For the fourth time today, Chris came to on a ripped leather couch, the familiar smell of his home filling his lungs. This time, however, he kept his eyes firmly shut. He had no desire to face what was waiting for him in the living room. Not yet, anyway.

He cast about for his status, taking stock.

Status

Ongoing Effects: Moderate Bruising, Mild Laceration, Mild Blood Loss, Moderate Muscle Fatigue

Shifts: Intelligent Design, Speeded Per. and React. (FD) 9/X (65), Mental Health 10/50, Impact Absorption 30/X (30)

Soulbinds: Collapsible Baton, Sympathetic Speaker

Skills: Self-Control 9(4), Running 7, Endurance 6(2), Boxing 5, Blunt Weapon Fighting 4(4), Pain Tolerance 4(2), Flexibility 3, Meditation 3, Cleaning 3, Multitasking 3, Driving 2, Combat Sense 1(1), Knife Fighting 1, Cooking 1, Dancing 1

Unallocated: 18(+3 Scenario, +13 Skill) points

His breath hitched, and he forced himself back into a steady breathing pattern. 13 skill levels, 51 reward points all told, and all it had cost him was an hour of breaking his friends and neighbors. That, and this awful stiffness in his arms and torso that ached whenever he took a breath. Sarah hadn’t been exaggerating, that was more than his entire previous total.

It seemed he had gained two new skills, Blunt Weapon Fighting and Combat Sense, which tracked given how much he had needed to rely on his weapons and his instincts over the past hour. Self-Control had shot up, and that was likely to do with how he had used his shifts, slipping in and out of a faster timeframe, pushing his focus beyond its limits. The levels in Endurance and Pain Tolerance, he thought as he suppressed a wince at a line of fire carving up his side, were self-explanatory.

How these skill levels functioned was a difficult concept to wrap his head around. Supposedly they were only descriptive, and represented how well he could do specific things, but they did seem to be helping, somehow. With every level in endurance he did seem to bear the strain of effort better, and with every level in self-control his mind was quicker to obey. The levels in pain tolerance especially, which if you had asked Chris a week ago, he would have been loath to recognize as a skill, seemed to be blunting the waves of magma rolling through his body every time he took a breath.

Sarah had said that his procedural memory would no longer decline. Did that mean that if he could do something once, he could do it forever? Were these skills being written into his muscle memory as if etched in stone? Maybe that was the bottleneck that kept humanity from ever truly mastering a skill. Memory is constantly being washed away, a sand castle before the tide of time, and we can build it up faster than it falls, but possibly only up to a point? When you reach a certain level of knowledge, of mastery, is every new thing you learn balanced by losing something old?

Well, he wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. Apparently, whatever Sarah had done to him insulated him from the tide. He had been raised up out of the water.

Hopefully when his friends joined him, that wouldn’t make him feel so alone.

He opened his eyes to the dim light of the kitchen’s fluorescent bulbs, and worked on fighting through his exhaustion to focus his eyes on the ceiling.

“How do you feel?”, a soft voice floated over from his right.

Juliette. “About as good as I look.” Chris groaned out. “How do I look?”

“Like shit.” Nova. Brusque as ever. “Was it worth it?”

He thought for a moment as his eyes finally focused, resolving the pale ceiling. “Yeah, I think so.”

“What happened?” Nova again.

He finally tore his eyes from the ceiling, casting his eyes about the room. The blinds were closed, and Nova and Juliette seemed to be the only ones here. He watched as Juliette rose from her seat and made her way into the bathroom. “Later, please.” He coughed, and winced as agony shot through his chest, then receded. “What time is it?”

“One in the morning.” Nova said, checking the time on her sleek, black laptop, resting in her lap. She was using the time to get work done, apparently. She glanced conspicuously at his lap. “New toys?”

He looked down to find three bulging packages, in the form of slate gray envelopes, arrayed about his legs. He also noticed that his shirt was whole again, only slightly blotted with blood, all of which was wet, and slowly spreading. Sarah had said that he couldn’t bring anything with him, so what clothes had he been wearing? His ticking clock brain began working on the problem, and he forcefully stopped it. Later. He responded to Nova in the affirmative as Juliette tracked back into the room, spare towel and first aid kit in hand.

“Here, up.” She said, helping raise his back off the couch, creating another flare of pain, and putting the towel down behind him. She then helped him shuck off the shirt. Both girls winced at the mass of bruises adorning his torso, and the constellation of cuts, mostly concentrated on his arms. Juliette started cleaning the cuts with a damp rag, to get a better look at them. It took all his self-control to keep still as his arms burned.

“You couldn’t have gotten through without ending up like a crash test dummy?” Nova said, deadpan. “I shouldn’t have to tell you to avoid the other guys weapons.”

Chris chuckled, darkly, and the room seemed to come into sharper focus as some of the exhaustion fled. “I’ll remember that for next time, boss.”

Juliette ceased her ministrations and sat down, heavily, on the couch next to him. “Some of these are going to need stitches.” She turned to look at Nova, resignation in her deep blue eyes. “We need to take him to the hospital.”

“Unless,” said Nova, with a twinge of hope in her voice. “Did you earn enough points for a healing shift?”

Chris, on a hunch, reached for the biggest package in the middle of his lap. He tore it open to reveal a four-inch section of matte black cylinder, seemingly molded to his right hand, and a silver card which read:

Collapsible Baton v1

Dimensions: 3-foot length, 1.5-inch circumference, 7 pounds.

Material: Carbon Polyfiber, reinforced with crystalline carbon lattice.

Durability: Full

To extend, squeeze with each finger starting from the bottom, rolling up, then back down. To collapse, do the reverse.

By default, will deaden the conduction of concussive force back to the user. To increase this conduction, rotate where the barrel of the baton meets the grip clockwise, up to 180 degrees. 180 degrees corresponds to full conduction, 0 degrees corresponds to full deadening.

To view this information via the system and access repair and upgrade functions, reflect on the object’s status while in physical contact.

Soulbound. Repairable. Upgradeable.

He held the cylinder loosely in his right hand, and rolled his grip up and down. The baton responded immediately, flowing like liquid shadow, the grip extending four inches backward and the barrel extending outward, creating a uniform rod of reflective black, interrupted only by a thin band of silver where the grip met the barrel. “I think I already have one.” He said, slowly working himself into a standing position, ignoring the protestations of his bruised and battered body. “Come on, lets go on a field trip.”

The girls followed him outside, Nova intently reading the card, and Juliette spoke with a faint smile on her face. “Of all the weapons, you went with a pipe? No swords for you, huh?”

“It’s based off of how I beat the scenario, where I didn’t have much choice of weaponry.” He said, spinning the baton, testing out how it felt in his grip. Seven pounds didn’t seem like a lot, but it was heavy. Roughly three times as heavy as any baseball bat he’d ever held. He could get some force behind this. “Besides, I kind of like it.” He cranked the barrel forward, and as a silver band appeared, circling the very tip of the cylinder, the whole baton began to resonate. He felt… connected to the thing, humming with the slightest movement, and he could feel the vibrations running up his arm.

It felt like motion, flowing into his veins through his palm, similar to the thrum of heavy bass at a concert. It was the slightest trickle of liquid power, starting to energize his body, eroding away the fatigue in a slow stream just from the jostling of the baton in his hand while he walked.

Yeah, he could work with this.

The trio made it out of the cul de sac and into the brush that surrounded the neighborhood, walking until the light of the streetlamps barely reached them, and they were surrounded by small trees.

Chris faced the biggest one, called his shot, and swung hard, one-handed at the tree.

The rush of power forced him to his knees.

He could feel his whole body vibrating, buzzing with the energy of motion as the shock traveled up his body through his arm. He could tell that he was mistaken earlier, the power wasn’t in his veins, it was in his bones, shaking him to his very core as the vibration was metabolized automatically into energy and health.

The girls watched, dumbfounded, frozen in the act of calling an ambulance as Chris’s edges blurred, fuzzy and indistinct, seemingly shifting out of phase with the world. After only a second, though, he came back into focus, slowly standing from his kneeling position, and they all watched as the ugly purple bruises faded to a pale green, then yellow over less than 20 seconds. They stopped there, as Chris ran out of energy.

“I think I know why this shift wants me to stop at 30 points.” He said, his voice having lost the thick coat of exhaustion, as he experimentally stretched and jumped up and down in place. He then geared up to take another swing, two handed this time. “I need a battery”.

****

Chris filled the two in on his new shift as they walked back to the house, and once inside, Chris ducked into his room and came out wearing an old paint-stained t-shirt. He wasn’t bleeding anymore, but he was still dirty. His body was in top form, it had healed up completely with only a few blows, and he felt like he could run a marathon.

He hadn’t been overwhelmed by any of the strikes beside the first, and could stay on his feet and even continue fighting through them. He found, however, that when the power finished its work, while he could still absorb more, it wouldn’t do anything for him. The power didn’t make him stronger or faster, or more powerful in any appreciable way, and when it was done healing him and restoring his energy, it began fading away, draining like water through a sieve.

When he made it back onto the couch, Nova made him open the other two packages. Their cards read as follows.

Sympathetic Speaker v1

Dimensions: 3x2x1in

Adheres to any metal surface, releases on command. Records music played around it passively.

Responds to vocal commands from soulbound user, resonates metal to conduct music.

Soulbound. Upgradeable.

Dimensional Clip

Dimensions: 2x1x1in

Attuned User: Chris

Attaches to any container or bag, establishes a dimensional pocket inside allowing storage of up to 200kg or 5 square meters. Stored items can be retrieved by an attuned person touching the clip and thinking of the item. Clip can only be removed from its container by an attuned user, and doing so ejects all contents of the pocket. If clip is destroyed, the pocket and all contents are as well.

An attuned user passing the clip to another human attunes the clip to the other human. There may only be one attuned user at a time.

The “speaker” took the form of an unmarked silver rectangle, about the size of a cassette tape. Chris stuck it to the fridge and resolved to start filling it with music the next morning. His roommates were asleep, presumably. Playing music would be inconsiderate.

“Why are you guys still up, by the way?” Chris said, working on opening the last package.

“We’re the second watch.” Juliette explained, examining the baton. “We didn’t know how long you’d be, or what shape you’d be in when you got out.”

Chris looked around, quizzically. “And with two of you it would be easier to get me to the hospital?”

“Or to talk you down.” Nova stared him down. “What did you have to do in there?”

“Are you alright? You… seem okay.” Juliette said.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Chris said leaning back, rolling the clip around in his hand, testing its weight. “It was touch and go for a minute there, but this Mental Health shift has kept me pretty level.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and took a beat before continuing. “It was a zombie apocalypse scenario. Starting here.”

Nova quirked an eyebrow, quick on the uptake. “…Us?”

“Yeah.”

Juliette sucked in air through her teeth. “That’s horrible.”

“It wasn’t fun.” Chris rose from the couch and walked over to the recliner, a small silver clip and its requisite card in each hand. He offered both to the occupant, who was apprehensively watching his every move. “Here, as compensation.”

Nova’s eyebrows shot up, and she stumbled over her words for a moment. “For killing me? You don’t have to…”

“No, I know.” He said, enjoying that he had managed to fluster their unflinching leader. “You’ll get more use out of it than I will.”

Nova stared, wide eyed, and looked to the couch for support. She found none in those laughing blue eyes. Eventually, she deflated, and took the offered items.

“Just try and get hurt less next time, alright?”

“Of course, boss.”