Chapter Fourteen

Haruki knelt in silence and focused. Pushing his inner fire down until his cross-legged position became uncomfortable, he found the spark. The act of pulling on it, filling his body with the Spirit of Lightning, turned on entirely new senses. From the magnetic field of the Earth, to the tiniest fluctuation of EM waves emitted as electrons passed through microchips, he felt the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Everything carrying even slight current became as known to him as the fingers on his hands.

His nervous system became a book he could read. He knew exactly how long he could sit in this position before cramps set in. Also, as he sensed the faint electric charges in the air, motion lines of objects painted a three-dimensional picture in his mind.

He touched the motion lines around a two-kilogram weight on the rack. By adjusting the motion, teasing the kinetic energy in different ways, he brought the weight moving towards him. First, he called it rapidly and sent it back slowly.

A gentle pull brought up the fire within until it filled him. His inner sense revealed both lightning and fire overlapping, coursing through him. A roar of wind assaulted his ears.

Instinctively, he clamped hands over ears, and the lightning retreated. Immediately the sound ceased, and his fire-enhanced hearing revealed the truth.

“The air conditioning,” he whispered, staring.

With both powers active, his senses magnified to the point where the gentle air hiss sounded like a furious roaring gale. With effort, he brought lightning up again with fire active. The gentle hiss of the air vent became a hurricane of sound. In addition, dozens of conversations of building employees overlapped with one another. Worse, the cacophony of nearby Tokyo intruded as a wall of voices and vehicles. His head ached from the impact of each footfall as loud as a sonic boom.

Is it real, he wondered? Before, he never heard sounds loud enough to hurt him, even when his body slammed through stone or metal. The loud noises simply registered loud. His nigh-invulnerability protected him against pain from loud noises. So why was this different?

Out of instinct, he levitated himself using the Lightning’s kinetic manipulation. The two Gifts together magnified his already-enhanced hearing thousands of times, if not more. If his strength increased by a similar amount, he might accidentally damage the building just by walking. Oddly, his mental strain focusing on multiple abilities at once proved non-existent. The Gift of Lightning amplified his mind in strange ways, making thoughts easier and memory recall nearly flawless. With these enhancements, he endured the chaotic wall of noise assaulting his ears.

After ten minutes, the loudness proved to be an illusion. Despite his ability to hear every sound for miles and miles, the cacophony was his mind assigning what it knew to a brand-new experience. With effort, he could pick through the soup of sound and ladle out a single conversation or interaction. Without opening his eyes, he picked a couple singing along to a K-pop song in their car driving by. With focus, its exact location in three-dimensional space revealed to him by positional sound alone. He followed the sound with his hearing as the car drove from one corner of his range to another. His mind mapped out where the object was and how it moved relative to him.

He gingerly set himself down, feet touching the floor at a snail's pace. He risked opening his eyes. The cold light of the overhead LEDs illuminated the room. With both Gifts active, his vision became a world of new experiences. Before, his enhanced sight picked out dust motes in the air. Now, he could see microscopic imperfections in the otherwise smooth surface of the walls from across the training room.

He let his lightning retreat, bringing himself back to simple enhanced levels. Tomorrow, this would be a big deal, but right now, he'd have to go to bed.

“Sir, he's waking up, his readings are off the charts!”

Haruki’s vision vanished and came back an instant later. Now, though, he saw the world through a light blue tint. A faint distortion pattern caused his vision to weave like a tapestry falling through the air. He was inside a chamber filled with liquid, and a breathing mask covered his nose and mouth. Moving his head proved difficult. His eyes darted left and right, taking in the sight. More than a dozen scientists in lab coats stood at stations receiving readouts. Around his chamber stood a wide variety of people. They spoke with different accents but spoke in English. He could vaguely see a reflection in the glass of his tube.

It was his face. Someone had cloned him.

A Herculean effort paid off, and he turned his head to see five tubes connected to his right arm by an injection site. A middle-aged man in a suit stepped into the room. “Inject him with formula 3A7B.”

Haruki's eyes went wide. The voice had a gruff sound disguising it, but there was no doubt it was Aeriesai. In a moment, a searing pain burned its way into his right arm and he snapped awake, face down on the cold floor of the training room in Japan.

He threw caution to the wind and dashed for Kensuke.