Blake ran through the city streets of Eflok, turning into side streets and alleyways randomly as he went in an attempt to elude pursuit. He hoped it was working, though he had no way of knowing if it was. Though the bar held in his right armpit and the dismembered left forearm jammed between his teeth slowed his pace a bit, he was pretty sure that his “pretty fast” outpaced the top speed of at least most Otharians.

Blake’s heart pounded heavily in his chest, partly from the enduring rush of adrenaline still coursing through his system and partly from the blood loss. His vise-like grip on the stump of his left arm kept the vast majority of his precious scarlet fluid inside his body, but not all. He had a time limit to complete his next objectives, and he knew it.

Blake’s most urgent goal was to get far enough from the arena and the guards that he didn’t have to worry about taking a blade in the back. Once he’d managed that, he could move on to his second goal, which was finding something other than his hand to properly cover his stump and stop the bleeding entirely. Only then could he work on his overall goal of escaping the city.

Eflok felt as lively as a ghost town. Blake turned into another alley, his eyes searching for ambushes, but he only saw terrorized eyes peeping fearfully from the gaps between primitive wooden slats if he saw anything at all. It was as if the entire city was hiding from a man-eating tiger, each person hoping it would pass by their house and prey elsewhere.

Blake was quite willing to oblige. Even if he wanted to mess with the people in those houses, he didn’t have the time. Every minute he delayed was one more minute that the Otharians had to hunt him and reinforce the city exits.

His heartbeat thundering in his ears and his breath growing ragged, Blake slowed to a halt, his gaze falling upon a clothesline strung up across the alley between two houses. Three fairly clean shirts swayed in the soft breeze—just the sort of thing he was looking for. The line hung above the second-story windows, but that wasn’t a problem. He placed his severed arm and metal pole on the most sanitary-looking spot in the alley, took a deep breath, and jumped. A moment later, he landed with two shirts in hand.

Without delay, Blake proceeded to rip the shirts into thin strips without fully removing his one hand from the open wound by pinching part of the shirt with two fingers and doing the actual ripping with his teeth. It was an awkward process, but his strength made the act of tearing the canvas-like cloth almost trivial.

Blake didn’t feel particularly guilty about the destruction; the owner of these clothes had probably been in that stadium cheering for his death. It was almost cathartic. Almost.

First, Blake tied a loop of cloth around the middle of his upper left arm to cut off the circulation. The act of tying with only a single hand proved far more challenging than the ripping, especially because he needed to tie it as tightly as possible to cut off the circulation. Once he’d managed that, he began to address the wound itself. Blake did not possess much of any first-aid or medical training, but he’d once had a neighbor who’d lost a leg “in the war”. He tried to copy the back and forth diagonal criss-crossing wrapping pattern he’d seen the neighbor use. Between his limited tools, inexperience, and improvised materials, the final result would have made even a first-year nursing student cringe.

Still, it did the job. The bleeding, already slowed greatly by the tourniquet, decreased further until, a few minutes later, it seemed to finally come to a full halt. Blake picked up his pipe and arm and brushed the grime off his former limb. He could feel the toll of all he’d been through beginning to take its toll, the shock and blood loss leaving him somewhat lightheaded.

Blake shook his head. As tired as he felt, he couldn’t afford to rest yet. He could only rest once he’d escaped—and maybe not even then.

It was time to head out and make his escape. Unfortunately, thanks to all the zigging and zagging he’d done to make his way to this unremarkable alleyway, he didn’t have the slightest idea where in the city he happened to be. He couldn’t even use the midday sun hanging high in the sky to know which direction he was headed. Blake decided it didn’t matter. He’d look for the wall, head towards it, and follow it until he found a gate out of the city.

A cry came from the distance as he left the alley, and Blake turned to find a group of five soldiers down the street, one of them pointing at him with alarm. Blake took off in the other direction, running as fast as he could manage without dropping his things. His ears picked up the sound of something whizzing through the air and he juked to the left just as an arrow zipped through his previous location. The sight of the arrow skidding off the stone in front of him spurred him to run even faster.

Fortunately, it seemed that his initial supposition was entirely correct; the speed he could muster with his superpowered legs outstripped anything his pursuit could manage. The soldiers were quickly falling behind, with even the archer quickly finding themselves too far away. Blake felt a flash of relief as he spotted the city wall off in the distance, only to turn the corner and find himself staring at another squad of soldiers hunting for him just twenty meters away.

And so it went, as Blake found himself in a life-and-death game of cat and mouse that wound through the labyrinthine layout of the city. Every time he managed to escape one squad, he’d run across another not even a minute later. With the full might of the town’s security forces—a group large enough to keep the peace throughout the entire metropolis—entirely devoted to hunting him down, he barely found room to think. To get away, he ran through side streets, crossed rooftops, leapt over alleys, and more, always utilizing his physical advantage to stay just ahead of the natives as he worked his way in the general direction of the stone edifice that marked the bounds of the city. He needed to hurry; now that they knew his general location, the soldiers searching around the rest of the city would be on their way towards him. At some point, there would just be too many people to dodge, even for somebody with his capabilities.

Finally, after what had to be more than thirty minutes, Blake skidded out of a back street onto what counted for a main boulevard in this place and spotted his destination ahead, just a thousand yards away. A good forty well-armed Otharians stood between him and his freedom, but Blake didn’t have time to look for another way out. Unlike the others, this group didn’t budge from the gate when they spotted him. Clearly, they had orders to not leave it.

Quickly, Blake looked around for something to protect him as he formulated a simple plan. Most of the assembled men and women held some sort of melee weapon. Blake disregarded those ones; he’d disable them before they could get close enough to become a threat. Rather, he found himself far more worried about the dozen or so who either held a bow or nothing. He still had a lot of ground to cover and not much room to dodge as he did so. The last thing he needed was to become a flaming pincushion before even making it to his goal. Were the arrowheads the Otharians used made of metal? He’d been too busy running his ass off to even check.

Blake’s gaze fell upon a large, empty wagon abandoned on the side of the street by some panicked civilian, and an idea crystallized inside his mind. Pulling out his pipe, he jogged over to the uncovered vehicle and inspected it under the wary and watchful eyes of the Otharians down the road. As he’d hoped, the construction of the cart made it suitable for his needs. About eight feet long and five feet wide with the floor composed of thick, solid wooden boards, it had what he needed to work as a functional makeshift shield. The side railings, about two feet high, would help protect his flanks a little as well.

Blake formed his pipe into a set of three strong parallel spikes arranged in a triangle formation. The back side of the spikes converged into a larger, solid handle shaft that ended in a convenient handle just perfect for Blake’s remaining hand. Grasping the handle, Blake drove the metal points into the center of the wagon’s floor, lodging them so deep that they poked out the bottom. Then, to stabilize it, he widened both sides of each spike where they touched each side of the wood so they were too wide to fit through the holes he’d just created.

Satisfied now that the wagon wouldn’t slip and slide around on his improvised attachment, Blake allowed himself a smile. The entire process had taken him under a minute, proceeding so swiftly and smoothly that none of his pursuers had managed to catch up with him yet. It was amazing what one could accomplish with super strength and the ability to mold metal with one’s mind.

Bracing himself, Blake adjusted his grip on the handle and heaved. The wagon shuddered as it rose off the ground and Blake stumbled slightly under the sudden new weight. While he could lift the vehicle without issue, the wagon weighed more than he did. Were he lifting it above his head, this would pose little issue, but the point of his whole scheme was to hold it out in front of him and use it as a combination shield and battering ram. He found himself having to constantly fight against its torque to keep it aloft, but quickly enough he found a satisfactory balance.

Blake began to walk forward, step by step, each one coming a little faster than the last. Soon, he broke into a jog, then a run, until finally, he was moving in a full-blown sprint towards the gate and its defenders. The street between them was straight and unobstructed, meaning he could focus entirely on building up speed. Sure, he couldn’t see in front of him, but that didn’t matter much. If he focused, he could make out the shapes of the metal blades and the gate itself—a large, glowing criss-cross of metal bars—through the wagon. That told him where he needed to go and how far until he got there. He didn’t need to know anything more.

A “chock!” resounded as something, probably an arrow, struck the bottom of the wagon. Then came another, and another, and another, each impact striking with greater force and urgency. By the time he was under fifty yards away from the assembled troops, the wagon looked quite worse for wear; two of its wheels had fallen off and several small holes dotted wood, and he was fairly certain that part of it on the other side was also on fire. What mattered, though, was that it had largely held together, protecting him ably as he closed in at what he estimated to be about sixty miles per hour.

The Otharians’ reaction was far from coordinated; some stepped out of the way, their weapons ready to strike at him as he flashed by, while others stayed put, intent on blocking his path at all costs. Blake, however, had no interest in either group. Just before he plowed into the blockers, he leapt. The extra weight of the wagon meant that he barely rose ten feet, but it was enough for him to sail over the heads of his obstructors as the others swiped at him futilely with their neutered weapons. Arrows and other projectiles flashed by, most aimed at the space beneath him, while the rest zipped by at cross angles behind him. None of the defenders seemed able to compensate for Blake’s speed and sudden change of height.

Blake’s leap carried him above the heads of those suicidal enough to put themselves in his path. He and the wagon spun forward as the wagon’s weight turned his leap into a tumble, but he was ready for that. The metal lodged in the half-destroyed wagon liquefied and flowed towards Blake, severing his connection with the large mass of wood and momentum. The wagon crashed into the back row of Otharians as Blake flew by. He would have loved it if he’d landed gracefully on his feet and kept going, but he settled for rolling into the gate tunnel, stumbling to his feet with half his momentum intact, and rushing for the gate. The metal barrier felt like water against his skin.

Nobody stood waiting for him on the other side, nothing but open farmland, sunny skies, and freedom. And so, Blake ran and ran, not caring about which way he was headed. All he cared about was putting as much distance as he could between himself and that accursed city. It wasn’t until several hours later, when he stopped for a rest in some woods, that he realized he didn’t have the slightest idea where he was or where he was going—even more so than before.

Blake leaned back against the gnarled trunk of an old, grizzled tree and let out a small groan. He felt a kinship with this particular tree; with its scar-covered bark and broken branches, it looked on the outside like he felt on the inside after half a day of near-constant running. Still, as exhausted as Blake felt sitting beneath the glow shining down from the lunar trio above, he found himself unable to sleep, his mind cranking at a hundred miles an hour.

To put it simply, there was just too much for him to think about. It would have helped if he could have pondered as he ran, but he hadn’t dared to let his concentration lapse at the speed he’d been going, lest he misplace a foot and snap an ankle or something. Now, serenaded by the uncanny chirps of Otharian night life, he could finally devote his full faculties to the important questions that plagued him.

Question the First: what to do about his arm? Unfortunately, he had no more answers now than he did that morning. He did know, however, that it was time for him to make some sort of bandolier-like holder to carry it for him. The other option was to keep carrying it in his teeth, and only an idiot would do that. Forming a tight band of metal around his chest, he pressed the arm up against it and grew two bands around the wrist and the end where the elbow should have been. Satisfied for the moment, he moved on.

Question the Second: what was his goal? Running randomly through the wilderness was all well and good, but Blake knew that he needed something to aim for. He needed a plan, and to have a plan, he needed to know what the plan was supposed to accomplish.

The general, non-specific answer remained “escape”, but as Blake looked out upon the unfamiliar landscape, he understood that he needed to find the specific answer to the question. There were too many unknowns. First, where in Otharia was he? Second, where in the world was Otharia? He needed a map or something like it to help him figure out where he needed to go instead of just fumbling around until he stumbled upon a different nation—that is, if he even could stumble upon a different nation.

What if he’d been heading the wrong direction this entire time? What if it didn’t matter what direction he ran, because Otharia was an island? Or, even, what if he did manage to find another country and it turned out that they were just as bad as this one? It wasn’t like Blake had any other nation to compare this one to. If he wanted to be pessimistic, he had no reason to believe that Otharia was an outlier compared to the rest of the world. It was very possible that every place had its own version of an Elseling and he qualified for each. It could be that running wouldn’t solve his problems whatsoever.

Still, until he discovered otherwise, Blake decided he had no choice but to get out of Otharia as fast as he could. Yes, the rest of the world might be just as bad as Otharia, but for the moment, that was only a possibility, while Otharia was reality. He’d take possibility over reality any day of the week.

This all led to Question the Third: how was he supposed to survive long enough to escape? Really, this was two questions merged into one. There was survival against the elements—finding food and water, shelter, etc. until he could make it to the border—and then there was survival against the Otharians.

Oddly enough, Blake realized that he was far better suited for dealing with the Otharians than he was for the simple act of acquiring food. His superior physical abilities gave him an upper hand—a singular upper hand, sadly—against his human foes, but he hadn’t the slightest idea how he was going to feed himself. He found the notion rather embarrassing, actually, and would have much preferred it to be the other way around, but there was little he could do about it. If only he had watched more survival shows on television!

Blake’s hunger and thirst had mounted through the day as he’d pushed his battered body across the Otharian countryside. However, he had not allowed himself to stop and forage during his flight; he hadn’t felt safe enough to stop for any reason whatsoever until now. There was always the lurking possibility of “raiding” a village for food if he stumbled upon one, but after his last experience, the idea did not appeal to him whatsoever.

He looked around the area but couldn’t find anything that looked very edible in the gloom. He did, however, hear a barely perceptible sound off in the distance that resembled running water. Just the sound seemed to triple his thirst. Pushing himself up with a groan, Blake went to check it out, taking his pole with him and leaving his lost appendage back at the tree for the moment.

Just over a low nearby ridge, Blake found a small clear stream trickling along. He paused for a moment, as his mind dredged up some non-specific, half-remembered knowledge about purification and iodine and how you weren’t supposed to drink from natural running water even if it looked clear.

“Fuck it,” he said, bending down to gulp up some of the sweet, sweet dihydrogen monoxide. If the water ended up full of parasites and bacteria and whatnot, so be it. They might cause complications later that could make him sick or even kill him, but he knew he’d die of thirst far sooner if he didn’t partake. It wasn’t even really a choice.

Blake stopped before he could drink, his mouth just inches away from the water, as an idea came to him. Why take the risk when he didn’t have to? Taking his pole, he split off a piece and shaped it into a small jug, which he filled from the stream. Returning to the tree, he scrounged up bits of fallen wood, cleared an area of anything flammable, and placed the wood in the area’s center in a small pile.

Blake knew that one could start a fire through spinning the edge of a stick against a log, though he’d never done it himself—during the few times his parents had dragged him on a camping trip, matches and lighter fluid had been standard issue. Still, the mechanism was simple enough. Lacking two working hands, Blake opted to convert more of the metal from his pole temporarily into a spring-operated device to do the work for him. All he had to do was push it down and the device converted the force into rotation applied to whatever stick he placed in the center.

Between his super strength and his new creation, lighting the wood proved easier than he’d feared. Within two minutes, the wood caught and he had a small, persistent flame lighting the surrounding area with its flickering light. Taking the jug of water, Blake reformed the metal into a rudimentary distiller by tapering the jug’s top into a thin tube that curved down at a sharp diagonal angle out past the rest of the container. Using a bit more metal, he created a stand for the distiller and a cup. With satisfaction, he set the stand around the fire, placed the distiller atop the stand, put the cup beneath the thin tube’s end, and let the distiller work its magic.

As he waited, Blake returned to the stream to finally wash himself better. He would have done any number of unmentionable things for some soap, but for the moment, just having a steady supply of water to rinse with felt amazing.

Once he felt he’d cleaned off all that he could, Blake returned to his little camp. As the fire slowly heated the stream water, Blake thought about his situation and what he’d just made. If he were to survive, he needed more things like this, more tools and weapons. He needed... technology. Fortunately, he had years of knowledge and experience in the field and an ability that would let him use it, though how far he could go remained unknown. Was he limited to simple metal contraptions like this distiller, or could he replicate and adapt the technology he’d found in the bunker? He needed to experiment, but unfortunately, he didn’t have much time for that sort of thing—not with all the fleeing he had to do.

Blake picked up the cup and greedily gulped down the several ounces of water contained within. The liquid tasted like manna from heaven. He hadn’t realized just how much he needed the water until it was pouring his throat. Setting down the cup, he stood up, grabbed what remained of his pole, formed it into a large canteen, and headed off to the stream to get more.

He would experiment tomorrow night. Right now, he felt absolutely beat. He needed water and rest. Some food as well would be downright wonderful, but he’d settle for two out of three.

“AAAUUUUUGGGHHH, OTHAR, SAVE MEEEEEE!!!”

Blake watched with dismay as the Otharian urged his garoph—already pushed to a terrified gallop from the man’s screams and the smack of his short whip—to find another gear. The wagon hitched to the garoph hit a bump in the road as they zoomed away, one of the many sacks loaded atop it opening up and spilling its contents out onto the road. The peddler didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t care. All the Otharian seemed to care about was putting as much distance between himself and Blake as he could.

Blake sighed as he watched the wagon round a bend and vanish from view. All he’d done was stumble out into the road beside the man and his beast, but that had apparently been enough. The man had screamed like a banshee and sent his poor beast into a frenzy, and the rest was history.

There would probably come a point when Blake would find the sight of others screaming and running away to be comical, but he was not there just yet. Right now, he just found it tiring. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to say a word before the freak-out.

Walking down the now-empty road, Blake approached the items left behind on the dirt. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be a small assortment of items of dubious utility. He found some rocks, some trinkets of unknown value, and a variety of other things, all of them worthless to him... except one. Near the top of the pile sat a package containing what looked to be some Otharian version of hardtack.

Blake didn’t know what grain the crackers were made from, or what they were doing there—some of the man’s personal rations, perhaps—but that didn’t stop him from immediately grabbing them and retreating into the rocky wild that surrounding the road. That man’s loss was his much-needed gain.

Sitting out of sight of the road, Blake pulled out the food and began wolfing it down, taking sips of water from the jug of purified water he’d filled the night before. As he did, he took a moment to ponder what this last interaction meant.

The thing that stood out and worried him the most was that the man had immediately recognized him, even though he was far beyond the reaches on Eflok now—at least from what he’d seen of the Otharians’ transportation capabilities. That meant that the man had heard of, or possibly even seen, Blake before.

Blake’s mind went back to the execution and the strange floating, talking image of the man who’d addressed the crowd. He’d gotten the impression that the man had not been physically present in the arena, that instead, he had been a sort of hologram created by the strange veiled woman. If he’d been physically in the arena, surely he would have just walked out onto the balcony himself, right? So, he must have been elsewhere, which meant that, somehow, he’d been able to broadcast an image of himself from a distance.

If it were possible for this man to virtually appear at the arena, would it also not be possible for the reverse to happen? Would it not be possible for his execution to be broadcast outside of the arena like some twisted, morbid sporting event? If it was important enough that the locals would fill an entire stadium to witness his death, then it was also likely important enough to broadcast nationwide.

A pit grew in Blake’s stomach as he considered the possibility and determined it the most likely case. If true, it meant that many people who hadn’t been in the arena that day would know who he was and exactly what he looked like. He couldn’t risk being seen by anybody, or they’d run off and report his location to the authorities like that man was surely doing right now.

The idea that even the slightest human contact could prove to be his doom demoralized him. Yes, he hadn’t been planning on showing his face at a village or something, but still, the fact that even being momentarily seen would likely make his life orders of magnitude more difficult just added onto the already overbearing pressure of his situation.

He let out a sigh and stood up, his pilfered meal now fully in the bottom of his stomach. He needed to get going before somebody dangerous showed up. Picking up his jug, he resumed his trek.

That night, Blake found himself sitting on a rock in a hollow on a rocky hillside, a tiny fire crackling by his feet. He worried slightly about how the terrain prevented him from seeing anybody approaching, but the light of the fire would have made seeing out into the distance difficult anyway, especially with thick clouds muting the light of the moons. He hoped that the hollow would hide the flickering flame from anybody that happened to be nearby, though he doubted anybody was. He hadn’t seen any land development in several hours.

Gingerly, Blake began to unwrap the “bandages” around the stump of his left arm, hissing softly as he got to the inner layers, which were still sticky and clung to his flesh a bit. Carefully, he placed the used bandages on the cleanest part of his leg and picked up his jug. Forming a long flat handle that he could bite, he stuck it in his mouth and clamped down, then picked up the bandages with his single hand. Tilting his neck, he poured small streams of water over the bandages, the closest to cleaning that he could manage.

Blake found it amazing how much harder life became with just one hand. Even tasks he’d considered trivial just a few days ago now felt like arduous undertakings. If he didn’t possess his metal-bending powers, he didn’t remotely know how he’d be able to function.

Blake thought the wound itself looked better than it had the night before, though he didn’t have any expertise in the matter. Still, there was no sign of bleeding anymore, which heartened his spirits. The inner ninety percent of the end was covered by a giant, semi-solid scab that oozed a hint of translucent, sticky goo, and even that seemed far more viscous than it had the night before. Most encouraging—or most disheartening, depending on how you looked at it—was the ten percent around the outside, which looked to be covered by newly grown skin. Encouraging in that he was healing, and healing at a noticeably high rate. Discouraging because...

Almost on a lark, Blake picked up his severed arm—which he’d laid across his lap—and stuck it against the stump, end to end. He’d done the same yesterday. It wasn’t that he’d expected anything to happen, but... well, he had to admit there’d been a tiny shred of hope. He still didn’t fully understand the world’s rules; who was he to say what was and wasn’t impossible?

Part of the reason for that hope was how not-dead his severed limb appeared. While pale as the moons above thanks to the complete lack of blood, the arm didn’t appear as he would have expected for something “dead”. He could spot no decay or degradation, and couldn’t smell anything that reeked of puss, infection, or death.

The other part was how durable his body had been since his transfer. He could see proof of that in how quickly the skin was growing over his stump. Unfortunately, reconnecting his limb hadn’t accomplished anything, and the skin growing over the wound was creating a barrier that would permanently remove even the shred of a shred of hope that he still possessed.

He needed to decide what to do about his detached body part soon. He could potentially carry it with him wherever he went, but that was the behavior of insane people in horror movies, not a normal, well-adjusted person like himself. When was it time to give up?

Not yet, he decided. He’d give it another day, maybe, and really ponder possibilities before making the final decision. Once he got rid of it, after all, there would be no going back.

Like the previous night, Blake decided to stop somewhere close to water. After recreating his distiller, he set about purifying the water he’d drink tomorrow. As he did, he finally set his mind on solving the problem of tools, weapons, and technology. If he could crack this puzzle, his chances of survival would skyrocket.

The hillside bunker, or whatever that place he’d first appeared in was, showed that it was possible here to create machines that did both seemingly impossible things like pierce the fabric of reality and mundane tasks like opening a door. His years of education and experience had allowed him to recognize things like transistors—or at least the bunker’s weird analog of transistors—that he had worked with many a time back on Earth. If he could figure out how to recreate stuff like the flowing lines of tiny lights, he’d then be able to apply his knowledge to... well, he’d find out what he could do with it as he experimented. If his hunch was correct and devices like the automatic door at the bunker entrance also ran on the same technology, then he’d have endless applications for the technology.

Blake split off a bit of metal about the size of his fist to be his testbed. He found it funny that he kept using this specific metal, which he’d only seen used to restrain him, as his material of choice. He liked the idea of using the tools of his oppressors against them. The symbolism felt right. Still, the metal—whatever its name might be—appealed to him for non-symbolic reasons as well. It reminded him of titanium with its high strength and very low weight, though he suspected it would prove to be even lighter than titanium if he could compare them.

With barely a thought, Blake formed the metal chunk into a flat floor and a palm-sized humanoid figure. With more focus, the figure began to walk in a circle, first clumsily but quickly improving until it moved with balance and poise. Blake moved onto harder activities, making the tiny metal man skip, jump, and even do a backflip. By the end of the exercise, he could make the figure breakdance, pulling a series of head spins, acrobatic flips, handstands, and even doing the worm. Blake chuckled at the sight as the figure came to a halt with one final, defiant cross-armed pose. His minute control had increased demonstrably since he’d discovered the power two days before. Conveniently enough, it didn’t seem that physical contact was necessary to get the most out of the ability. The biggest factor was distance from what he could tell, and even that had grown greatly as he’d practiced.

He felt it a shame, however, that conventional physics still had a say in what he could do with the metal. He couldn’t make more of it or destroy it like he’d watched Yarec do with stone. Nor, from what he could tell, could he increase the metal’s durability as Yarec had to his sword. Furthermore, he couldn’t do other actions that defied physics like how the water mages had made their water levitate; the little figure could do a backflip but sadly would never be able to fly.

Still, he couldn’t complain about having kick-ass superpowers. As neat as that would be, just being able to recreate technology he knew would be powerful enough. The question was, how?

Blake didn’t know what the paths winding through those devices were made from. He hadn’t been able to look at the paths, only the lights coursing through them. It was like watching the headlights of a million cars miles away following a road through the dark of night.

However, Blake had a hunch or two. The threads of light within the devices had been so ubiquitous, complex, and fine—far thinner than a millimeter—that he couldn’t imagine them being created first and then embedded within the metal. The process would have surely warped and broken the paths. That led him to believe that they were created inside the existing metal.

But, how had the people who made those machines done it? He didn’t know the answer to that question, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized it didn’t matter. “How had the people who’d built the bunker created the paths in the metal” was the wrong question. Even if he knew, the answer would almost definitely be worthless for him in his situation. They’d probably accomplished the task through some sort of advanced fabrication technology to which he, a man sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere, had neither the training nor opportunity to use. The correct question was, “how could he make the paths himself, given his resources and abilities?”

Blake stared at the lump as he pondered various ways to make pathways through solid metal. While it remained possible that the pathways were made of an entirely different material than the metal that encased them, that possibility was not worth considering—he didn’t have any of this hypothetical material, so there was nothing he could do about it either way. Instead, he considered how the metal in his hand might be altered.

If he were to be honest, he still didn’t have a complete grasp on the limits of his metal control. There were many other possible properties he might be able to influence; he just hadn’t had the time or energy to test it yet. Now would be a good time, he decided, to kill two birds with one stone.

Blake decided to make his first test compression and density. Could he compress or condense the metal into something denser, perhaps with different physical properties? Holding up the lump, he willed it to form a perfect sphere about three inches in diameter. Once the metal had fully adjusted into his desired shape, he began to will it to shrink.

Nothing happened.

Blake closed his eyes and tried again, “thinking” at the metal harder this time, but still, nothing happened. He could feel something in his mind, like the sphere was trying but unable to fulfill his demands. Blake commanded the sphere’s core to liquefy, leaving only the outer quarter solid, and tried again. This time, he swore he saw the sphere shrink, though the difference was so slight that he couldn’t say if he’d imagined it or not.

He willed a tiny hole to form in the shell and a negligible dot of grey ooze squirted out from the sphere onto his shirt. Blake willed it to flow up his torso, along his arm, and onto his palm. There, he formed it into a tiny sphere beside the large one. Eyeballing the volumes, he estimated the large sphere to be easily more than five hundred times that of the small one... maybe even a thousand times. Not the greatest test, he had to admit, but enough for him to determine that no, he could not condense this metal more than an ever so slight amount. This tracked with what Blake knew from Earth: solid metal did not compress much at all unless under incredible pressure far beyond his capability. He let the dot merge back into the main sphere

What about heat, then? Perhaps, he conjectured, by heating the metal, he could induce different properties within parts of it. First, he willed the sphere to get warmer.

Nothing happened.

Flexing his brain muscles, he imagined the atoms in the metal beginning to vibrate faster and faster as the thermal energy built up.

Still, nothing happened.

Okay, well, it seemed he didn’t have thermal control capabilities either. Unless... while he couldn’t generate heat, could he control the flow of existing heat? Holding the sphere over the flame, Blake quickly determined the answer to be “ouch, no”.

Well, what other possibilities could there be? What else could he even try to mess with that might alter the physical properties of this material?

Old, half-forgotten memories from Blake’s college Materials Science classes bubbled up to the surface. What about molecular structure? So many people thought that the chemical makeup of a material was all that affected how it interacted with the world. What they didn’t realize was that molecular structure could also greatly affect how materials worked. Geckos, for example, didn’t need some sort of chemical glue to be able to walk on walls and whatnot; the clinging force they used was generated entirely by the way the molecular structure of the hairs on their footpads interacted with surfaces. Another example he’d read about once was of a hydrophobic material that didn’t need oil or rubber or the like to work. Instead, it was covered in super tiny little spikes that would keep the water away from the main surface using the water’s own surface tension.

But perhaps the best examples of why molecular structure mattered were crystals and metals. The crystalline, ordered structures of metals like iron were what made them so useful. They allowed the metals to handle the dislocations caused by deformation without losing cohesion and breaking into pieces. He vaguely recalled that different metals had different molecular configurations which could affect their properties. Some, like iron, even changed when exposed to heat.

What structure did this metal have, and could he change it? Would that even make a difference? Blake couldn’t say without giving it a shot, at least. Still, it wasn’t like he possessed the capabilities to observe anything as small as the molecular world, so how was he supposed to go about this?

After a few moments of contemplation, Blake realized that he might have a way to view something that small after all and fished his single crystal out of his pants pocket—making sure not to touch it with his skin, of course. Back in the bunker, Blake had spent a good amount of time contemplating a single transistor analogue within the device closest to him. Transistors in modern microchips could number in the billions, all packed onto a tiny little piece of silicon. There hadn’t been nearly that many in the bunker device, but there had been a lot—far more than he would be able to count, at least—and they had appeared very, very minuscule. Yet, at least while in Hyper Mode, he’d been able to focus entirely on a single one, observing the tiny transistor completely and in full detail. There had definitely been some amount of magnification going on. But could he push it deeper?

Blake opened the hand of his severed arm and put the crystal on its palm to help hold it in place. Then, picking the sphere back up, he dropped his elbow down to rest atop the crystal. Hyper Mode flared into action and the world slowed to a crawl.

Staring at the metal in his hand, Blake marveled at the level of focus that this strange state provided. He felt like he could not only see but also feel every single tiny nook and cranny on the surface of the sphere. He hadn’t really appreciated it until now. Then again, he’d had a host of more important things to think about the other times he’d entered this state, like figuring out what was going on or the fact that his arm was being cut off.

Pushing his awareness into the sphere, he reveled in the sensation his new metal-centric sense provided, the odd mix of sight and feel bringing him a level of awareness about the entirety of the sphere that wasn’t possible with the standard human senses. Pushing that new sense, he focused his awareness on a tiny piece of the whole, feeling everything there was in that small section in impossible detail. He pushed deeper, narrowing his focus further, then again, and again.

A headache formed, growing more and more painful the harder he pushed, but Blake forced himself to ignore it. This amount of pain was nothing compared to what he’d been through already. Smaller and smaller he forced his focus, the world in his mind becoming stranger and stranger the deeper he went. Finally, after some indeterminate amount of time that could have been a few seconds or half an hour, Blake found what he believed he was looking for.

Before him were what he could best describe as balls. He wasn’t sure if this was what the metal atoms looked like or if it was just his imagination influenced by all the low-budget science videos he’d had to watch in school, but he was pretty sure he’d reached his destination. At least, he hoped so; trying to go any deeper felt like trying to push through concrete.

The balls were arranged in a repeating mesh. If he broke it down into the smallest repeating pattern, it resembled a cube, with a single ball in the center and eight balls surrounding it, one where each corner of the cube would be. Using his metal-manipulating abilities, Blake rearranged one of the repeating shapes, pulling in nearby balls to fill in each of the six sides between the corners. The new pattern stuck and did not revert, but that was all that happened. He repeated this for several of the cube structures, memorizing how it felt to effect this shift. However, when he was finished, the only changes he saw were the ones he implemented himself.

After a few moments, Blake pulled his awareness back to a more macro level. From this new distance, he couldn’t notice any difference between the bit he’d altered and the rest. Though he expected this, he still felt a little let down. Pulling back even more, he lifted his arm, breaking the connection with the crystal.

An involuntary gasp escaped his lips as time returned to normal and he became so discombobulated that he nearly tipped over. His head pounded and he found himself panting uncontrollably as sweat poured down his forehead and into his eyes. It seemed that his feat had taken a lot more out of him than he’d thought.

Originally, Blake had planned on experimenting for a while before going to sleep, but now he didn’t feel up to it. Further experimentation would need to wait until the next night. Extinguishing the fire, he settled down and within minutes entered a deep slumber.

The next afternoon, Blake hopped over some knee-high rocks, skirted a thorny-looking bush, and scaled a ten-foot steep incline. He’d slowed his pace since that manic first day now that he had some distance from Eflok, dropping down to an estimated thirty miles per hour in a straight line. In reality, it was more like twenty or twenty-five miles per hour, as the Otharian wilderness did not allow for many unimpeded straight lines.

Heading down into a shallow valley, the terrain in front of him grew more wooded—one of the most heavily wooded areas here he’d seen so far, in fact. It would be a great place to sit down and rest for a bit, he decided.

From the moment he entered, it felt like the woods didn’t want him there. The ground felt gnarled and pointy from a lattice of roots working through the earth, and he found himself constantly having to force his way through branches, bushes, and shrubs blocking his way. Twice, an errant branch smacked him square in the face, causing him to stumble and fall to the forest floor.

Eventually, he found a small clearing, where he sat down on a felled tree and took a swig from his water jug. Letting out a weary sigh, he eyed the sweat-soaked makeshift bandages on what remained on his left arm. He knew he should clean it, but he didn’t have the opportunity yet and it would just end up re-soaked in sweat anyway. The day’s exertion under the warm sun had left his entire body covered in sweat, and he still had more coming.

Thinking about his stub of an arm only brought the missing piece back into his thoughts. He removed it from its carrying strap fastened across his chest and studied it for a moment, his musings from the night before resurfacing with new context. Carrying around this stupid piece of flesh was annoying. The hand flopped around as he ran, smacking him in the chest, and the extra weight kept pulling him forward and messing with his balance. Plus, it kept getting caught in branches and the like.

This wasn’t working. Blake needed to be honest with himself. The odds of him saving his arm were so low as to be effectively zilch. He could carry this thing around for years and it wouldn’t make a difference. He was just afraid, afraid of accepting the truth. His arm was gone, and it wouldn’t be coming back. It was time to let go.

Looking around, Blake took in his surroundings. Light cascaded through the canopy, falling down in golden rays to light up the vitality of the forest in a vibrant rainbow of color—even after spending so many days in Otharia, he was still not used to the wide variety of plant shades. A patch of grass filled the clearing, with a smattering of blooming wildflowers speckling the ground with their own unique hues. As burial grounds went, this wasn’t so bad.

Taking another swig, he stood up before false hope could change his mind. Forming some of his excess metal into a small spade, he chose a spot not too far away that looked softer and less rocky and root-filled than the rest and began to dig a hole. There turned out to be a lot of roots beneath the surface, but the keen edge of his spade, powered by one very strong arm, made quick work of the task.

Soon enough, he found himself standing over a hole about a foot wide and three feet deep. Returning to the fallen tree, he scooped up his severed limb and returned to the hole. Holding the arm out over the opening, he told himself to release his grip but found himself hesitating once again. There was a finality to this moment that impeded him, foiling his earlier resolve, and so, instead of dropping his lopped-off arm into the shallow grave he’d dug for it, he stood there, arm outstretched, holding it over the gap as time seemed to stretch on.

“What are you doing?”

“GAHHH!”

If Blake had been wearing shoes, he would have jumped right out of them. Panicked, his hand unwittingly released its cargo as he whirled left to find... a girl holding an assortment of branches in her arms. Perhaps eight or nine years of age with brown eyes and brown hair that fell to her shoulders, a sharp, thin face, she wore on her face the off-put scowl of an older sister who’d just walked in to find her younger brother eating his own boogers. She glanced at the hole, then at the pile of dirt with the spade sticking out of it next to the hole, then to Blake’s confused and frozen form.

“Which wagon are you with?” she asked. “Why did you drop your arm in a hole? That’s gross.”

A tidal wave of questions washed over Blake all at once. Who was this girl? Where had she come from? How had she gotten so close without him noticing? Had he just been tunneling so bad that he hadn’t noticed?

Blake’s first instinct was to immediately bolt, but something held him back. Maybe it was the fact that this person was just a child, or maybe it was the way she looked at him. Yes, her gaze was not a flattering one, but she was looking at him and talking to him like he was a person, and it had been a good while since anybody had done that.

“I’m burying it,” he replied.

“What happened to it?”

“It... got cut off in an accident a few days ago,” he lied. It wouldn’t do him any good to get into the real reason.

“Really? Have you just been keeping it with you while you’re in the caravan? You must be really dumb.”

Blake didn’t take mockery well in normal circumstances, but to have it come from a kid rankled him something fierce. “Oh, and you’re the expert on how to deal with losing a limb, kiddo?” he retorted before he could think better of it.

“Yeah, you take it to the Church and have it burned as an offering to Othar like when Old Vuntelz lost his foot, stupid,” the girl shot back.

“Well, excuuuuse me, but I’ve had a lot on my fucking plate these days and-”

“Samanta! You had better not be goofing off in there!” an older, uncompromising voice called from not far off.

Blake swore under his breath as the new voice pulled him back from arguing with a child and reminded him of the harsh reality of his situation. Grabbing his spade, he rushed over to the log and merged the digging implement back into the water jug from whence it came.

“I swear, if I find you just sitting-” A woman with soft pink hair and a face very similar to the girl’s pushed through the underbrush and into the clearing not five steps from the child. Cross, she glanced at the girl and opened her mouth—no doubt a scold of some sort about to emerge—but froze as she noticed him as he picked up his water. Blake watched as the color drained from her face in record time.

“Mom, this weird man was-”

“Samanta, run!” the woman cried, grabbing the girl and pulling back into the clearing.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck,” Blake grumbled to himself as he took off in a perpendicular direction after making sure he wasn’t about to be retracing his steps. “Stupid stupid stupid!”

He should have just run from the start. Maybe then, he could have avoided this mess. The girl hadn’t recognized him, and she might not have described him to others in a way that would make it clear who he was. But no, he’d gotten swept up in a stupid little argument with a kid like an idiot. All for what?

...he’d enjoyed the argument for the few moments it had lasted, at least. It had been nice to speak normally with somebody again.

Blake crashed through the brush, his movement already improved by having one less thing to cart around with him. He could see by his feet more easily and breathe better, too. It was a shame he hadn’t had the time to cover it with the dirt he’d dug up. Oh well. Some lucky critter would get a fine meal, most likely.

Moving at as close to top speed as he could muster, Blake emerged from the woods headed... away. He couldn’t say which side of the small forest he’d left, or what direction he was going, only that it wasn’t where he’d entered and not in the same direction as the woman and the girl. That was all that mattered, really. That, and putting as much distance between this place and himself as possible before the word got out.

Looking back and to his left, Blake found the source of his issues. There was a road running through these woodlands that he hadn’t seen as he entered the valley. Parked along that road was a convoy of wagons at least twenty in number, all rushing to get underway before the Big Bad Elseling ate their sternums or whatever. Several people shouted as they noticed him, their faces contorted in fear. This was what he got for being complacent. He promised himself to reinforce his vigilance and ran.

Blake had changed directions five times since meeting the caravan, until he was so lost that he wouldn’t have been able to find his location even with GPS and a map. That was why, even though a little daylight remained, he decided to stop his escape early when he stumbled upon a cave in a hillside. He couldn’t see how deep the hollow went, but it definitely traveled fairly deep—deep enough that it went past the reaches of the light, at least.

Settling down, Blake drank the last of his water as his stomach rumbled. He was hungry again. Looking back now, it seemed clear that the only reason he’d been relatively fine without eating for a week or so had been because he’d been stuck in a rock for most of it and unable to work up an appetite. While he wasn’t over the moon concerning the hunger gurgling in his belly, he felt strangely happy to find he still needed to eat fairly often. It made him feel more human, and he’d always loved food. The thought of eating a whopping one meal a day or something like that and still somehow getting fat because of this new metabolism made him want to cry.

Leaning against the side of the cave, Blake set out to finish his experiments from the night before. He’d managed to squeeze in a little thinking while running that morning, before the whole debacle in the woods—he was slowly getting more accustomed to moving at higher speeds, now only needing to devote ninety percent of his brain towards keeping himself from face-planting into a rock. He’d focused that remaining ten percent on the results of the previous night’s trials, trying to think of more things he might try.

Blake was fairly sure that he’d successfully altered the molecular structure of a bit of the metal before going to sleep, but that bit had been impossibly small—far too small for him to actually confirm. After all, there were countless molecules in even a drop of water, and he’d barely managed to change what, a few thousand? It would have been nice if he didn’t need to restructure every molecule manually, but solid metal wasn’t going to rearrange itself to fit a new pattern all on its own—as far as he knew, at least.

It wasn’t until this morning that he’d realized the stupidly obvious thing he’d overlooked the night before. Solids didn’t restructure themselves, but what about liquids? Mixing water and sugar in a jar and growing sugar crystals was the sort of thing you showed five-year-olds to get them into science. How could he have forgotten such a simple concept? He even had a way to make the metal liquid—okay, liquid-ish—with just his mind!

Wasting little time, Blake formed a test sphere like the one from yesterday from his metal supply and held it in his palm. He flexed his thoughts at it in that way he’d grown so accustomed to and felt it liquefy, the metal remaining in a spherical form only because he actively willed it to retain that shape. Thinking better of it, he re-solidified the bottom eighty percent, creating a bowl of sorts to hold the remaining twenty percent.

Setting it down for the moment, he fished out his crystal and set it on his lap like he had the night before—minus a detached hand beneath it—picked up the metal again, entered Hyper Mode, and mentally dived into the abyss. He swam deeper and deeper, the effort needed to go further growing greater and greater as he went, until he arrived at the same level he’d reached the night before.

The world down here looked different this time. No longer did the balls that he believed to be molecules or atoms cling to each other in an ordered pattern. Instead, they drifted around each other, completely free of attachment to their neighbors. With a flash of insight, Blake understood what was going on. When he’d liquefied this metal with his powers, what he’d in effect done was to somehow nullify the metallic electron bonds that normally forced metal atoms to form into a patterned lattice. Unable to shed electrons into the greater structure, the balls were left to freely float about as if they were in a liquid state.

Curious, Blake arranged several of the balls into the same modified pattern he’d created the night before. However, the balls simply floated away from each other. Mentally shaking his head, he did it again, only this time he allowed them and only them to re-solidify.

The effect was immediate. The balls latched onto one another in the arranged pattern and, to Blake’s surprise, didn’t stop there. They latched onto more of the spheres floating freely around them, pulling them into alignment to propagate the pattern. The crystallization spread so fast that, without the time-dilating component to Hyper Mode, Blake would never have been able to witness it happen. Zooming his awareness back out, Blake found, to his delight and surprise, that the entirety of the liquefied metal had solidified with this new molecular pattern. The new metal looked very similar to the old, but Blake could see a slight difference in the color and sheen. He decided to call this version “Variant B”, with the original metal being “Variant A”.

He’d done it! Well, he’d done something, at least. Whether or not any of this would further his goal of magic crystal-metal circuit technology remained to be seen. Further testing was required, and so further testing immediately commenced.

Sometime later, Blake had managed to discern several facts. First, if he liquefied solid Variant B and let it solidify again without applying direct control, it would revert to the original Variant A. The second thing he discovered was that while Variant A metal would shift to Variant B when brought into contact with solid Variant B, this applied only to liquefied metal. This meant he could create channels of liquid Variant A within solid Variant A, introduce a tiny bit of Variant B to it, and voila! Easy pathways within solid metal!

The third, and perhaps most important thing he found, however, was that it was possible to trigger the shift in the liquefied metal without delving all the way to the molecular level. He didn’t need to even be in Hyper Mode to do so! It wasn’t an easy feat—so challenging, in fact, that he’d only managed to do it twice in what must have been a hundred attempts—but he could do it. Hopefully, with practice, it would get easier. Going into Hyper Mode and diving that deep took a lot out of him.

Finally, he was ready for the ultimate test. What would happen when he mixed all these different components—a crystal, Variant A, and Variant B—together? Would he be able to make a circuit like what he’d found in the bunker? Blake’s mind was practically vibrating with excitement. He couldn’t wait to find out!

First, Blake molded the sphere into a cube, from the top of which he grew two prongs to serve as contacts for the crystal. The configuration resembled that of the machines in the bunker, and in Blake’s mind it resembled the positive and negative contact points for a AA battery. Setting the cube on the ground, he fished out his crystal, making sure to not touch it directly yet so he wouldn’t enter Hyper Mode by accident, and placed it in between the two prongs. Now placing his hand on the crystal, Blake let time slow as he observed what followed.

The most obvious item of note was the crystal itself: brimming with countless motes of light, it shined brightly. In contrast, the metal was nearly devoid of the tiny pinpoints, with the only ones he could see being located in the prongs close to the crystal. Blake had not seen a setup without channels like this back in the bunker, so he didn’t know what to expect, so he watched what happened next with rapt attention.

What happened next was... not much. The lights were very slowly but steadily flowing from both ends of the crystal into the metal, diffusing throughout the entire object like gas particles filling an empty vessel. Eventually, the osmosis came to a halt and the whole cube shined with lights, though the crystal atop it still seemed to hold many times more than the amount filling the much larger metal block.

Now that Blake knew what happened with a crystal and the normal Variant A, he moved on to Variant B. First, he converted part of the metal touching one end of the crystal into Variant B. The area immediately began to shine as motes of light entered the reformed material at a concentration far above that of the surrounding Variant A.

Next, Blake extended the Variant B, creating a tube the thickness of a drinking straw into the center of the metal mass. The lights followed, filling in the altered metal with both a speed and a density more than ten times higher than seen in the initial test. Once the lights reached the end of the path, the flow ceased and the lights came to a halt. All lined up and bunched together, they reminded Blake of cars in a traffic jam. Interestingly, though Variant A surrounded the stream of lights and had far fewer light particles per square inch, all the lights remained in the Variant B pathway.

Following that, Blake looped the path back up around to the other prong, connecting it at last to the opposite end of the crystal. As Blake had hoped, instead of stopping when they hit the end of the line, the lights flowed back into the crystal, the circuit complete. Giddily, Blake studied the circuit, watching the lights move from the crystal, through the entire loop, back into the crystal, and out again.

What determined the direction of the flow? It was currently flowing in the same direction as he’d created the pathway in the first place. Curious, he flipped the crystal around so the contacts touched the opposite ends as before. The lights resumed their flow in the same direction. Interesting.

Still, as much as he wanted to study that, he decided to look into it more at a later time instead. His time now was limited, and there remained something more pressing to look into, something that stood as the biggest reason he wasn’t already jumping for joy. As nice as his accomplishments were in a vacuum, they still paled in comparison to what he’d witnessed in the bunker. The circuits there had been far, far smaller, and yet the density and flow speed of the lights had been far, far greater than what he had in front of him right now. To prove the point to himself, he created a tiny circuit reminiscent of what he remembered, and, as expected, it couldn’t hold a candle to his memory. He felt he was on the right track; he just needed to keep going.

And so, keep going he did. Delving back down to the molecular level, he lost track of time as he searched for and found more structural variations. His head felt like it was being pounded with a sledgehammer by the time he was finished, but in the end, he’d managed to discover Variants C through G and tested each of them thoroughly. Of them, Variant E—a hexagonal structure—turned out to best approximate what he recalled from the bunker. The tiny Variant E test strings winding through the metal block shined with a brilliance far exceeding the others as tightly-packed lights rushed through the winding maze he’d created within the cube. So many of the motes surged through these paths now that the crystal’s luminescence up top had finally begun to noticeably wane, the sea of lights within no longer so tightly packed.

Blake added more and more paths, recreating some of the transistor setups he’d witnessed days ago, until the inside of the cube looked like a confused scribble. He delighted in it all... until he noticed that the total quantity of lights seemed to be decreasing—not just in the crystal as before, but in the circuitry as a whole. Indeed, as time went on, the crystal and pathways began to grow darker and darker until barely a light remained and, to his surprise, Hyper Mode cut off. It seemed that these crystals were exhaustible resources... and he’d used up his only one.

Reality finally harshing his vibe, Blake removed the inert crystal. Sometimes, when life told you that it was time to stop, you needed to listen—a lesson he’d learned the hard way in his twenties. Thoroughly exhausted, he laid down and fell into a deep slumber.

Blake had planned to spend his day as he’d spent the last few, but that had changed. The crystal had refilled while he’d slept. It seemed that it worked like a rechargeable battery, except it didn’t need to be manually charged. Perhaps it was always recharging? His curiosity got the better of him, and he began to experiment once more.

It wasn’t until the moons hung high in the sky the next night when Blake Myers finally settled down to rest. He’d been up for hours and hours, but he found himself far too excited to sleep. Instead of running, he had gotten caught up in the spirit of scientific inquiry and spent the entire day and much of the night experimenting and creating, each new exciting discovery pushing him to keep going. The possibilities swarmed like locusts in his mind, voraciously consuming all other thoughts. This technology had such incredible potential!

He’d already known of the applications for electronics-like devices—he’d seen the arrays of transistor-like pathways, and though he hadn’t found anything resembling storage or memory, he was sure those existed in the bunker devices as well. But it was the potential for mechanical devices that refused to let him sleep, and boy, oh boy, was there potential out the wazoo!

The first realization had come by accident around mid-morning. He’d been playing around with his metal cube and crystal setup, forming parts of it into various shapes and seeing if anything happened while he waited for the crystal’s charge to run out, when he’d grown thirsty. After drinking his fill, he’d gone to set down the water jug nearby but, due to some combination of a worn-out body and a lack of attention, he’d fumbled the release and tipped the jug over. It had rolled towards the test cube, the neck of the bottle falling inside one of the many circular protrusions jutting out from the box, and... reversed its spin.

It turned out that running the crystal energy through exposed Variants produced a magnetic field-like effect. If he looped a channel around the inside of a pipe and inserted a separate metal rod inside the pipe, running energy through the channel would cause the rod to levitate into the center of the pipe and begin to spin rapidly. He’d discovered a way to create a rotational energy generator that could recharge automatically! Motors powered by free energy! What’s more, if he altered the path of the channel and the energy flow, he could create lateral momentum as well. This opened up so many options!

The second, equally important discovery came as he tried to construct his first functioning test motors. He’d been experimenting with incorporating ball bearings into the mix, and—more on a whim than anything else—he’d converted one of the balls into Variant E. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he hadn’t expected energy to transfer from the coil into the bearing! It seemed that if two separate pathways came into contact, then energy could be shared between them. That meant it was possible, if properly designed, for him to create devices made of multiple interconnected pieces and power it all with one source!

He could create so many things with this—cars, airplanes, and god knew what else! All he needed were more of these crystals and this metal and he could change the entire world while ensuring his protection at the same time. Who would mess with him if he had an army of drones at his beck and call?

It sounded like a pipe dream, but Blake believed that, given enough time, effort, and resources, he could create some amazing things. This was far more than baseless conjecture on his part. He had proof of the possibilities this technology allowed attached to the stump of his left arm.

Lifting his left arm stump up for what had to be the hundredth time that night, Blake again lovingly observed the mechanical prosthetic arm he’d built. Already the ninth iteration of the design, he’d used the project as a way of expanding and refining his use of the day’s various technical discoveries while simultaneously building something he desperately needed.

With a few mental commands, four metal fingers and a metal thumb curled inward until their tips touched a metal palm, then straightened out once more. He was still getting used to his new prosthetic arm—or “Lefty Mk Nine”, as he called it in his head. His control remained highly rudimentary and clumsy. That would improve as he got more practice and continued to iterate on the design. The fact that he’d improved it so much in just a day while still having so much more he could upgrade stood as a testament to the viability of the wild visions dancing in his head.

The general design for the first iteration—aka “Lefty Mk One”—had consisted of a cup that fit around the end of his stump, connected to an elbow joint, a forearm, and a simple wrist and hand. The hand mechanisms themselves had been very crude in comparison to the final iteration. None of the fingers could move individually, nor could individual knuckles bend. It had been controlled by flexing his stump and hadn’t stayed on his arm well at all.

Over the course of half a day—nearly a subjective year in Hyper Mode’s time-dilation—Blake Myers had iterated on his new arm, each new revision upgrading its capabilities and complexity. He would work on the design for an hour or more, then pop out of Hyper Mode for a minute to reconfigure his arm to the new version and run some tests, then reenter his altered state of mind to begin the next round of improvements. Only once he’d noticed the lack of sunlight had he decided to stop for the time being.

The Lefty Mk Nine bore little resemblance to his original endeavor. First, it featured an array of metal chain straps that wrapped around his shoulder, neck, and remaining half an arm to help hold the metal hand in place—and what a hand it was. Each part could move as realistically as an arm made of flesh and bone, every joint now fully independent and capable of incredible precision and delicateness while still being capable of strong gripping power if needed. Elaborate lattices of microscopic crystal channels ran through the interior of the metal, guiding energy around the arm and utilizing an extraordinarily complex series of transistors to control the energy distribution across each tiny joint motor.

All of this new fidelity required a control system better than “squeeze arm to clench fist”, and so much of the day had gone into designing and testing better interfaces. He’d tried more complicated designs with multiple bands around his real arm but found that they just couldn’t provide enough control. He’d tested multiple other physical interfaces, but they each had their own issues and none had provided the level of precise control that he desired. He'd even gone so far as to consider a design that would connect the metal arm to his body through a series of long, thin wires that he’d have to stab directly into his stump, before deciding that the entire idea was stupid and would probably only give him some sort of metal poisoning.

Finally, with the Mk Nine, he’d come up with a solution that satisfied him. Instead of using his physical body to control the arm, why not use his powers instead? Buried deep in the center of the contraption, he’d created a tiny sphere of liquefied metal encased in a small chamber covered in thousands of incredibly tiny pressure plates. Using his abilities, Blake could manipulate the shape of the liquid metal to apply minute pressure to various plates, triggering the behavior that he desired. It would definitely take some getting used to, but it granted him the fine level of control he desired.

Blake watched the metallic fingers writhing at his beck and call and fought back tears, feeling one step closer to being whole again. He gave a metal middle finger to the world that had mistreated him so and rolled over to get some much-needed sleep. He was out like a light before he even finished laying down.