Chapter 156: Tests
SPEED TEST
Rene had set up motion sensors across the laboratory, creating a measured 100-meter track from wall to wall, with laser timing systems and high-speed cameras to record his movement because normal cameras wouldn’t capture enhanced speed properly.
"Try running slowly," she instructed with emphasis on the word ’slowly’ that suggested she expected chaos.
Orion started what he thought was a gentle jog, the kind of easy pace you’d use for warming up—
BOOM
He crossed 100 meters in microseconds, the sound barrier breaking behind him, a miniature sonic boom in the underground laboratory making Rene’s body rock backward from the pressure wave, and Orion slammed into the far wall hard enough to crack it because he’d been moving too fast to stop properly.
"400 kilometers per hour," Rene announced with a tone that suggested she was impressed despite having expected something like this, "and that was your ’slow jog’ apparently."
Orion extracted himself from the wall-crater he’d created, embarrassment flooding through him because he’d tried to move slowly, had consciously attempted to jog gently, and instead had broken the sound barrier in an underground laboratory.
"Try walking," Rene suggested, resetting the sensors.
He walked. Carefully. Deliberately. Each step measured and controlled.
Still faster than a normal human’s running pace—the sensors showed 80 kilometers per hour for what felt like a casual stroll, and Orion shook his head in disbelief because walking at 80 kph was absurd, was the kind of speed cars traveled on highways, and he was achieving it just by putting one foot in front of the other.
"Maximum sprint?" Rene asked, and Orion noticed she’d printed a reinforced treadmill, advanced materials capable of handling tremendous forces, with graviton stabilization to keep it from shaking apart.
He got on the treadmill with trepidation, secured the safety straps—though what good those would do if he fell at supersonic speeds he didn’t want to contemplate—and started running, gradually increasing pace.
Faster. The treadmill belt blurring beneath his feet. Faster. Air resistance becoming noticeable. Faster. His enhanced body warming from friction. Faster still—
"800 kilometers per hour," Rene announced, reading the display, "and I detect you’re holding back significantly—if you circulated exotic energy through your legs, enhanced your muscles beyond their passive state, you could likely achieve hypersonic speeds, possibly break Mach 2 or 3 with full enhancement."
"I don’t dare risk it," Orion admitted, slowing down gradually, the treadmill taking several seconds to decelerate from his running speed, "I can barely control my body as it is—adding active energy circulation to my legs would make me completely uncontrollable, probably result in me running directly through walls like they’re made of paper because I wouldn’t be able to stop."
He stepped off the treadmill carefully, and his legs were buzzing with contained energy, muscles practically vibrating with the desire to move faster, to push harder, to see what true maximum speed felt like.
"The problem," he said, forcing himself to focus on the issue rather than the temptation, "is I can’t modulate speed—everything is too fast or too slow with nothing in between, like my body only has two settings: standstill and supersonic, with no middle ground for normal human-paced movement."
Next was SENSORY CONTROL.
Orion closed his eyes and focused on his hearing, trying to organize the chaos of auditory input into something manageable.
Hearing:
He could hear Cassia’s heartbeat two floors above—thump-thump, thump-thump—steady and peaceful, the rhythm of deep sleep, and beside it Nyla’s slightly faster heartbeat suggesting she was dreaming, lost in REM sleep with her heart rate elevated.
But that was just the start, because his hearing didn’t stop at nearby humans—he could hear his own body with terrifying clarity: blood cells moving through vessels like a rushing river, individual cells making tiny sounds as they flowed through capillaries, his heart valves opening and closing with sounds like distant doors, his lungs expanding and contracting with sounds like bellows, even his neurons firing created subtle electrical pops that he could hear if he focused, and underneath it all the constant background noise of cellular metabolism, billions of chemical reactions happening simultaneously creating a sound like distant static.
"Can you hear anything else?" Rene asked, her voice cutting through his internal focus.
"Everything," he said with overwhelmed wonder, "the mansion’s pipes—water flowing sounds like distant rivers, I can tell which pipes are hot water and which are cold by the sound of thermal expansion, I can hear where the pipes connect to city water lines underground—electrical current in the wires sounds like buzzing, rising and falling with power consumption, and I can tell which circuits are active and which are idle just by listening."
He focused outward, expanding his attention beyond the mansion. "Wind outside hitting buildings forty kilometers away, and I can hear the difference between wind hitting concrete versus glass versus metal because each material resonates differently, and there are conversations happening in nearby buildings—I can’t make out words at this distance but I hear voices, thousands of them overlapping, people talking and laughing and arguing—"
The city sounds were overwhelming: car engines near and far creating a constant background rumble; music from dozens of sources, different genres and volumes and distances all mixing together; construction equipment running overnight shifts because some work couldn’t be done during business hours; the living breathing sounds of hundreds of thousands of people existing simultaneously, sleeping and waking and working and playing.
"And underneath everything," he continued with something approaching awe, "there’s this constant low rumble that I think is just the city itself—buildings settling, wind patterns, traffic vibrations transmitted through the ground, all of it combining into a sound like Earth itself is humming."
Vision:
"Can you see through solid objects?" Rene asked.
Orion opened his eyes and looked at the wall in front of him, focusing his vision with intent—
And the wall became transparent, not through x-rays but through psychic sense merging with visual processing, his perception extending through the wall rather than being blocked by it, seeing the internal structure of the wall itself—rebar and concrete and insulation—before seeing beyond it to the gravity chamber being assembled by Mark IIIs that worked with incredible coordination, each movement precise, components being fitted together in sequences that looked almost choreographed.
"I can see the manufacturing happening in real-time," he said with fascination, watching robotic arms install graviton generators, "every detail is crystal clear despite the walls between us—I can see which bolts are being tightened, can read the serial numbers on components, can watch the AI coordination happening through their synchronized movements."
He pushed his vision further, through more walls, through the earth above, through the mansion structure. "I can see people sleeping in buildings fifty kilometers away, can count individual bricks in walls at that distance, can see texture and grain in materials, can observe details that would require a telescope normally—even in total darkness my vision persists because I’m not seeing light anymore, I’m perceiving reality directly, and reality doesn’t care whether photons are bouncing around."
Next test was Smell:
The cascade of scents made him want to stop breathing entirely—food from yesterday still detectable in molecular traces, cleaning products creating chemical signatures that overwhelmed his nose, electronics producing ozone and heated-plastic smells, Rene’s nano-synthetic covering with its distinctive artificial scent, and permeating absolutely everything was exotic energy which smelled like lightning captured and bottled, like ozone but cleaner and sharper and more electric
. "The mansion is just the start," he said, breathing shallowly to reduce the scent overload, "the city beyond carries thousands more scents on the night air—vehicle exhaust from highways mixing with food cooking in hundreds of restaurants, industrial processes releasing chemical signatures I can’t even identify, nature smells from parks and gardens, and I can smell the ocean, the salt-and-brine note underneath everything else even though we’re dozens of kilometers from the coast."
"And all of it crashes together," he continued with frustration bleeding into his words, "demanding attention simultaneously, and I can’t filter it, can’t focus on one scent and ignore the others, can’t turn it off even when I want to, it’s just constant overwhelming input that makes me want to hold my breath forever."
Touch:
Air currents that had been gentle before now felt like strong winds pushing against his skin with measurable force, and he could feel temperature variations of a tenth of a degree as distinctly as normal people felt the difference between hot and cold—the air near the ceiling was 20.3 degrees Celsius, the air at floor level was 19.8 degrees, and he could feel the thermal gradient as he moved through it.
Electromagnetic fields from every electronic device in the mansion created pressure sensations against his skin like invisible hands pushing from different directions, each device creating its own signature, and he could tell without looking which direction the router was, where the Mark III replicator stood, where Rene’s body was positioned, all by feeling their electromagnetic emissions.
"And underneath everything," he said, extending one hand and feeling the pull, "Earth’s magnetic field is a constant presence pulling gently toward north, like gravity’s weaker cousin, and I can feel it always, there’s no turning it off, it’s just a constant gentle tug reminding me which direction is magnetic north regardless of where I look."
"Every sensation is amplified," he concluded with exhaustion creeping into his voice, "magnified to the point where simply existing in my own skin feels like being constantly bombarded with information that my brain struggles to process even with doubled intelligence."
Psychic Sense:
"Your psychic range has expanded significantly," Rene noted, pulling up sensor data, "based on your earlier tests it’s approximately fifty kilometers—can you verify?"
Orion extended his psychic sense outward like unfurling a sail, feeling for the limits, and the sensation was almost intoxicating—awareness expanding in a sphere around him, encompassing more and more space until he could feel the boundary of his perception like a bubble that extended fifty kilometers in all directions.
"Fifty kilometers confirmed," he said, and then had to pause because the amount of information flooding in was staggering, "and I can sense every living thing within that radius—humans sleeping in homes, thousands of them, each one a distinct presence with their own bioelectric signature; animals moving through the city, dogs and cats and rats and birds, millions of them creating constant background noise; insects beyond counting, trillions of tiny life signatures that my expanded perception insists on registering individually even though consciously I know that’s insane—"
He pushed through the biological noise to detect other things. "Non-living objects create signatures too—electronic devices generate electromagnetic fields I can sense, hundreds of thousands of computers and phones and appliances all humming with electricity; I can feel the electrical grid itself, power flowing through transmission lines in massive currents that register as warm pressure; data transmission through fiber optics creates subtle vibrations I can detect even though fiber optics use light rather than electricity."
"Can you manipulate electromagnetic fields?" Rene asked with scientific curiosity evident in her tone.
Orion focused on a metal bar lying on the floor across the room, extending his psychic sense toward it, feeling the electromagnetic field surrounding it—everything with electrons had a field, and metal conducted better than most materials—and he tried to influence the field, to push it, to make the bar move.
The bar shifted. Scraped across the floor with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. Moved several centimeters under his psychic influence.
"Electromagnetic manipulation confirmed," he said with growing excitement, "I can affect EM fields directly, which means theoretically I can do all kinds of things—manipulate metal, generate magnetic fields, possibly even fly through—"
"Can you fly?" Rene interrupted, clearly thinking along the same lines.