Dan would later feel fairly proud of how he reacted to the situation. Flames swept outwards from the man's body, moving almost as if in slow motion. The brilliant orange-gold streamers that had scythed through the city were crawling through the air like they had been bogged down in molasses. It was less an explosion than a barrier, a shield, a cocoon of fire gradually expanding over the man's skin. It was slow, and steady, and oh so dangerous.
Dan moved on instinct, on reflex, on that primal setting of the brain which acted rather than reacted.
He tackled the nurse. The poor woman was frozen in surprise, gaping like a fish as the burning shell crawled towards her. Dan's action wasn't smooth, or graceful, or particularly gentle, but it got her away from the flames. They tumbled away from the man's body, rolling across the frozen concrete to the edge of the barrier.
Dan stumbled to his feet, half dragging the nurse up alongside him. She winced as she stood, her knees scuffed from the tumble. They both watched in something akin to horrified awe as the roiling flames grew brighter and wilder by the second.
"Run!" a strained voice pleaded.
Dan glanced at the man who spoke, the blue-skinned volunteer responsible for the icy field they inhabited. The frost over his body had become more visible, more solid. It flowed along his arms and legs, hardening over his clothing, slowing his movements to a crawl. Ice crystallized along the ground, blooming into a frozen wave that clashed against the heat. The air grew thick with fog, the cloudy air tinted crimson by the bonfire blazing at the center of the dome.
"I can't hold the fire back for long," the frozen man continued through gritted teeth. "You have to evacuate! Warn the authorities!"
The second half of his plea broke through Dan's shock. Moving robotically, he unclipped his radio and spoke in hurried tone, "This is Bravo-one-seven, we've encountered an active villain in grid B-four. He's a pyrokinetic who has been shot in the stomach and is currently trying to incinerate us."
Dan paused, still holding down the button. "...I'm pretty sure he's the guy who caused the explosion earlier today. I'd suggest an evacuation. Bravo-one-seven out."
An urgent voice replied to him, but he couldn't hear past the sound of boiling water and roaring flames.
Dan wasn't sure why he was so calm. Maybe it was because he could teleport out at almost any moment. Maybe it was because some tiny part of him remembered that this was only a simulation. Maybe he was back in that state of utter serenity that he had experienced weeks ago, when he'd first stumbled into a spaceship and flown through the stars.
Whatever the reason, he was calm, collected, centered on the obstacle before him. The situation was still salvageable. Things hadn't gone to shit quite yet. Dan had options aplenty. He could leave at any time. He could teleport away and save himself. The three volunteers beside him would almost certainly die if he did, but Dan would live to help another day.
It was the safe choice. It might even be the smart choice. It was certainly the choice that Marcus wanted Dan to make. This was the test, the cruel purpose of the simulation. It was nothing less than calculated trauma. The largest living thing that Dan had managed to teleport was a mouse a bit bigger than his thumb. Dan couldn't save his fellow volunteers, only himself. Not, at least, if the situation was as it appeared to be.
If this really was the villain who caused the fire.
If the man was even capable of throwing out another blast of that scale.
If there was no way to stop him from doing it.
If if if.
Dan's eyes fell on the nurse at his side. Her entire body was trembling, but her face was set in grim acceptance. She was young, he noticed; younger than he was. Unshed tears pooled in her eyes as she stared down what was essentially an explosion in slow-motion. She could run, but she wouldn't make it far without a movement upgrade. The heat outside of the icy barrier would sap away her strength in seconds. If the range of the previous blast was any indication, fleeing would accomplish nothing other than making her suffer before she died. There was something inspiring about her defiant poise.
The last volunteer, the dark-skinned giant named Samson, was less inclined to accept his fate. He punched repeatedly at the frozen ground, massive fists shaking the earth with each blow. The concrete yielded to his strength, fracturing beneath his fists. With a grunt, Samson pried loose a slab of concrete and rebar, hefting the watermelon-sized boulder like a baseball. His arm cocked back and, bellowing at the top of his lungs, he lobbed the missile directly towards the burning villain.
Samson had excellent form. The ball of concrete rocketed through the intervening space and crashed against a carapace carved out of fire. It penetrated, briefly, sinking past the shell and revealing the agonized, enraged face of the villain beneath. He roared, a sound barely audible over the crackling heat, and the shell rippled violently in place.
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The projectile abruptly rebounded, repelled by an explosion of flame and reduced to a molten slag. Samson ducked under what was left of his weapon as it whizzed past his head, spraying white-hot chunks of steel across the floor. Dan's half-formed idea of dropping something heavy on the villain died in its womb.
The game was rigged. It had to be. The result was fixed in place by a bitter old man trying to share his cynical wisdom. Once again, Dan saw the choice that Marcus wanted him to make. The safe choice, the smart choice, the cold choice. Find the proper authorities, Daniel. Know what you're capable of, Daniel. Accept your limits, Daniel.
"Do the right thing, Daniel. They knew the risks. This is what they signed up for. This is what you signed up for," an old man whispered into his ear.
Something inside Dan snapped.
"You don't get to decide what the right thing is, Marcus, you interstellar douche canoe," Dan snarled under his breath.
"Reasonable, then, if not right," Marcus replied, unphased by Dan's anger. "There is only one choice available to you here. Make it."
That wasn't true. There were at least two choices, though one probably involved Dan getting killed. He wasn't in any hurry to experience that, simulation or not, but neither could he abandon good men and women without even attempting to help. It was odd how attached he felt to these people; the idea of these people. Heroes, the real kind, not idiots running around in spandex. He didn't want them to die.
They weren't real, true, but they were real enough.
The heat continued to rise within the boundaries of the cold field. The ice on the ground melted away into water, into steam. The fiery shell surrounding the injured villain roiled and writhed and grew brighter and brighter.
Thirty seconds had passed since the man had woken up. Dan was running out of time and options.
Dan's power was a supremely selfish one. He could go anywhere in the blink of an eye. He could bring any number of material possessions. He could do this repeatedly, for as long and as far as he wanted. What he could not do, was take another human with him. It just didn't work. The doctor had tried to explain the exact mechanics to him, but Dan's ability to understand how higher level physics interacted with insane power fuckery was basically nonexistent.
In layman's terms, all living beings naturally produce a form of energy invisible to the naked eye. This fact had gone largely unnoticed by society at large, as the field was both difficult to detect and largely inactive. Dan's own energy field was unique, in that his power exclusively manipulated it. The doctor, upon confirming this, insisted on calling the odd energy that formed the field Mercury Energy, or eMergy. As far as Marcus could tell, a natural eMergy field overlaps the body perfectly, but otherwise just sits there being useless. Mercury's current theory was that cosmic radiation warps the field in strange, often nonsensical ways, and grants the being some sort of ability. The eMergy field was, in part, the source of superpowers.
It was also what allowed Dan to teleport things outside of his body.
He liked to think of his eMergy field as a veil of water, hanging on the outside of his skin. He only had so much of it, but he could move it around however he liked. If he wanted to bring something along, whether it was food, or a piece of machinery, or even Merrill, he had to drench it with his field. With a creature as small as a mouse, Dan's own eMergy could overwhelm it and drag it along for the ride. For a fully grown person, for a child even, Dan simply lacked the ability to penetrate their personal field. Inanimate objects, non-living things, lacked this defense.
Dan's power wasn't teleportation so much as swapping. There was no pop of displaced air when he shifted locations. There was no sound at all. He simply willed himself elsewhere, and the universe shuffled things about to accommodate him.
When Dan realized this, it led him to a series of somewhat disturbing questions. Could he teleport into empty space? Could he teleport into something solid, like a wall or water? Was his weight limit one-sided? Did it account for what was on the other side of his jump? He already knew that he couldn't appear where a person was, but he lacked the courage to experiment with solid objects.
Dan's power propagated poorly through air. It was maybe half as effective within a few feet of his body, and got exponentially worse from there. Teleporting anything heavier than an apple, without touching it, past five feet away, was a distant dream.
Air, as it turns out, is quite light. Fire is even lighter.
Dan had a stupid, brilliant, insane plan.
"I think I can bring down his fire for a second," he shouted to Samson.
The giant of a man frowned, taking wary eyes off the growing ball of fire for a brief moment and glancing over. He cocked an eyebrow, somehow conveying dry skepticism despite the utter pandemonium surrounding him.
"Be ready to hit him again," Dan insisted.
Samson grunted something, the words lost to the oppressive roar that permeated the dome. He knelt down again, digging into floor with his bare hands. Dan watched the man out of the corner of his eye, keeping the majority of his focus on white-hot blaze in front of him. When the muscled giant lifted up a chunk of solid concrete, Dan knew it was time to act.
He turned to Samson. "I'm going in."
He got a grim nod in return, and the mild respect in the man's eyes drove Dan forward. He stared at the edge of the churning cocoon, pictured himself there, and blinked.
The heat was agony. It scalded away his skin, like he'd just swan dived into a pool of boiling water. Dan screamed, absolutely unprepared for the pain yet determined to accomplish something. This had been a terrible idea, the worst in the history of the world, but he was stuck with it. The way out was through. He was going to drag this big ball of fire into the damn sky.
He could probably get all of it. He was probably close enough. But Dan hadn't subjected himself to this for a probably. He shoved his hand into the wall of fire just in case, barely registering the increase in pain as his nerves were stripped away. The scent of burning flesh filled the air, but Dan was running on pure adrenaline now. His mind was set, his focus was absolute. He closed his eyes and pictured himself high above the city, alongside the great golden sun that he had seized.
Gravity took hold suddenly, dragging Dan downward. He opened his his eyes, peering past his pain long enough to see blue sky above and black clouds below, before fire exploded outwards and consumed his world in brilliant light.