughness and inertia added to it but not mass. It worked... pretty close to the 'water in the desert' analogy and I suspected Liz could extract the door easily enough when needed.
"Give me your hand," the Warden demanded as soon as we walked into the even darker and emptier chamber beyond.
"I rather like my hand where it is, Liz." I quipped. "Both of them."
"Oh for heaven's sake," she grumbled, grabbed my left hand and pulled at my middle finger. Moments later, thin bands of gleaming silver energy wrapped around it before solidifying into five bands of metal fused together; one gold, one silver, one the shiny red-brown of freshly cast copper, the fourth was black like cast iron and the last was the ash-white of pure aluminum.
"Huh..." I raised my hand at eye height, looked closely at the new ring. "I hope this doesn't mean we're married, because you're so not my type."
"Shut up and walk into the circle," Liz said, pointing me at the center of the chamber and the circle carved onto the floor that definitely hadn't been there a few moments before.
It was like the ring writ large, five bands of metal from gold to aluminum cast into the ground. Something about the whole thing pricked at my mind, some memory or idea I couldn't quite remember. Frowning, I examined the concentric bands of metal more closely but couldn't find anything. No figures, runes, or any sort of marking, no mechanisms or wiring, nothing special except for their composition and Liz's power coursing through them. No relation to a certain long-lasting sci-fi series involving mythically significant aliens then.
For a moment I entertained the idea that the whole thing was an elaborate trap. Both the location and situation would be almost perfect for it; an underground vault to contain the collateral damage, a weird artifact that could easily be a weapon. It could as well be... or could have, if we weren't in the middle of New York. Nobody in their right mind would set off a potentially city-killing encounter, not unless the extra casualties were the point. Both Liz and the military were methodical, calculating beasts, not insane mass-murderers.
Then the moment passed, I walked into the circles and the light show began in earnest.
First, the circles of metal glowed with an inner radiance of varied color, gold, silver, crimson, emerald and brown. Then lightning that was more magic than electricity crackled across them in rainbow arcs, rising higher and higher as the glowing metal rings seemed to rotate in more than the three conventional dimensions. Each of the rings drifted beyond normal space-time, each metal band shifting to a different layer of reality... then the energy coming off them grounded itself in the smaller respective bands around my left middle finger.
Magic lightning crackled across my skin, danced like an unseen wind in my hair, then completed the circuit by returning to the larger rings on the floor. It shone, it tickled, it smelled like ozone and fresh-spilled blood, then it subsided and darkness reclaimed the chamber. I stood there in the gloom, the rings on the ground red with heat as they slowly cooled from channeling enough power to light the whole city above us for hours and... nothing. One minute, two minutes, at the five minute mark with no further activity I lost patience.
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"Was something more supposed to be happening now?" I waved at Liz and Agent Stone. "Because I'm not seeing it. Is my own power assessment 'need to know' only, or some similar malarkey? Did I need to actively use my powers and somebody forgot to tell me?"
"No, it should have worked," Liz said, then gestured at the now cool metal rings. A pattern of vibrations went through the whole ring, echoing between the bands in complex enough ways they probably worked like some computer program. "The main array fired properly, the anchor drew the effect to you, but there was no return effect, no interaction." Liz scowled at me as if her power scanner failing was my fault. "It's like you completely absorbed the scan."
"Weird, yet uninformative. Are you sure your doohickey worked properly?"
"It's not a 'doohickey', you trailer-trash ignoramus, it's a sophisticated mental-spiritual resonance sensor!"
"Nice technobabble, but we both know magic works however the caster believes it to work and not on any scientific principles." Which meant the problem was either in Liz's beliefs or... "What exactly did you intend it to do? How is it supposed to work in simple, generic terms?"
"The big ring gathers raw magic from me, throws it into whoever wears the small ring, then collects it and sees how it was changed," Liz explained in a long-suffering sigh as if she'd had to give the same explanation for the thousandth time. Since she was part of the military and had to write reports for everything, she probably had to do just that. Sucked to be her, I guess. "We all know and shape how our own powers work, consciously or not, and that shapes all the magic we use so..."
"Oh, so you scan the mental process that shapes our powers, not our actual powers." It was a clever workaround since the powers themselves had no observable source or mechanism. "One problem though."
"What is it?" I was getting the idea that Liz's patience was running out for some reason.
"How does your device work if the super to be scanned has mental defenses?"
"..." Liz stared at me. I stared at Liz. Agent Stone stared at both of us then took a big step back, and another, and another... "Are you fucking with me? Do you think wasting people's time is a game? Turn off the damn mental defense!"
"How should I have known to do that?" I asked, quite reasonably in my opinion. "Apparently, I didn't 'need to know' how your scanner worked so how could I've guessed which of my powers would cause problems?" Maybe they should have shared more information. It's not as if we're allies or anything! Oh, wait.
Needless to say, the whole situation devolved into shouting and blame games for the next fifteen minutes. I put some of my attention into following that and coming up with the occasional second-grade insult as the situation warranted, while most of my efforts were put in extending my Force Awareness to the city above. By the time the argument got going, I'd already found various TVs playing Saturday morning cartoons in the city above. By the time both Liz and Agent Stone ran out of steam and/or regulations to quote I was in a much better mood.
"DONE!" I finally shouted, Liz and Agent Stone turning to glare at me for interrupting their argument. "I mean, my mental defenses are turned off. I can only keep them down for a short time though," I lied.
That got them going in the right direction and Liz's scanning device powered up for the second time. More magic dancing across my skin, more of my hair thrown around by an unseen wind. The difference was, I could feel power flowing through my body. It was similar to when my own powers grew after a particularly intense fight or noteworthy heroic feat. A feeling of euphoria, of boundless energy like drinking the spiritual equivalent of a warm cocoa while having a city's main power flowing through you. Except this energy was a temporary charge from Liz, not a permanent addition to be claimed, and it inevitably slipped through my grasp to return to its source.
The ring on my finger was white-hot now, hotter than an incandescent light bulb yet it being magical prevented its quick meltdown. Maybe the greater power the wearer had, the more power the scanner needed to, well, scan them properly? No idea, but it certainly made the ring a little too hot to the touch. Hopefully other supers did not cause the same reaction, otherwise trying to scan them would come with acute loss of fingers.
Then an image flickered into my field of view and drew all of my attention:
Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y10m9d Known skills:
Points: 13/206
Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forcefield Creation, Forced Acceleration, Greater Proximakinesis, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap
Attributes: Might 48, Agility 24, Reason 6, Vigilance 12, Ego 24, Luck 6
Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II
Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope I
When my friends and I had gained powers during the Invasion, the first of us to gain them had thought powers worked like a computer game. He wasn't entirely wrong for more reasons than we knew back then, but because of the subconscious element in all powers many of us had ended with a game-like interface. For all that it didn't really fit the ideas some of us had of our abilities, it had been a convenient means of tracking them. It was also something I hadn't seen in over six months, since the final battle of the Invasion.
Now, thanks to Liz's scanner, it was back. It was also very different than I remembered... and if correct, it would explain many of the discrepancies I'd been feeling...