Clock and Circuit

  NIKA

  Sometimes, I worry. That’s until I remember I’m literally the best. My middle finger slides into the hole of the disc on my right, a snug, comfortable fit. I hold it out in front of me and an emblem of a clock fades into existence.

  When I turn the disc, the spectral hands on the clock outline start moving with the disc. It takes a bit of torque to turn the discs at first, as expected given that I am actively violating the natural order of the fourth dimension.

  I loved using Ego.

  My focus shifted to where I felt the most heat from. The same wall Aushen and friends had come from was now billowing with flames. I could just make out soldiers beginning to breach the room.

  I began to feel a slight sense of concern about the impending wave of conceptual arson heading toward us. My sights land on Aushen, whose feet have barely left the ground, and I pull his hand and aim it at the wall of fire. As soon as I touch him, his time syncs with mine and he stumbles along the ground.

  “You’ve got to stop doing that, you’re going to give me whiplash one day,” he complained.

  I ignore him, “Ice. Now.”

  His fingers splay out and a sheet of sparkling white hits the wall of fire and fills the room with glittering mist.

  I rush forward, leaving Aushen in the past, straight into the oncoming fire. Bullets speed towards me in slow motion and I equipped Alt and got to cutting them straight out of the air. My priority was closing the distance between me and the soldiers.

  I flung Alt at the soldier carrying a tactical grenade launcher and watched with gruesome focus as it sliced his head clean off. It never gets old watching people's appendages fall from their bodies in slow motion. It does, however, get old watching Aushen be sick every time I draw too much blood.

  After having eliminated the source of the explosions, I made my way back to the others, the time disc flew back to my hand, and I hooked it back to the side of my belt. I let my time return to normal and return my other disc to its respective clip on my trousers and snatch up my prototype railgun. Aushen was more or less where I left him, Fadabiea, Blu, and Aerix slid to a stop by his side.

  “You guys have fun with that, I’ll watch,” Aushen said uneasily.

  “Not a chance. Didn’t you kill someone earlier? You were trying to save my life without the knowledge that my skin was impervious to bullets. What if I didn’t have bullet proof skin? What if you decided to hold back?” Aerix said accusingly.

  I looked at Aushen, demanding an explanation for this unheard-of occurrence. But before he had a chance to elaborate, a really sick idea illuminated my mind.

  “Fine then, I’ll pick up your slack then.”

  I caught Ego and sped up my time once more, I ran back towards the line of soldiers and slowed down enough for them to spot me. When they opened fire again, I turned the time up for a third count and positioned my left arm so a bullet would just graze it. I didn’t so much as glance at the aftermath of the wound before flinging myself in the direction of my allies and returning the flow of time to normal.

  I let myself slide past Aushen in a somewhat helpless manner, and he, Fadabiea, and Aerix rushed to my aid.

  Blu eyed me for a moment, then nodded in understanding. Smart boy, he was.

  Though you didn’t need to be too smart to recognize my bloody brilliance.

  When Aushen got to me, he dropped to his knees, shock prominent on his face. He’d never seen me hit by a bullet before, despite the little time he’d been in this reality, he clearly had a concern for my safety. (I love being one of Eternium’s chaps.)

  “I’m not an idiot,” he told me. “But I’ll help as long as you don’t intentionally take hits again.”

  I watched triumphantly as he sprayed ice along the floor and the scraping sound of skates on ice began to recede towards the gaping hole in the wall. I sat up and brushed off Aerix and Fadabiea and watched as the wound healed itself within seconds.

  I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a scion of Eternium with a proper kickass perk like that?

  I caught sight of Aushen extending his staff that I designed for him. One created for quick modifications and via making various blades of ice around it. Up until now, I’d only seen him use it bare. Not now though, he summoned ice near one end of the staff until he had a massive one-sided battle axe with a blade of hardened frost, Aerix and Fadabiea inhaled sharply in surprise as he brought it down on an operative.

  Scratch that. Who wouldn’t want to be ME!?

  A smile pulled at my face, as I stood to go join him in combat. My reserve of Concept Energy for time control was roughly at its limit for the moment, so I reached for my railgun slung across my back and switched it to AR mode. The black paneling slid and clicked as it repositioned itself accordingly, the purple lighting pulsed underneath it. The LED interface on it flashed to read the number of charges in it and the current mode of function.

  Blu stepped to my side and drew a gun from his side and aiming down the sight.

  “Do you know how to use that?” I asked skeptically.

  “No way. You?”

  “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we, then Bluey.”

  “Nit.”

  “Twat,” I cooed cheerfully.

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  He vanished into darkness, appearing amid the battle. I moved to the edge of the hole and positioned myself for a clear shot as Fadabiea and Aerix ran past me, leaping calmly into the mosh pit of blood, death, and overall good times. Fadabiea’s scythe molded into her hands, compiled of ivory, vines, and bark, and she drove it through a man holding a mace.

  I’d always wondered why the soldiers didn’t all carry firearms, but it hadn’t occurred to me that they might be a limited resource on Index Two. Aerix had a huge sword that I hadn’t seen them enter the room with and was slamming it into the various soldiers, knocking them aside, rather than cutting through them. I took this as an opportunity, and aimed at one of the unbalanced shooters, I slowed my breathing, closed one eye, and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  The safety.

  “Focken hell.”

  I remedied my problem and tried again, the gun fired this time, with limited recoil but immense damage as the magnetic round blew a hole clean through the man’s chest, disregarding his armored vest. I had to be careful not to shoot through an enemy and take out someone who didn’t happen to be Blu. It’d be a shame if I hit one of my new friends that wasn’t Blu. I actually think I’m going to shoot Blu. After switching my weapon to automatic and jumping through the shattered wall, gunning down soldiers became marginally more efficient.

  I didn’t shoot Blu in the end, unfortunately.

  We did, however, as a group, end up slaughtering about thirty soldiers. Six of them were by Aushen’s grudging hand, I looked excitedly as he twisted his staff, and the ice at the end shattered and the spearhead he made mid-battle fell away in depleted clumps of snow. I ran up to him and rammed his shoulder with my own, “Not so bad was it?” I teased loudly.

  Blu was grinning that shark’s grin of his as he formed a holster around his left thigh for a second gun he scavenged from one of the many available corpses.

  Fadabiea and Aerix looked at us with a touch of concern.

  I let Aushen be after much begging and pleading, and mild amounts of threatening. He then proceeded to look around at the corpses littering the ground, puke, and then slip on the blood pooling on the floor. I caught him in time and hauled him back to his feet to avoid getting a copious amount of blood on him.

  “We should most definitely get out of here now,” Fadabiea intoned.

  “Okay but first, I had a project I was- “

  Blu cut me off and glared at me, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly sure it was one of your projects that distracted us from leaving the first time.”

  Fadabiea stepped in front of him and spoke calmly, “While that may be true, it’s worth getting any advantage we can. So, let’s hear it, Nika.”

  “Do you lot have mobiles?”

  No response. Just blinking and staring.

  “Phones? The little gadgets for having a chat!” I made a phone sign with my hand.

  Fadabiea and Blu nodded, Aerix shuffled back and forth, awkwardly.

  “Fine,” I huffed decidedly. “Aerix, take this spare I built from scratch.”

  “Cell phones don’t work down here,” Blu pointed out as I passed a phone to Aerix.

  “Actually, they do if they’re on a closed network. That’s how the com units work. Nika has the us on a two-way network, but we can’t call anyone else, or reach each other on different levels,” Aushen droned on, pedantically.

  “Ack-shually,” Fadabiea mocked in a nasally voice.

  I ignored her and turned back to Aerix. “Do any of the crystals you summon have good frequency interference?”

  “I know of some that I found beneath bedrock, so there aren’t any actual names for it,” Aerix pulled a matte-yellowish rock from their satchel and tossed it my way.

  Deep thought ignited my mind, as a plan began to formulate in my head. “Do you know the hardness of this?”

  “I think it’s seventeen-point-two,” Aerix relayed to me. “A standard diamond cutter won’t be enough to work with it.”

  A black circular saw blade then flung into the wall in front of me, I jumped in surprise and nearly dropped the rock Aerix gave me. I turned and looked at Blu, who was holding out his fist and looking down at the length of his arm, an empty mark on his sleeve was being replaced by another black plus sign, covering the blue underneath it.

  “Try that,” he said smugly. “I don’t know the hardness of shadow steel, but it’s blocked everything that’s tried to cut or destroy it so far.”

  I stepped over to my workbench, and the others followed me back into the room. I affixed the new blade to the buzzsaw and turned it on. “This should do,” I lifted Ego and turned to the others.

  Fadabiea crossed her arms, “about how long will this take, whatever it is that you’re doing.”

  “What a silly question, I’ll see you lot in about five minutes give or take,” I sped up time around my workbench and got to work. It was an arduous process, making small chips out of the rock, to allow the phones to function on an open network, without satellites or being affected by the interference that permeates The New Labyrinth. In about thirty minutes I had enough chips for all of us with some to spare.

  I spun around and smiled at the echoes, holding up the product of my superior intelligence. I faltered almost immediately when I realised I had forgotten to level out my time. Feeling significantly less intelligent than initially, I returned time to its normal flow and tried for another winning smile.

  “That was six minutes, I think,” said Blu disinterestedly.

  I threw a wrench at him.

  The blade of the buzzsaw flew back to the Echo of Doom and Gloom. Only he had appeared in a shadow, out of the way of the wrench.

  Everyone received their phone upgrades and tried them out after replacing the SIM cards. We all exchanged numbers, and those of us who had each other’s numbers had to re-exchange a second time. Aushen immediately sent a picture of a cat with its face in a jar in the group chat we had made. Sablune and Fadabiea were shaking their heads in his direction.

  “Are we good to leave now?” Aerix asked me, wrapping their arms around Fadabiea, who stiffened slightly. Though Aerix didn’t seem to notice, their gaze was fixed on my face, awaiting my answer.

  I grabbed my backpack containing portable tools and a mobile workbench, “Right. We can get a move on now, yeah? Unless anyone else has reason to stay.”

  “Thought I’d do some sightseeing,” muttered Sablune.

  “Oi, piss off, will you?”

  I flipped a lever underneath my workbench, causing it to slide away and collapse, revealing a passageway.

  Fadabiea clicked her tongue. “Just can’t stay away from the cliché, can you two?”

  “Who asked you?” Sablune shot, sneering at Fadabiea.

  “Can I ask that you perish?” She responded smoothly.

  Aerix pushed the two of them down the chute, who then jumped in after them followed by protests and swearing echoing from below. Aushen checked his phone and snorted, showing me the simultaneous messages that the assaulted duo had sent.

  Sablune [Kill yourself.]

  Fadabiea [Kill yourself.]

  Followed by a message from Aerix.

  Aerix [Nah.]

  I smiled and grabbed Aushen’s arm, then flung him down after the others, following shortly afterward.

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