Let the record forever show that tail injuries are not fun. They are like getting kicked in the shins, only the shins in question happened to be sticking out of my behind. Thankfully, pastries made things better, particularly bear claws, frosted pomegranate scones, and a tiramisu croissant. But my relief came at a cost. The change advanced. Biomass crawled through my face and neck and down my back. Paresthesias danced from above my ankles to my knees, and when it was done, I couldn’t feel anything beneath my ankles.

Anyhow, what did I learn? Well, I learned that Step Two was a lot more nuanced than I could have ever imagined. An hour ago, I would have said that Step Two was about imbuing the plexus with my intent. But, that turned out to be the exact opposite of what I needed to do. This power was more like a puzzle than anything else—a construction set—only I didn’t have any pre-fabricated models to try and reverse engineer. My mind was abuzz with possible ways of arranging or manipulating the plexus. Could I make different parts move objects in different directions? Could I make multiple plexuses at once? Could I vary the intensity of its forces across its volume? There was a lot to figure out, and not enough time to do it. But one feature stood out over all the others.

Nina and Dr. Horosha’s plexuses had been completely different from mine. Maybe it was just me having played too many video games, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that different appearances meant different effects. As I’d seen with Nina, when the appearance of her plexuses had changed, so too did the nature of the miracles they caused.

Obviously, that had me wondering.

So far, all of my plexuses had been made of those metallic blue and gold filaments. It would be interesting to see if I could diversify my power-portfolio.

“What do you mean, Mr. Genneth?” Andalon asked, sitting in the chair next to my stool beside the table.

“Fire magic is red, ice magic is blue, electrical magic is yellow or green. That sort of thing. They look different.”

“Andalon thinks your shimmery-wimmeries look really pretty.”

I shook my head. “It’s not about how pretty they look. I think I could use those other types of plexuses to expand the range of my abilities. Imagine what I could do if I could combine them with the blue and gold ones that I’m already making.”

You bounce it, you shake it, you really, really make it, and then the thing happens!

Huh…

Andalon’s words brought to mind Nina’s words from yesterday:

I can change it. I can shape it.

And she had, though I didn’t know if doing so was what allowed her to use various different powers, or if it was just an outward sign of her multiple abilities.

“The plessus does different things when it’s different, Mr. Genneth.”

“That’s a tautology, Andalon,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

“A what?”

“Something that’s true, but not helpful,” I explained.

As I sat there on the stool in the lengthening morning light, Letty Kathaldri’s words played in my ears.

It’s sad you haven’t been training like I have, Doc Warlock. What a waste of talent.

I really didn’t want to give Letty credit here, because she was horrible, but on this matter, she was absolutely right. There was no point in denying it, no point in trying to push it out of mind. The incidents with the transformees sequestered in Room 268 had skirted disaster. Psychokinetic powers capable of flinging beds like frisbees were not to be trifled with.

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And I didn’t want anyone else to get killed.

And, almost as badly as that, I didn’t want to do wrong by my transformee patients. I’d upset them. I’d scared them. I’d sedated them against their will⁠.

In the past few days, forced sedations had become something of a running gag—one that didn’t amuse me in the least.

Yes, the transformees were far less dangerous now that they were sedated, though we’d have to do a rain check on that if, say, they started using manifesting psychokinetic powers while unconscious. Still, to the best of my current knowledge, as long as they were unconscious, they were out of my reach.

And the cherry on top was that I was a transformee, too, only I had the luxury of still being in the closet, because I was lying to my colleagues about my condition.

So, yeah… that felt pretty bad. Helping others alleviated bad feelings like that, so, my powerlessness in the situation left me trapped with my guilt, like a pot-boiled lobster.

“Okay.” Andalon leaned forward, crossing her arms behind her. “So… whatcha gonna do?”

“I’m going to try to change my plexuses’ colors.”

The sooner I unlocked those other types of plexuses, the better. “There’s no telling what kinds of freaky things the near future will bring across my path.”

Andalon lowered her head in concern. “That sounds… uh…” she struggled to find the right word, “not… safe.”

“Given the choice, I’d prefer to be armed to the teeth.” I looked over the wall again. “Things are starting to look pretty scary out there.”

“What is teeth?” Andalon asked.

I flashed my teeth and clacked my jaws together twice. Andalon pursed her lips in confusion.

Adjusting my position on the stool, I raised my hands in front of me, once again placing them on the surface of an imaginary sphere. I conjured a plexus into that space, metallic blue and gold, just like all the rest.

Andalon pointed at the orb. “See, it’s really pretty. Isn’t that good enough?”

I just sighed.

Here goes nothing…

I had no idea how to go about changing the plexus’ color or texture. And what does one do when one is clueless?

Try. Try everything.

And that’s what I did. I thickened it, I thinned it, I grew it and shrank it, I shook it around. One moment it was no bigger than a cue ball, the next, it was wide and spacious, the ever-moving threads having expanded into a glistening shell around me, primed with power—but still that same old blue and gold.

It was absolutely beautiful to look at, not to mention as frustrating as heck. The only thing my light-show succeeded at doing was making me hungrier. The whole exercise felt weirdly poetic; I really was going in circles—well, spheres.

Then the pre-alarm alarm went off on my console. This was the alarm that I’d set to go off to remind me that the alarm I’d set to go off to remind me to head to my shift was ten minutes away from going off.

Because, sometimes, a guy just needed that extra push.

“Son of a bison!” I groaned.

I wasn’t just irked and exasperated: I was running out time.

It was time to try a more risky approach.

So far, my focus had been on the plexuses’ shape. My line of thinking being that I could access the other abilities that Nina and Dr. Horosha had shown once I found a way to change my plexuses’ shape. But, what if it wasn’t a question of shape? What if power was the determining factor?

Before I reached Step Three—where the magic actually happened—Step Two required me to settle on the various properties the plexus would have; things like its brightness or the thickness of its light-threads. One of my first discoveries—and the reason for my first chair launch—was that the strength of the forces my plexuses created depended on not one, but two variables: the amount of activation energy I pumped into the plexus in Step Three, and the structure of the plexus itself. The first chair had launched because I’d made a bright, dense plexus, and had thought that I could create a small effect by making the amount of energy I fed the plexus in Step Three correspondingly small.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Even a whisper would become explosively loud when spoken into a megaphone set to the highest volume setting.

Nevertheless, out of all the alterations I could currently perform, the way the plexuses’ appearances changed when I beefed them up seemed to be the closest I could come to a complete change of ability type. So, that’s what I did here. After shrinking the plexus to a manageable size—about a foot in diameter—I fed Step One power into the plexus—basically, raising its minimum and maximum volume settings. All the while, I kept careful watch on its filaments, waiting for any signs of change.

“Uh… Mr. Genneth?” Andalon said, warily.

Just then, it happened: a change started taking hold. The filaments twitched. Little upticks popped up all over them, like splashes from upside-down raindrops.

“I’m almost there,” I said.

The light grew blindingly bright. The air in front of me visibly quivered. My breaths became labored; my arms and legs felt impossibly heavy.

Andalon rose to her feet, blue eyes wide in alarm. “Mr. Genneth?!”

I gave the plexus one more push.

Light burst. The threads thinned.

And Step Three happened all on its own.

The next thing I knew, I’d been flung backward, launched out of my seat.

Through the air.

Over the garden wall.