Mitch felt calm. More so than he had felt in many years, even before this whole affair started. Things seemed clear now: simple. His problems had been boiled down to one thing. He wasn’t strong enough. He wasn’t strong enough to stop the warden from stepping on his throat. He wasn’t strong enough to keep his freedom. He wasn’t strong enough to survive.

The American in him didn’t want to accept Kanshou’s worldview, but over the last few days, he hadn’t been able to get it out of his head. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Strength in the modern world might not be strength in a physical sense, but it was still there. It might be counted in political offices, or dollars, or subscribers, or awards, or college degrees, or super bowl rings, but the truth was, the more strength you had the more people listened to you: the more influence you had. Empires had been built and broken by influence. Power was still the defining element of the world, it had just taken many different forms. Sever one head, two grow in its place.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that equality was a joke. The phrase wasn’t “America was built on equality” it was “America was built on opportunity. Everyone had the chance to become powerful in their own way. The constitution might say that every man was born equal, but that is where it stopped. From then it was the choices you made and the power you accumulated that defined you and your place in the world.

The choice was no longer whether or not he would be a lab rat. That choice had been taken from him. The question was, how would he use the options that remained to him. Was he satisfied just to be the bitch of the faceless powers of the next realm? Not even slightly. But tyrants tend to only respond to one thing: someone or something even more tyrannical. So he had come full circle. To defeat the powerful he needed power. To become powerful, he had to do what these people wanted. Doing what these people wanted might make them stronger as well, which would come very close to defeating the purpose of his gaining strength in the first place.

It may be possible that he would be able to become stronger than them even after they learned his secrets, but it would be much harder. So he had to become stronger while both giving them enough information that they didn’t kill him because his usefulness had ended and also hiding enough that he still had an advantage over them regarding growth. He would also have to hide his own strength while doing all of this.

He wasn’t sure how to do that just yet, but he was sure of one thing. His apartment had outlived its usefulness as a laboratory. He needed to be at least a few miles from any population center if he was going to be playing with megaton level energies. It was time to leave the city.

His last few days had been spent preparing and scouting locations. He had a tent, sleeping bag, generator, power tools, electric fire starter, cooking gear, food for six months, and materials for experimentation. In fact, he had gotten so much stuff he had been forced to buy a nearly broken down box truck to store and transport everything. All in all, he had spent just over twenty grand. His savings had been wiped out, and he had maxed the majority of his credit cards. None of this bothered him much. He needed a different kind of power now than could be accounted for by accountants

While he had been out making his purchases he had noticed that something had changed since Kanshou nearly killed him. People had started treating him differently. They almost jumped when he spoke and were very deferential. Even the world’s most lackadaisical cashier had been respectful on his most recent grocery run. The orange eyes and fiery mist had faded after a few hours, so it wasn’t that. It must be something intangible.

However, there had been very tangible benefits to his episode. His energy finally responded to his will. He still didn’t have a solid explanation for why it worked, but it did. Whatever had changed was on an instinctual level that he couldn’t have taught someone even if he were inclined to do so. He could summon a pale orange misty flame-like thing to his hand at will and if he focused he could shove it away from himself. It didn’t do much but splash against a wall and leave a rather anemic scorch mark, but it was lightyears beyond what he had been capable of before.

On top of that, his reflexes seemed to have improved again, to the point where most of the people around him, while he had been out shopping, had looked to be moving in slight slow motion. It was like what had happened during his fight with Brad, but all the time.

His body had also seen a bit of a transformation. Gone was the last of his remaining pudginess. He now looked like lithe. Not in the anemic way of a runner, more like a middleweight boxer; muscular without being bulky and cut like an anime character.

Externally, the last signs of aging had faded, leaving him looking like he was a particularly robust twenty-something.

He had also managed to access the relay. The warden had said that it would give him information on his strength and abilities, so he had experimented, carefully considering the break-it-and-die warning. If he sent a small amount of energy into it with is newfound control he would get what looked like a HUD in his vision. It had been somewhat disappointing. All it showed was a couple of lines of information that gave him no real idea of what was going on.

Capacitance:

3567

Max Emittance:

43

He didn’t know what those terms meant, which pissed him off a bit, but he would keep his eye on them to see if they became useful.

He ran through his list one last time and determined that he was ready to go. He left his apartment and locked the new door behind him. He went downstairs via the stairwell, jumping each flight of stairs down to the next landing and exited the building through the side door and climbed into his straight truck.

The truck started with more of a wheeze and a rattle than a roar, but he only needed about a hundred miles out of the thing, so he didn’t worry about it. He was heading to an old and abandoned quarry that was twenty miles from the nearest town. There were a few single homesteads in the area, but after all this shit he wasn’t worried about it. If something went wrong, then it was just their bad luck for living where they did.

He pulled out of the lot and headed on his way.

He had chosen his departure time poorly. It took almost three hours to get out of town. He had been more worried about the checkpoints exiting the city than traffic, but the soldiers staffing them had been pretty lax and waved him through after a couple of basic questions.

The hours spent idling meant he had stopped a few miles outside of the city for a refuel and a break. He was currently sitting in the booth of one of those combo gas station and restaurant deals doing his best to enjoy the exceptionally mediocre combo meal in front of him. The news was on TV in the corner, and he had found himself watching it despite himself.

The President had been forced to resign, or was it abdicate? Anyway, his score was beneath the threshold that the military had finally revealed for the “estimated” cutoff of death for the next Tolling. Several congresspeople and one judge from the Supreme Court had been forced to do the same. They were also talking about how, now that the public knew that the Tolling didn’t just kill people randomly, everyone from physicists to pharmacists were researching into ways to save people. A few mystics claimed to have the answer and were starting to build large followings. There had been a few more riots, one of which had been handled so poorly that the colonel in charge of operations had been demoted and reassigned. A few illegal suicide clinics had begun operating for people with low scores who didn’t want to wait until the Tolling.

It was all interesting, but Mitch didn’t really give a shit. He had already written the world off and was only concerned with becoming strong enough to throat fuck the bastards who had started all of this. He hoped some of them had pretty mouths. And long hair; it was always better with some handholds.

Without an ounce of warning, some stranger popped into the seat across from him with a tray, blocking his view.

“What the fuck dude, there are plenty of empty seats, fuck off.”

“Sure there are, but I need to talk to you.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy dickwad. Shove off.”

“Nah, I’m good. This seat’s comfy.”

Mitch fought down the urge to punch this maladjusted dick licker and stood up grabbing his tray.

“Fine, I hope you get ass raped by a retarded clown.”

He turned and started walking away. Assholes weren’t on his hit list, and he didn’t need to call attention to himself at this point.

“So, Mitch, how were you planning to fight those mutants without someone watching your back?”