253 Respite
253 Respite
What was it like to be celebrated?
I genuinely had no frame of reference.
For most of my life, I had been an object of fear, suspicion, or calculation. People measured distance from me. They whispered. They flinched. Even allies regarded me as a weapon first and a person second.
Now I stood in the center of a half-rebuilt town while people chanted my name like a prayer.
It made me uncomfortable in a way violence never had.
It made me feel strangely helpless.
Since staying the night was part of the deal, I played along. I handed my broken mask, shattered smartwatch, and remaining gadgets to Krissy. She handled them with the kind of reverence usually reserved for relics.
“I’ll hold nothing back,” she promised. “If it can be fixed, I’ll fix it. If it can’t, I’ll make it better.”
“I believe you,” I replied.
And I did. In my current state, deception stood out like cracks in glass. Souls shimmered with intent. Lies distorted their edges. Krissy’s was steady, bright with stubborn competence and excitement.
As dusk settled, more people gathered.
They formed a loose circle around me, careful not to crowd. Lanterns were lit. Someone dragged out salvaged speakers powered by a jury-rigged generator. Children peeked from behind adults, wide-eyed.
“You really fought him alone?” a middle-aged man asked, his voice thick with disbelief.
“He used to walk above the bunker sometimes,” a woman added quietly. “We could hear the ground tremble. We thought he was a god.”
“You didn’t look scared,” the blond boy said, hovering a few feet off the ground again. “When the sky went black like that. You just kept going.”
I shrugged faintly. “I was scared.”
They laughed, assuming I was being modest.
An elderly man with a cane stepped forward. “We’ve lived underground since my grandfather’s time. Eighty years. We had libraries. Teachers. Engineers. We kept knowledge alive, hoping someday…”
He gestured vaguely toward the open sky.
A young girl piped up, “Is it true there used to be cities with lights that never went out?”
“There were,” I answered. Of course, I’ve taken liberties this world was like mine. I wasn’t probably wrong, considering how much I’ve seen of the wreckage.
“What was it like?” someone asked from behind me. “Before all this?”
The before.
I hesitated. My world and theirs had diverged long before Rodney’s reign. Even my own “before” was tainted by chaos.
“It was loud,” I said eventually. “Crowded. Complicated. People argued about everything. But there was music. And movies. And arguments about which hero would win in a fight.”
They blinked.
“Hero?” the blond boy repeated.
“Or villain,” I added without thinking.
A few exchanged confused looks.
One woman tilted her head. “You mean like good rulers and bad rulers?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “More like… individuals with powers who chose different paths.”
“Why would anyone choose a bad path?” a child asked bluntly.
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
Why indeed.
In my case, it was young stupidity to be blamed. But it was probably different for the others. From their questions, it was clear they were educated. They understood energy systems, structural engineering, and basic genetics of mutation. They spoke about power classifications in clinical terms. But culturally, they were decades behind. There were no comics here. No saturated media culture turning superpowered conflict into archetype.
Rodney had likely fallen into madness before the hero–villain dichotomy fully crystallized in public consciousness. That classification had emerged as a social response to escalating incidents between extreme ideologies, as more individuals manifested powers. Society needed narrative boxes. Labels. Symbols.
In this world, that evolution never finished.
If they had grown up on caped fiction and moral theatrics, they would not have stared at me with such unfiltered reverence.
Krissy sidled up beside me, wiping her hands on a rag. “You really rattled them with that villain line,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m probably the only one old enough to know what that implies.”
“You still let me stay,” I replied.
She shrugged. “You killed our nightmare. Labels can wait.”
As night deepened, the gathering shifted into something resembling a festival.
Someone roasted preserved food over controlled fires. A group of teenagers performed music using salvaged instruments and improvised percussion. Children reenacted my battle with Rodney in exaggerated pantomime, one of them standing on a crate and declaring in a dramatically deep voice, “Die!” before falling over theatrically.
Laughter rippled through the square.
People approached me in ones and twos.
“Thank you for giving my son a sky,” a woman said, squeezing my hand.
“I never thought I’d see the ocean again,” an old man murmured. “Some of us doesn’t even know what it looks like.”
“You’ll stay a few days, right?” the blond boy asked hopefully.
I had no answers for most of them. Conversation did not come naturally to me. I was better at intimidation than reassurance. So I listened more than I spoke.
Their souls glowed warmly in the lantern light.
No reverent distortion. No fanatic edge.
Just gratitude.
By the time the night reached its peak, someone projected the recorded battle onto the large screen again. This time, instead of fear, the crowd cheered at each critical moment. When Rodney’s undead collapsed, they erupted in applause. When I tore through his psychic storm, they shouted my name.
Nicholas.
Grim.
Hero.
The titles blended together in the air.
I stood slightly apart from the celebration, watching them dance, laugh, and cry beneath a sky that had not belonged to them for generations.
Richie found me when I thought I had blended well enough into the background.
I had thinned my presence with intangibility, not turning invisible outright, but existing at an angle most eyes slid past. It was a subtle trick. I did not want to loom over their celebration like some ominous monument.
He plopped down beside me anyway, legs dangling off the edge of a half-repaired fountain.
“Krissy told me she finished fixing your gear,” he said, nudging my shoulder lightly. “You can pick it up tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
I never doubted she could do it. The moment I disassembled her drone back then, I recognized sophistication in its architecture. This world’s technology had evolved under pressure, adapting specifically to counter Rodney’s threat. Hardened circuits. Psychic-null materials. Autonomous systems designed for long-term bunker survival.
They were not primitive.
If anything, they were specialized.
I made a mental note to send someone from the Company here eventually. Not the SRC. I did not want this world’s advancements quietly harvested under the guise of assistance. A mutual exchange would benefit both sides.
Richie kicked his heels against the stone. “Are you really leaving tomorrow?”
I considered it.
Originally, yes. However, I realized I needed independence from the SRC more than ever. I’ve gained what I wanted, power and a healed body. I have no use of the ‘relationship’ with the SRC any longer. With Krissy’s help and access to their parts, I could likely construct a personal portal system. I had already sketched the framework in my mind. If I succeeded, I would no longer rely on their transport network.
The more multiversal portals, the easier it would be to move around. This world was a good start as any.
The fact I’ve healed from gaining my new rating was a great boon already.
My spatial awareness simply corrected structural inconsistencies in my body until they no longer existed. Another chain severed from the SRC.
“I’ll stay two more days,” I decided.
Richie grinned. “Nice.”
As the party grew louder, my thoughts drifted.
Rodney’s final moments replayed in my mind. The way he surrendered. The way Guesswork had spoken to me before deploying me here. Subtle things. Almost throwaway lines.
‘Take care of my family if I perish.’
At the time, it felt like gallows humor.
Now it felt like preparation.
I had always kept open the possibility that the SRC could become an enemy. Prudence demanded it. Yet some foolish part of me still wanted them to be something else. An ally. A constant.
I exhaled slowly.
The music swelled. Laughter erupted near the central fire pit.
Then the women descended.
One leaned over my shoulder, her voice low and playful. “So, Grim Reaper, do you always brood this much?”
Another pressed a cup into my hand. “You saved us. The least we can do is make sure you enjoy yourself.”
A third circled around to face me directly. “You’re not from here. That accent isn’t ours. Where are you from? Is everyone there as… intense as you?”
“I have someone waiting for me back home,” I said carefully, trying to maintain distance.
“Oh please,” one of them scoffed lightly. “No one needs to know.”
Laughter rippled through their group.
An older man joined in, half-drunk and entirely too enthusiastic. “If you’re looking for strong bloodlines, my daughter can bench-press a truck. Power compatibility is important, you know.”
Another chimed in, “We’ve got young women with promising abilities. Flight, energy projection, regeneration. You’d make terrifying babies.”
I choked slightly on air.
“I appreciate the… offers,” I said flatly, standing up. “But I’m taken.”
“You can’t blame us for trying,” one teased, stepping closer.
I retreated with strategic precision.
If Nicole ever found out I entertained even a fraction of this nonsense, I would not survive the aftermath. That thought alone was sobering.
Still, I could see through them now. Their souls glimmered with mischief, curiosity, and gratitude. A few carried opportunistic motives such as alliances, status, or securing strong offspring, but nothing malicious.
They meant well.
That almost made it harder to refuse them.
Sorry, but I have no plans of helping you guys repopulating your planet.
Eventually, I escaped toward the edge of the square where a cluster of men were arguing loudly over something trivial. One of them spotted me.
“Hey!” he shouted, grinning broadly. “If you’re as strong as they say, prove it. Arm wrestling.”
The crowd immediately rallied behind the idea.
The challenger was built like reinforced concrete, muscles coiled tight under his skin. His soul flickered with competitive pride. When we clasped hands, I felt the surge of super strength through him.
“Don’t cry when you lose,” he warned playfully.
“I’ll try not to,” I replied.
We locked elbows against a salvaged metal table.
“Three… two… one!”
He pushed.
The force behind his arm was immense. For a normal opponent, it would have snapped bone instantly. I allowed a fraction of movement, enough to make it believable. The crowd roared encouragement.
Then I applied a controlled spatial warp.
Just a slight redirection of force vectors, compressing the space his arm occupied while stabilizing mine.
I brought his hand down firmly onto the table.
The impact echoed.
He screamed.
The crowd gasped.
I immediately released him, scanning his arm. The bone had fractured near the elbow. Not catastrophic, but painful.
“Sorry,” I said, genuinely meaning it.
Within minutes, two med-techs rushed forward with a compact regeneration unit. Their technology was efficient. They stabilized the fracture, injected targeted nanite gel, and began accelerated tissue knitting.
The challenger’s tears shifted from agony to embarrassed laughter.
“Worth it,” he groaned. “I can say I lost to Grim.”
The crowd cheered again.
When it came to power development, this world lagged behind even mine.
Over the two days I stayed, I quietly observed and assessed. Most people here averaged around ratings of four or five at best. Capable. Useful. But nowhere near the upper thresholds I was accustomed to. The distribution felt thin, as if the world’s potential had been siphoned off and stretched across too many vessels.
Rodney had likely been the cause.
If the undead retained their powers after death, then the global pool would have been collectively diluted for decades. My understanding of the underlying mechanics was imperfect, but I had seen similar phenomena before. In that medieval world, Dr. Time once monopolized the Researcher rating so thoroughly that innovation stagnated everywhere else. One individual could distort the curve of an entire civilization.
Rodney must have done something similar on a broader scale.
Now that he was gone, the equilibrium would eventually rebalance. It would take time.
During those two days, I split my efforts between social obligation and construction. At dawn, I would ride out with Krissy to an abandoned factory several kilometers from town. It had once produced heavy machinery; now it served as our workshop.
My Researcher rating had also been absorbed into intangibility’s domain. I could no longer “feel” it the way I once did. Learning entirely new theoretical frameworks felt slower, more deliberate. However, everything I had already memorized remained intact. Blueprints, principles of quantum anchoring, dimensional resonance matrices, stabilization equations… they were still there.
Krissy watched me sketch diagrams across a salvaged holo-panel.
“You’re telling me that ring structure is going to punch through space itself?” she asked, prosthetic fingers tapping against her chin. “Because if that’s true, I’ve been aiming too small my whole life.”
“It won’t punch,” I corrected mildly. “It will persuade.”
She barked out a laugh. “Persuade space. Sure. Why not?”
I dismantled three of her hardened energy cores and reconfigured them into a synchronized tri-phase driver. She leaned over my shoulder as I worked, eyes widening with every adjustment.
“Hold on,” she muttered, staring at the lattice I was constructing. “That’s not standard layering. You’re folding the containment field inward.”
“Yes.”
“That should implode.”
“It would,” I agreed, “if space were treated as passive.”
She stared at me for a long moment before grinning like a maniac. “You’re treating it like a cooperative variable.”
“Exactly.”
She slapped the table. “You terrifying genius.”
“Nah, all my tech knowledge are stolen.”
Her Researcher rating was unusually high compared to the rest of the population. It contrasted sharply with the general power landscape here. Rodney’s undead likely had little use for sustained analytical thinking, which meant someone like Krissy could accumulate intellectual leverage in the gaps he left behind.
She was probably not unique. Somewhere else in this fractured world, other pockets of specialists must have quietly grown strong under the radar.
By the end of the second day, the framework stood complete.
A circular gate assembled from salvaged alloy beams and reinforced with layered null-tech plating dominated the center of the abandoned factory floor. Cables snaked outward into generator banks. The tri-phase driver hummed with restrained potential.
Krissy circled it slowly, grease-stained hands clasped behind her back.
“You’re telling me this thing can connect to another world on demand,” she said in awe. “Not a bunker. Not a satellite. Another world.”
“Yes.”
“And you built this in two days with scrap and my spare parts.”
“With your help,” I corrected.
She looked at me, eyes shining in the dim industrial light. “Stranger, I’ve spent my entire life adapting to survival. You just showed me how to leap.”
I ran a final diagnostic sweep, using spatial awareness to detect microfractures and instability points. Everything aligned.
Krissy stepped back as I moved to the control console we had assembled from repurposed terminals.
“Where does it go?” she asked quietly.
“Home,” I replied.
I adjusted the resonance frequency, inputting the dimensional coordinates I had memorized long ago. My world. My responsibility.
Energy surged through the ring, rising from a low hum into a resonant whine. The air inside the circular frame began to distort, bending inward like liquid glass.
I placed my hand on the activation switch.
“I’m opening a portal to my world,” I said and then I engaged it.
The portal ignited in a bloom of pale light, the ring humming as spatial layers peeled back and aligned. The surface shimmered like liquid glass and then a silhouette stepped through.
White and black hair split cleanly down the middle.
Nicole.
I had informed the Company beforehand using the repaired comms embedded in my porcelain mask and smartwatch. I had only activated the transmission after triple-checking that the SRC wasn’t piggybacking on my signal. Paranoia had become second nature.
The moment she saw me, her composure cracked.
“Nick!”
She crossed the distance in seconds and threw herself at me. Arms around my neck. Lips against my cheek, my jaw, my mouth. The force of her embrace nearly knocked me back a step.
“S-someone’s watching,” I muttered under my breath.
She froze.
Then she pulled back with remarkable dignity, smoothing her coat as if she had not just assaulted me with affection. Her expression cooled into the polished executive mask she began to wear so well.
Behind us, Krissy failed to suppress her laughter.
“Hah! So you’re the woman I keep hearing about?” the old mechanic called out, hands on her hips. “Didn’t know gods had time for romance, but that’s reassuring! Anyway, I’ll excuse myself. Don’t make a mess of my factory or spill any suspicious liquids, you hear me? I don’t care if you’re a god or goddess.”
With that, she hopped onto her battered bike and rode off, still chuckling.
Nicole watched her leave, one eyebrow twitching. “Who’s the old bat?”
“A local,” I replied. “They’re culturally stunted in some areas, but their tech is solid. Krissy helped me build the portal.”
Nicole glanced around the abandoned factory, taking in the machinery, the improvised power grid, and the dimensional ring. Approval flickered briefly across her face.
“I’m surprised you came yourself,” I added. “You could’ve sent Abner. Or Mira.”
She scowled as if I had insulted her. “Oh, Nick. Of course I would come running when I heard you were healed.”
Without warning, she grabbed the hem of my shirt and lifted it.
“I’m fine,” I protested. “See?”
She leaned in close, scanning my torso for the dark porcelain fractures that once marred my skin. Her fingers traced along my ribs, clinical and intent.
“We need to be thorough,” she said.
Then she crouched slightly and tugged at my waistband.
“Nicole—”
She unzipped my pants and pulled them down just enough to inspect the rest of me for lingering cracks.
At that exact moment, the factory door creaked open again.
“Sorry, forgot my all-purpose wr—”
Krissy froze mid-sentence.
Her eyes moved from my exposed state to Nicole’s very professional, very focused posture.
There was a long, loaded pause.
“Right,” Krissy said calmly as she retrieved her wrench from a nearby table. “Carry on.”
She walked out without another word.
Nicole calmly pulled my pants back up and zipped them. She dusted off my shirt as if tidying up paperwork.
Then she looked up at me.
“Why do you look disappointed?”
I stared at her.
She grinned, victorious. “Oh? Were you expecting something?”
I folded my arms. “I missed you too, Nicole.”
Her teasing softened into something warmer. She stepped closer again, this time resting her forehead lightly against my chest.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I missed you more.”
For a moment, the hum of the portal and distant factory echoes faded into the background.
Then reality crept back in.
“You’re really healed,” she murmured, almost to herself.
“Yes,” I said. “And I don’t think I need to rely on the SRC anymore.”
Her eyes sharpened at that.
“Good,” she replied. “Because we need to talk.”