Chapter 1 - Test Run

Gabriel stepped into the training room for the last run of this testing stage. Each progressive battle against the training robots had become harder than the last. They’d run through many scenarios, as was customary, from multiple attackers to a combination of power levels. The final tests were always the toughest.

His latest gadget was a device that was capable of creating antimatter using controlled electrical fields. It was powerful enough to disintegrate an old-world Abrams tank in a full-powered blast. Pound for pound, this was the most potent weapon on the face of the Earth. It would help humanity fight off the Mechablitz threat. Not that he would be involved with that.

The weapon strapped to his arm was a simple wrist-mounted cannon - controlled via Neural Link and the special glasses he wore - that attached to his anti-gravity generator through his power armor. If his ensemble could even classify as power armor at that point. His suit was still nothing more than a frame with his weaponry and power source mounted on it.

It afforded no more protection to him than his enhanced physiology. Known more specifically as a Class 3 Strength and Speed mutation with Class 3 Regeneration. Not that those numbers were anything to scoff at, but running into something, or someone that could paste him was always a possibility.

For now, his antimatter - or AM - Cannon capped out at three blasts per hour of whatever antimatter construct he could create using the prototype settings on the devices. The heat generated was still too much for the advanced heat sinks he had originally developed for his flight generator. Right now it strained just keeping him airborne while firing. He was afraid to fry the system trying to push his luck.

He knew he would have to redesign the coolant system, but now was not the time to start another project, it would have to wait. Just like the armor and diamond fiber “muscles” he had already 3D-printed for his exo-suit.

He was not defenseless without his AM Cannon, luck would have it. He had at his waist, electromagnetically fused to his armor, a black metallic object that, when powered up, would channel AM waves along its length to create what he lovingly called a lightsaber.

It was more aptly named the AM Scissor.

Anything that came into contact with this form of energy was atomized; the covalent and ionic bonds holding its structure severed. It could cut through almost anything. His blasts worked similarly, but the extra energy utilized in maintaining the constructs slightly weakened the atomizing effect.

He couldn’t exactly just evaporate an entire building or a Blitz Attack Craft, for instance.

Gabe stood in a stark white, cubic room around the size of a full city block. There was no furniture in this room. It was remodeled specifically for training purposes. Everything was monitored by camera for the safety of the lab techs. It would take a Class 6 like Quantum to destroy this room quickly, but that didn’t mean Gabriel’s antimatter couldn’t punch a gaping hole in any of the thick surfaces.

Across from him stood a featureless grey robot, identical to all the others they had tested him against. This one was supposed to be the strongest he had ever faced.

The training mechs had settings to allow them to emulate up to the basic Class 3 abilities. They also carried advanced armaments. Iodine created them from notes Gabe completed in the days before he began his silent resistance.

Unbeknownst to the Human Republic - the coalition formed by the democratic nations of Europe, the Americas, parts of Australasia, and Africa after the Gene Corruption - Iodine Inc. had been supplying their enemies, the Ruchin Coalition, with weapons and robots like these to fight the alien invasion for them.

This was how the Ruchin avoided the casualty rates of the rest of the globe.

It was one of their closest guarded secrets, both the Ruchin’s and Iodine’s, but it didn’t mean that Gabe had had any trouble finding this information exploring the Company’s networks. It was this discovery that made Gabriel resist the scientists.

This particular model standing across from him was set to Class 3. Possessing strength, speed, simulated pain response, as well as a Heavy Plasma Lance. At Class 3, its reflexes were quick enough to dodge bullets. It had a ballistic shield mounted on its left arm.

“Initiate test run,” said a voice from the speakers high on the walls.

The bot’s eyes flashed blue and then turned red, showing that it had powered up and that Gabe had 10 seconds to prepare himself. He activated the generator attached to his back to 20% and lifted a few inches off the ground.

The six circles on the device started glowed a deep purple, brightening as the soft whine of the machine rose. His glasses’ heads-up-display or HUD showed all systems green.

The jetpack-looking antigravity generator used a small energy pack to start up, and then a complex system of weights that would use the lack of gravity to produce power through perpetual motion. It could - theoretically - run forever.

Gabe channeled that electrical power through his suit. In that way, his armor was a sort of battery, though to do anything big he’d need to channel a lot more power. He snapped out of his musing and focussed on the impending fight.

He removed his AM Scissor from his hip and it began to hum as his thick gloves made contact with its surface. Black antimatter coated its length like a viscous oil of a black so deep it looked purple. What looked like tiny bubbles floated away from the main body of the saber, dissipating centimeters from its surface.

With that, Gabriel set his shoulders and raised his guard. After an instant, the robot seemed to twitch, firing its Plasma Lance.

Gabe had been ready but was sorely disappointed with his performance. The mech’s speed made him look drunk in comparison. Its aim wasn’t bad either, more like spot on.

Gabe reacted by pure instinct and jumped left. An orange, superheated rod of plasma dissipating in the corner of his vision where his head had been a split-second earlier.

He regretted not putting the armor and muscles on his suit at 2 in the morning.

He raised his generator to 70% and angled towards the “Training” robot in what had now become a last-ditch attempt at survival. He needed to get into close range. The aiming algorithms on the Bot would punch him full of holes if he ran at it, so he needed to do something swift… and unwise.

He dropped his AM Scissor and it magnetized to his hip as the generator on his back heated quickly, propelling him through the sound barrier and into the robot. The impact jarred his senses quite unpleasantly and left an aching pain in his right shoulder.

The Training Bot had time to turn and reach for him before he hit its chest plate, caving it a few inches inwards and pushing the machine along ten meters. The mech swiveled almost immediately afterward, knocking itself free from Gabriel’s bear hug and aiming its Plasma Lance at his head, point-blank.

He could smell the heat.

Gabe fought the urge to panic and flared his engines diagonally to aid his strength in thrusting his right hand into the robot’s arm, overloading the robot’s servos. He jammed the limb upwards, both to get it away from his skull and to free up space for the saber stab that followed.

His blade passed through his opponent’s armor like a hand through the wind, but what he struck was the shield. The robot had managed to block.

The Super sliced upwards and increased the G’s, flinging himself away to dodge the almost invisible counter kick that sought out his midsection.

As he disengaged, he flared his generator once more. This time to attempt to end this confrontation for good. He dropped to the ground and felt the heat on his back as 100% of his generator’s power was directed to his AM Cannon.

He was panicking at that point, so he discharged a burst from his Cannon rather than a more focused form of energy.

The dark, goo-like force shot towards the robot and struck its shield. The cheat still had time to raise its arm even now, it seemed. It didn’t matter, the arm still disappeared.

More accurately it seemed to evaporate. 2 shots left.

Down its shield and much of its defensive arm, the robot burst into motion, barreling towards Gabe. Without its pre-programmed weight, it overbalanced at such a high speed and fell to the floor. Sparks flew as it scraped along the ground with a screech.

Gabriel wasted no time and jettisoned forward, aiming a powerful stomp at the Training Bot’s head before it could recalibrate its sensors, but wasn’t fast enough to beat the software. He got swatted out of the air like a fly.

It was the first time his attacker had managed to land a blow on him, but Gabe’s enhanced ribs cracked just the same. His left side flaring in pain, he gritted his teeth and directed his momentum into a one-handed somersault that left him facing the machine from a few meters to its side.

He didn’t give himself time to register the pain of his body and, instead, launched another immediate assault. Generator to 80% he shot around the mech’s back, his saber drawn and aimed at its legs.

His eyes focused on his target, he knew that he had been kicked at a speed he could barely register, the robot’s limb extending backward in a horse-kick. The pain was excruciating, and this time his ribs did more than crack.

The next thing he knew, Gabe was embedded half a meter into the training room’s reinforced walls.

His sternum was broken, he knew that to be a fact from the way it shifted as he extracted himself screaming from the supposedly impenetrable surface. A few vertebrae might have also been damaged.

As his healing kicked in he saw the mech start sprinting towards him, the small rational part of his awareness that was left realized that something was wrong, and it wasn’t just his body, however much it begged and pleaded to be allowed to lay down and sleep.

The training robot should not have been able to throw anything hard enough to make a dent in the walls, let alone kick him into a fresh crater.

Its strength Class must measure closer to 4 than 3, if not mid Class 4, and the speed it was running at him defied even that estimation. That wasn't right - he had been briefed that the training bots limitation was Class 3 when they started using them the year prior.

Had they advanced in Class and not informed him when his life was on the line!? At that moment that didn’t matter, just another complaint on a list. He had to get out of this first.

His eyes glanced at his HUD and he noted that his generator had taken damage. Its output potential was down to 70%, maybe too little to outpace the thing crossing the expanse of the training room.

His mind - his only real advantage now - raced.

The fact that the metal beast was running at him implied that its Plasma Lance either didn’t have the range to reach him or that it had been damaged at some point in their fight.

Both options weren’t good. It wouldn’t be long until it beat him into red gravy or got in range to snipe him through the hippocampus.

Knowing he had to act, he did the only thing he could think of. He would use his AM Cannon. Firing a construct at 70% was dangerous, the containment field holding the antimatter in place would be weak. He risked losing control of the energy and potentially killing himself, but he had no other choice.

He had a bit of time, he hoped, so he picked out a construct from the small list on his goggles, Mimicking the shape of the machine’s Lance.

He was ready. Breathing deep, he moved his left hand towards the incoming machine, took aim, and brought forth his desperation in one final attack.

Plasma Lance weaponry fired giant rods of superheated metal, only instead of metal, it was superheated plasma. Much hotter, much more sticky. Imagine boiling acid combined with napalm. Gabriel’s AM Lance did pretty much the same thing.

The thin rod of antimatter speared the bot in place, punching a hole through it.

Its armor held for an instant, as the robot’s armor struck the extending rod of energy before accepting its molecular death and letting it pass through the rest of its center torso.

The lance dissipated and the robot fell in a heap, a silent husk of its former self. The armor and components struck by the AM construct gone as if taken out with photo-editing. The only evidence was a slight smoldering around the edges of the hole.

The fight was over.

Gabriel sighed inwardly, remembering this was just a test run.