Chapter 17: Under the illusion
The sun hung low over the horizon, casting long shadows across the scrubland as I pored over satellite images on a tablet screen. Victor had described the bunker’s vague location—somewhere northwest of the city.
After hours of cross-referencing, I’d narrowed it to three possible locations: a remote clearing ringed by mangroves, a limestone ridge near the coast, and an abandoned quarry swallowed by overgrowth. The plan was to check all the locations on foot.
Victor paced beside me, his jaw tight, his eyes darting with a restless fury. His desperation painted him as a man driven by love, a desperate act of true love indeed. A vague concept to me. We searched for hours, boots sinking into the damp earth, sweat beading on our brows, but the bunker eluded us. Still, we were certain it lay within this triangle of wilderness.
While discussing about other possible locations, Victor suddenly stopped pacing about. He dropped to one knee, pressing the side of his head to the ground, his ear against the dirt like a hunter tracking prey. Dmitry raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t take him for a religious man.”
“Victor, what are you doing?” I asked, crouching beside him.
“I can hear them,” he muttered, his voice low and certain. “Echoes—vibrations, waves rippling deep underground, miles from here.”
“You can hear echoes?” The idea hit me like a spark. I mirrored him, pressing my own ear to the soil. My enhanced senses flared, picking up faint tremors—distant footsteps, muffled voices, the groan of machinery—all threading through the earth like a heartbeat. I was suddenly curious about the other powers the serum was able to implant in humans. On top of my comparatively physical enhancements, the serum heightened regeneration and awakened hyper-cognition, but Gwendowson and Randy had only shown brute strength and speed. It left me wondering if at all Victor was he like me. Did he wrestle with the same fractured grip on reality?
“I found them!” he shouted, and before I could react, he vanished as he moved at a speed I couldn’t fathom—faster than Randy, faster than Gwendowson who were clearly hitting the Mach line.
A gust of wind whipped past, the ground trembling under his departure. The air crackled in his wake, particles spiraling in the sudden stillness. We stood frozen for few seconds, mouths agape, the weight of what we’d witnessed sinking in.
“What was that? Where’d he go?” Dmitry broke the silence, his Russian accent thick with disbelief.
Yukio’s eyes narrowed as he deduced. “Is that his power—teleportation?”