It was a bit after mid-day that Rebecca arrived at the pharmacy, seeing everyone gathered in the chairs and sofas of the waiting area, giving a halfhearted greeting, not sounding really thrilled to be encountering all of us again.
“Come on, I’ll do a last check up on you all and then you can be on your way.” She says, mentioning for Spotlight payback and led to follow her
“Sounds good to me” Spotlight shrugged gain after her to the treatment area
He had been up and well for over an hour already, feeling much better and smirking and joking with the group, his presence wake and well lifts the mood of the entire team, even the still gloomy Spyglass seemed a little less so.
The three that were called followed the doctor to the other room, and I shrugged, meeting spyglass gazes, moving to go as well, not seeing the point of just waiting. She came with me as well.
In the room Rebecca did some standard check us asking them if they felt anything unusual and taking their blood pressure. They reported what we knew already, that there was nothing wrong. Guess she was big on procedure, maybe.
“Now that I saw everyone is well, it’s time for you all to go,” Rebeca said, getting up to see us leave.
It was a little abrupt, but yeah, at this point we were just waiting around.
“Thank you again Rebecca, I’ll see that I don’t show up again.” LED says, everyone getting up and preparing to leave.
Rebeca heaves out an enormous sigh, deflating a bit as she shakes her head “You take care of yourself LED”
“Yeah, I will.” they share a long look, being the last two to get out of the room
Rebeca comes out with us to the front, seeing as we board the cars. LED gives her a final nod that she responds and we part from the encounter, makes me curious about what the story there is but it’s probably a touchy subject, was important enough that she helped us even gaining nothing out of it, the one who most profited was me in the end, something that was kind of trend recently even.
LED was driving again now that he’s all healed and Spotlight insisted on riding shotgun, his place of right as he called it.
I don’t mind, as I intend to catch up on some sleep as we’re moving. It’s the better scenario to test if I’d wake up or realize the tracker on us even asleep.
“So, this morning I could feel the tracker even when not actively concentrating on the matrixes” I tell them. “I’m planning to see now if I can detect it even if I’m asleep.”
“You man, you want to take a nap,” Spotlight jokes, looking back from his seat in the front.
“Yeah basically,” I smile, “wake me up in an hour or two, just to be sure.”
I get comfy and slowly drift off, listening to the sporadic conversation of my team members.
“Hey wake up” Payback shakes me.
“Uh, what going on?” I ask, still a little out of it.
“You told us to wake you up, it’s been more than an hour.” Payback tells me, and I remember the situation.
“Ah, yeah” I feel for my matrix and discover that the tracker did indeed come back, and I didn’t wake up at all. What a bummer.
“The tracker is on us,” I say, already working on dismissing it.
“That’s a shame huh, won’t be able to get a good nap,” Spotlight laughs in fake sympathy.
“Yeah, but that’s just until they give it up.” I hope it’s sooner rather than later.
“We’ll be driving around some other safe locations or just wandering the countryside until then, so it might be a few days.” LED calls from behind the steering wheel.
“I’ll try to disturb any attention coming to us together from the same location. It’s been a while since it connected so there might be more people aware of us.” I tell all of them, “It’ll be hard to pinpoint, but it might help if more of them can’t focus on us.”
I enter the space with the matrixes visualizing all the connections and copy from spotlights matrix the necessary modification so I can use his power more actively again, highlighting invisible threads’ connection to us from all directions. I proceed to snap all of them, leaving only the ones connecting to ourselves to one another.
My energy plummets immediately, as if I kept a complete transformation for hours on end. But it was worth it. Even if I scrambled our allies that happened to be thinking of us, it wouldn’t matter much, as the effect isn’t permanent. Not having pursuers is more important right now.
“I took all the attention off us. It’ll take a while to come back, I think. So, drive us somewhere random.” I say to more to LED but informing everyone as well.
“On it,” LED says
“That really tired me out so I’ll be trying to catch up on sleep then, wake me up again in a couple hours”
“Sure thing sleeping beauty.” Payback says, laughing.
I scoff, settling back to another brief nap while re organizing my matrix the way it was before again.
We had parked at a gas station, refueling and taking a time for everyone to eat and use the bathrooms, even us meta humans needed that after all.
It would be great to collect more powers around the countryside while we travelled around like this, but I don’t really have a method of knowing if people are awakened or not just by looking at them. I still haven’t tried to feel if someone normal has a matrix or not. I guess that they don’t, but maybe they have a lesser version of it?
Anyway, maybe I could try, but just taking the blood of some random person doesn’t sound much ethical. I shouldn’t go putting my interests above other humans just cause now I got powers after all.
That’s not the reason why I desired them so much. I just need to be a little patient, anyway. When I’m back at the base, I can make tests with everyone there. I’m sure victor wouldn’t mind.
“Come on, guys” spotlight urged payback and led coming back from the attached convenience, “we gotta go back to our road trip”
Sure thing, the tracker had continued through the day forming various other tethers; they were still trying to connect to any of us in a seemingly random order, coming again and again even as I snapped them, taking more or less two to three hours in between each time. The army was sure relentless, if anything, but not matter. In a stubborn competition, I’m sure I could win.
It’s the second day that we are travelling randomly to despite the army. The tracking comes much more infrequently now, having appeared just two times during the last day. Seen like he continued tries over the last days and particularly yesterday where they were going at it like crazy has taken its toll, or maybe their sample of blood if losing effectiveness?
We stopped at a cheap roadside hotel for a brief night, planning to go in about five hours so everyone could take a longer nap and stretch their legs.
The good meal was a pleasant welcome too. The exhaustion is catching up to everyone, but I don’t think we’ll need to compete for long. Our pursuers seem to catch up that this is a futile endeavor.
In another note it seems the strain on myself by not really sleeping is finally affecting my body, as one of between one of my various naps the other day I was almost falling asleep and the pounding headache was like it would split my brain, there was no coffee in the road and yesterday they were working the tracker relentlessly, just as I had though falling asleep once more I felt my transformation activate and jumble something in my brain ad I felt all awake again sadly if just passed the next time I sited down to take a nap,
It’s an interesting thing to discover, but it only means that I could go on for a couple more hours as to maintain the transformation active it drains me. If a fight broke out, I could run out of juice sooner than later.
It’s not a big drain and I could keep it up for hours and my power takes only a bit of time to recuperate, if it wasn’t for the risk of not being able to take on other transformations I could test it, it’ll have to wait and depend on how my powers continues to evolve. I’m in no need to not sleep as of right now.
It wasn’t even pleasant while it was active, like something was kind of off. Maybe I hadn’t stumbled into this transformation every time I felt sleepy before as it’s something natural, to sleep, and also changing my body to not need a basic need might be impossible, without a fitting power that I. could be the same with hunger too as m transformation even use my fat and boy mass to transform so maybe it can’t mess with that part.
I should sleep instead of theory endlessly while I can.
This time we found a camping resort, it was someone’s property that had been turned into an area to fish and be in contact with nature, only having trails and small cabins in the woods, we had rented some sleeping bags and tents and were taking a spot with a view to a river.
It was a rocky area close to the river, part of why we chose it. Better to deal with some rocks than the grass and bugs and while looking around our little camp, I see spyglass sitting in a big rock overlooking the stream,
It’s the sunset of the third day now, and we’re just waiting to confirm that the tracker is gone, as today there was no attempt to for any tether, or the tracker is dead or the blood isn’t effective anymore. We’ll go to an actual house next that is one of the dawnbreakers hiding places, and wait a bit more just one more day than one that we’ll probably even be able to sleep, me included.
I approach the crestfallen form of my teammate, sitting on the rock by her side, saying nothing, only admiring the colors of the fading sun with her. All my tries at getting a conversation started didn’t really work, so I guess she’s not really a big fan of talks.
“You really think it’s possible?” guess I was wrong. I glance at her, seeing her still looking at the sunset, a distant look on her face. She really was shaken by what. happened. It brought things to the surface that she didn’t want to think about.
I stop and think about her question, she’s probably referring to taking the government down and yeah, it’s probably really hard, and the rumors about the top powered of the country are pretty daunting but, “honestly, with the power I have it’s only a matter of time until I reach the biggest leagues there are, and it’s time I accept that.”
“I would come into clash with the regime any time or another even if I didn’t have any hate for them of motive to throw them down, only because I’d be a threat.”
“And really, I’d feel the same way. Because I’m certain I can overcome anyone. The strongest warriors are just going to make me that much more powerful.”
“It’s kind of daunting, even, to have this much power in my hands. I never dared to hope for this much, you know. As much as people call us sleepwalkers power freaks, what we want is a cool gimmick, a flexible elemental power in our biggest dreams, maybe. But what we really want is to not be left out of this fantasy. This one magical thing in our bleak world.”
“Not that the world didn’t make it bleak as well, and that’s something that I want to fight to change, and if this absurd broken power helps me, then well, I won’t complain. I’ll make a country where people can freely have their powers.”
“You’re such an idealist Matrix, and you’re far from being that powerful still.”
I shrug in response, not really arguing the point. We stay in silence a while, seeing the oranges reflecting off the rushing waters.
“She used to say the same things. She had a strong power and, well, she thought she could change this country as well.”
“That was our friend, I presume. How did you two met?”
Spyglass went silent, almost seeming to brush the question off out of habit before sighing heavily, changing position to look over the budding stars in the sky.
“We’d known each other for a really long time, even before we got into the same class in college. We just hadn’t clicked together before, but only knowing each other in class at first brought us really closer.”
“We entered a group of Sleepwalkers. My friend really wanted to get powers, to save people and have incredible abilities. At first, everything was going well enough, with the group mostly providing information.”
“But then, one day, another member of the group locked us in the lab we were using to gather that day and started a fire. It almost ended in catastrophe, but it got contained in time. No one died, but a couple of students got their powers there, and including us two.”
“Hers was flashy, and she didn’t know how to control it still, so she went to the facility first. I was appointed to go in the next two days. She told me about how it was as we talked every day and it seemed just fine.”
“It’s finally my day then to go to the facility and get tested and screened and all that, but well it’s been two days that I have powers I was testing it on my own all the time, and I had discovered a lot of things. And I was getting into the habit of searching everything I could about the people I met, more out of the novelty I think and, in that facility, the things I discovered, they are not the things you can just ignore.”
“I was scared. I just went home that day and when she asked me what happened, I told her. I told her all about the rot this country was hiding underneath the surface.”
“And then we ran. We would get no support from the police or our college, our families were a risky endeavor, and we didn’t want to risk them, so we got away”
She smiled, reminiscing.
“We just went sleeping in hotels and crashing in inns while we still had the money and then just staying in abandoned places or under bridges.”
“We robbed from the regime and hid anywhere we could. In a couple of months, we had gathered some notoriety and a bunch of other rejects. Kids that run away from purist families, kids that mutated, you know the drill.”
“It wasn’t long until we really started grabbing attention tho. They sent some stronger powered to the routes we normally took from, though it would be enough, but Angela smashed them like toys.”
Her name was Angela. Then I noted.
“We thought ourselves invincible, thinking that was the limit of the military strength. We had never seen actual power, not even Angela’s was the real deal.” she seemed stunned again, as we were approaching what went wrong.
“What kind of of power she had?” I asked.
She recollected herself smiling sadly, looking somewhere much further than the horizon. “she had it all, really. Energy beams, flying, super strength and those projections of energy. She was one of those superman types. The ones who make you think, damn maybe these powers are actually a blessing to humankind.”
She stopped her narrative again. Swallowing, I could see her eyes watering. She sighed shakily, wiping her nose and then continuing.
“It wasn’t to be, though. I guess the government saw it too, the potential that she had, or worse, the drive. She didn’t want to serve under them. She was a free soul. That was her undoing.”
“Her power might’ve not been the strongest, but it was up there, and it was very nice, pretty and clean. Together with her, she really looked like an angel. So, of course, they wanted her. They sent a recruiter... A recruiter and an executioner in the same person.”
She pursed her lips; I could see a tear escaping her eye. “We had no chance. Anything she did, all her strength, it amounted to nothing.”
“He would just shrug off all attacks she made and come down on us, again and again, unceasingly.”
So that was who it was, the rumored indestructible weapon of the government. “Samuel Ash, the only thing he’s missing is that he’s not green, or a genius.” And didn’t really grow larger, but you get the point.
She huffed maybe not the smartest thing to say in this situation “He’s not just a character Matrix, he’s actually invulnerable.”
“Every power has a weakness spyglass, you of all people should know that.”
“You think I didn’t look into that? Is it really a weakness if there’s no one who can overcome it”
“He’s not invulnerable, he can be bought down”
“The amount of strength that would be needed, it’s just, no one can reach it.”
“There are probably a couple people that can reach it.”
“Yeah, but not you. Not anyone I saw in the dawnbreakers”
“But if I was there, I’d be almooost” I dragged the word putting unneeded emphasis on it “invulnerable too. “
“Dumbass.”
We laughed as she wiped the stray tears away. The sun was slowly dipping behind the hills.
“I’ll walk this journey till the end Spyglass, I’ll turn this country into somewhere people can have free souls again.”
I believe you can do it matrix, ill trust you to that, because I don’t think I can go through to the end with this.
The last rays of sun hid behind the rocks, obscuring Spyglass’s crestfallen face, a mixture of fear and shame hidden under her faraway look.
“You don’t need to fight to deserve peace spyglass, ask LED to go to the bunkers when we get back.”
She only nodded; her expression unmoving.
