Ivey stirred on his chest, and he could not help but give him a reassuring squeeze. She cuddled tighter.

The tiny grain returned to its spot next to the core. Could he activate it directly?

First, he decided he needed to understand how the non-integral bits of the core functioned. He activated speed while keeping himself completely still in order not to not wake Ivey. There were no visual clues, but her breathing slowed noticeably. He examined his core and the pattern of energy when the ability was triggered.

Time and time again, he turned on the speed, fascinated by the process and the fact that each time he did so, its configuration shifted marginally, becoming ever so slightly more tailored to his body. If he was not looking for it, they would have gone unnoticed. Daniel understood the changes would not have been large enough to be picked up in scientific tests, if they were available to be run, but he knew it was there and the benefit would be more if he was moving while activating the skill. It was good to know that micro triggers could be used to tailor the alien core to his body. It meant that while he was busy surviving, he could go about improving his skills. A few fractions of a second every couple of minutes would still leave him ready for combat at any moment while also tailoring the power to himself.

That was great to know, but the important thing that he learnt was that his main core activated first, and that drove the zombie addon. His brain did not interact with the alien core directly.

With that nugget of information, he switched focus back to the tiny grain that hopefully contained the knowledge of how to unlock his beast whisperer skills.

The drill broke through below. The way he dug meant that it was done soundlessly. Daniel focused briefly on growing the hole. He wanted to use his power effectively on the next floor, which meant the conduit had to be wide enough to let his magic flow through it. Which was about the width of a quarter. Then once it was widened, he would start exploring.

Energy flashed from his core into the dead interface fragment.

Different combinations. Hundreds of them and Daniel’s frustration steadily increased. Nothing was working. It was possible he had destroyed it. The girl in his arm stirred, and he felt like kicking himself. Ivey would not be pleased when she found out. He really should have waited to consult her before diving straight in. His impatience might end up costing him.

No, he refused to believe that. He could get this working. There was just a step he was missing. He was sure of that.

Daniel reverted to slowing time once more and doing additional tests with the speed ability. Once, twice and then ten times, getting a feel for the process.

The steps felt identical to what he had been attempting all along with the grain. If that was the case, he might as well abandon the attempt. Yet even as a kid, he had never been the type to give up. Apparently, when learning the monkey bars, he had to be banned after opening up cuts in his hand. So despite how ridiculous it seemed, he attempted the interaction again.

Duplicating exactly what he did when engaging speed, he focused on the interface grain instead.

The tiny grain sparked. Barely. He hesitated, second-guessing himself. Maybe he had just seen what he wanted to see.

He tried once more, creating the same waves of energy that the speed method used.

The interface piece glowed.

Success!

Relief ran through his body. He was not a screwup. He had done it. The initial release of tension was replaced with mounting energy. If it was not the middle night, he definitely would have jumped up and down in excitement. For the life of him, he did not know why the connection was working now when it had failed previously. Yes, he had observed the speed engagement repeatedly and tried to mimic it, but it had felt like he was doing the same thing as before, but apparently those repeated observations had altered what he was doing in some tiny, minute way that he could not perceive.

It did not matter. It was working.

He smiled like a manic to himself.

Daniel tried again with less power. Another successful connection. It was repeatable. That was part of the scientific method. He wondered if magic was scientific or whether it changed depending on random chance, something to ask Ivey if he remembered.

There was so much unknown about this world he found himself in. It did not help that everyone else seemed to have an encyclopedia of information, and he had nothing.

Again, and this time he noted the connections. The transfer of power had more stutters than when doing speed. That meant while he had made progress, he was not there yet.

Daniel’s mental alarm triggered as the conditions of the drill completion occurred.

While he wanted to keep exploring the Animal Sense ability, it made no sense to abandon his contingency solution, which was spying using the roots he was creating.

Mentally, he examined the hole through the floor he had just drilled. Briefly, Daniel stepped back from what he was doing. It was scary how quickly his brain had adapted to magic. If he thought too much about it, then he would be terrified. The hole was two centimetres wide and went straight down through twenty centimetres of concrete with a slight deviation half way to avoid the reinforced metal that apparently criss-crossed the slab. With a burst of his power, the tendrils popped out of the hole and spread out, physically feeling out the environment and mapping exactly what was happening with the imprecise vibration or sonar vision that sensing through wood seemed to give him.

Then his eyes snapped open, and he looked at the roof above him.

Idiot. How naïve was he? Daniel wondered to himself privately. There was an entire crawl space above the ceiling tiles. It was filled with metal supports and aluminium encased bags that were there for central heating, plus a ridiculous number of cables. There was no space for a human, but for roots or insects, it was like a highway. Better still, exploring via the roof was something that the zombies would not be aware of.

He carried out a quick experiment, and it took him half a minute to grow two one-meter lengths of root. He did the maths. That was two hundred meters of root per hour. That was three hours, give or take, to map the floor. By morning, he could have a spy in every room of their floor and the one below him.

This would have been great to have figured out ten hours ago. He was sure it would have helped protect him. Anthony, for one, would still be alive if they had known there was a human in there. Then the traps would never have been deployed.

Fark it. He cursed himself inside, wanting to scream. He did not know, addressing the words toward Anthony’s ghost. Anger to tears. He had not known about the ability at the time. Sorry. As much as he liked to pretend otherwise, he was not perfect. All he could do was his best. It sounded like tripe motivational crap in his head, but it was true. No, he would do better than that going forward. Smarter, not harder; that was his motto and working out what his magic could do was part of the process. At least he could make progress exploring tonight, and in the morning, they would be ready.

The tendrils started growing. He discovered he could almost program what needed to happen. Spread them through the roof space and stop if they ran into animals. Caution was the better part of valour. He did not want to enrage anything dangerous before he was prepared to kill it, and remotely controlling a vine into a monster was a way to do that.

Everything was a gamble. Not finding out more was crazy, but accidentally poking the metaphorical yeti would remain fatal. He needed to keep reminding himself for that or else Ivey’s impatience would rub off on him and he would do something reckless. Maybe it already had the experimenting with the interface had been the good damn definition of irresponsibility. It was not a failure yet, but it was definitely an apt warning. It only took one mistake, if it was a bad one.

He kept going, letting the tendrils spread and if they disturbed something, then that monster, no matter how smart, would be unlikely to trace the disturbance back through a two-centimetre hole in reinforced concrete. The downside risks were slight.

With his spreading nature domain in play, Daniel turned his attention back to the Animal Sense spell. Once more, he checked the speed ability and then spent half an hour switching between the two internal energy engagements. It was exhausting, repeating the same thing over and over again. By the end, there had been clear progress. The interface grain was lighting up fully, and the connection was solid, but the spell itself was going nowhere.

Head throbbing, he gave himself a break, let his mind drift into his steadily growing network of influence. He had only grown fifteen meters of roots on each floor. It was a start. The ceiling under them had rats or mice that, for now, thankfully had not attempted to eat his roots, but they were there and given that it was only a matter of time.

Being careful not to use magic, he withdrew his mind and tried to sleep while imagining what he could do to fight off a rat attack on his roots. With his mind flicking from thought to thought, he drifted off.