Chapter 29. Peak Condition
Author note:
Good news! I managed to sort things out earlier than expected, so we're back on track. No delays today — here is your chapter. Enjoy!
***
I’m here again. Early morning, a private gym flooded with the cold light of fluorescent lamps. I stand in the center of the room, surrounded by machines, and once again start the familiar process.
I simply skip time, dropping into hyperfocus. To anyone else I would look like a blurred smear darting wildly between equipment, but for me it’s just a brief flash that instantly yields a finished result.
However, I began to notice oddities. Back when my Strength hit 10, the [Trainer] almost stopped pushing me through strength routines. The automation vanished. Now I approached the barbell only once a week, just for formality, without adding a single pound to my usual weight. I didn’t panic, I just observed, understanding that my body had run into some invisible ceiling. Besides, I suddenly had almost two extra hours of free time, which I gladly spent studying theory.
After Strength, Agility also reached ten. The very next morning I discovered that in hyperfocus mode I no longer spun across the mats or pushed my stretching until my joints cracked. Jumps, balance, running, all of it faded into the background. The system simply stopped considering it necessary. I held back and waited, focusing all remaining resources on the final bastion, Endurance. Without the ability to fast forward time, I would probably have gone insane from the monotony of endless cardio, but now I felt only a cold satisfaction as my lungs turned into bellows and my heart into a tireless pump.
And today, that marathon finally came to an end.
Bright blue lines flashed before my eyes, sending a shiver down my spine:
[Endurance +1]
[All physical parameters of the familiar have reached peak values for its race. Further development through training is impossible]
[To continue development, the familiar must undergo evolution]
I froze, breathing heavily in the cool air of the gym. A ringing silence filled the room, broken only by the hum of ventilation. I looked into the mirror, studying my reflection. My body looked perfect, every muscle fiber defined as if carved from marble by a sculptor. But the system messages faded, and no new ones appeared.
"Evolution?" The word tolled in my head like a heavy bell.
And how exactly am I supposed to go through that? Search for a radiation zone and hope for a useful mutation? Or maybe wait for a meteorite to fall and take a bite out of it? Everything I knew from science fiction suggested either absurd or outright suicidal options.
I was critically lacking information, and the System kept its mocking silence. What even stood behind that term? What if after this evolution I turned into some multi-eyed monstrosity fit only for a freak show? To hell with that. Even if my power increased tenfold, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my human appearance.
Shaking my head in irritation, I decided to set those thoughts aside. After all, the draft was coming soon. Surely the Awakened Corps would know more about such things than I did. That’s where I would find answers.
Right now, something else mattered more, rationality. I had reached the peak. But did that mean I could abandon the gym? For ordinary people, muscles are fickle, stop training and slip on your diet, and an athletic physique melts away into shapeless jelly. I needed to know for sure whether that rule applied to me.
I walked up to a bench, grabbed a heavy dumbbell, and began methodically curling it, carefully watching the edge of my vision. The answer came immediately:
[Warning! Physical activity of the familiar detected]
[The familiar has reached its peak and can no longer increase muscle mass. Further training is pointless]
I put the dumbbell back. Looks like my bodybuilding career was officially over. And judging by everything, it was due to my hacked abilities. An old notification about enhanced metabolism surfaced in my memory. Plus Danny’s words about weak telepathy and biocontrol. It seemed my cells had simply locked into this state. My muscles would no longer degrade. That was damn good news.
People on forums whispered that you could get stuck in portals for a week or even longer. Going into battle knowing your stats might drop due to lack of proper food or the inability to train was not exactly comforting. Now that fear was off the list.
"Alright," I thought, "since I’ve already paid for the day, let’s see what this peak can really do."
I sat on a bench and opened a browser on my phone. World records. Today was July 5, 2020. The maximum deadlift was about 1100 pounds. A massive number. I began loading the bar, plate after plate, until it resembled a black metal caterpillar. Exactly 1100 pounds.
While I was looking up heavyweight lifters, I came across photos of failed record attempts. Hernias the size of a fist, torn abdominal muscles, ruptured internal organs. People doomed to spend the rest of their lives with colostomy bags because of a single mistake.
I am a cautious person. Becoming disabled out of idle curiosity was not part of my plans. So with a sigh, I removed a hundred pounds from the bar. Safety came first.
Stepping up to the bar, I gripped the cold steel. A deep breath. I felt the [Trainer] inside me instantly mobilize every fiber. A pull!
The bar rose. The weight was colossal, it pressed my feet into the floor, but I didn’t feel agony. I pressed the metal overhead, holding it on outstretched arms for a few seconds. My muscles burned, my face flushed, blood roared in my ears, but it was controlled strain. I had no sense that the veins in my forehead were about to burst.
I lowered the bar. The crash against the floor seemed to shake the walls.
I could have added that hundred pounds back. Maybe another hundred on top of that. I felt my limit somewhere there, close to the world record, perhaps even beyond. But I didn’t. The risk of ending up in a hospital right before the draft was too high. The enlistment office would definitely see it as an attempt to dodge service, and my reputation, which I had built so carefully, would collapse before it even began.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with a towel. The approximate result was clear. I was at the peak of human capability. Beyond that lay only the unknown. Beyond that lay evolution.
Testing Agility turned out to be a task with an asterisk. It is not strength that you can measure in clean plates on a barbell. Agility is a cocktail of reaction speed, balance, and flexibility. Sure, I could already do backflips and walk on my hands as well as professional circus performers, but that was more showmanship than an objective indicator of a peak.
I was already starting to feel discouraged, mindlessly scrolling the feed, when a helpful search engine suggested the obvious: speed. Pure, explosive running speed. Who sits at the top of Olympus? Of course, Usain Bolt. His legendary record is about 200 yards in roughly 20 seconds. I rounded the numbers in my head just to have a baseline.
I did not have a stadium, so I had to improvise inside the gym. I measured the distance from one wall to the other and got exactly one hundred yards, exactly half of a championship track. I set my phone on a tripod at the far end of the hall, launching a stopwatch app with a motion sensor.
I froze at the start. The muscles in my legs were stretched like piano strings. I knew the theory: proper body angle, arm work, distribution of the center of gravity. I had learned all of it in courses back when my stats did not raise suspicion. Professionals run in specialized spikes that save precious fractions of a second, and I was wearing ordinary sneakers from a store.
"Let’s see what these legs can do," I thought and burst forward.
The start was so powerful that my sneakers squeaked against the floor for a moment. The world turned into a striped tunnel. I was not running, I was practically flying, barely touching the ground. At the finish, I barely managed to slow down to avoid slamming into the wall, and I jabbed a finger at the smartphone screen.
The result made me freeze. Eight seconds.
I recalculated in my head. If I ran 200 yards, I would finish in sixteen. I did not just beat Bolt’s record, I destroyed it. How? Bolt is a genetic phenomenon, tall and long-legged. I weigh more, and my build is different. The answer was obvious: [Trainer]. The system had reshaped my muscles for a perfect result, filling them with some absurd level of efficiency.
Excitement and a cold anxiety mixed in my chest. With abilities like this, any legal sports arena was now off-limits for me. One run in front of a crowd and sports managers would show up to sign me. Unwanted attention is my worst enemy.
Endurance turned out to be even more complicated. Google offered either week-long marathons without sleep or insane records of hanging on a bar for days. I had neither the desire nor the time to spend several days testing how long I could go without collapsing from fatigue. And if I used hyperfocus to skip time, I would surely crush every record by double, but that kind of test would be meaningless.
A reckless thought flashed through my mind: could I hack the system even further? For example, steroids. I was already at the human peak, but what if I added a chemical boost? In theory, my stats might jump a couple more points. I would also level up the Trainer without any questionable evolutions. Yes, it was dangerous, but my enhanced metabolism and healing sleep should process any side effects, turning harm into pure benefit.
The thought of becoming even stronger stirred my blood. Only one thing stopped me: I had no idea where to get a quality product. Online, they offered only shady chalk at the price of gold.
I cast one last glance at the machines and left the gym, promising myself I would not be back anytime soon. That stage of my life was over.
***
The evening at the cafe after another paintball match was noisy and relaxed. The smell of paint still seemed embedded in my skin, but hot potatoes with meat quickly brought me back to life. Thanks to my parkour skills, I moved across the field like a ghost, overcoming obstacles so quickly that opponents simply could not turn their markers in time.
My legend as a CIA agent on vacation had fully taken root. The guys from the club, mostly tough men from law enforcement, no longer asked unnecessary questions. I sat in the corner, sipping beer and listening carefully to their stories. Sometimes those stories carried fragments of priceless experience: how to act during a sweep, how to conserve ammunition, how to read tracks.
Charlie, a good-natured giant and an army quartermaster, was telling jokes again. He had hinted more than once that he could get anything that had a US Army inventory number. He could probably get those military stimulants I had read about. But time was running out. Experiments would have to wait.
I finished my meal and stood up, drawing the group’s attention.
"Guys, I’ve got an announcement," my voice sounded firmer than I expected. "Most likely I won’t be at the next session. Some things came up that cannot be postponed."
Silence hung over the table for a moment.
"Looks like our special agent is off to overthrow another dictator," Alex snorted, nudging his neighbor with an elbow. Laughter rolled through the cafe. No one tried to pry, and I was grateful for that.
"I’ll call you three days before the next game," Charlie nodded seriously. "If it does not work out, I will look for a replacement, although finding a fighter like you will not be easy."
As I was heading out to the parking lot, Rachel caught up with me. Fiery red-haired and always wired, she looked at me with her trademark brazen stare.
"Hey, Tom Ross," she poked a finger into my chest, "you owe me, remember? So do not you dare die out there, wherever you are planning to disappear."
I could not help but smile. "I will definitely come back, Rachel. I promise."
She just snorted and, turning sharply, walked toward her car.
***
At home, silence and a packed bag were waiting for me. I checked my plane ticket and documents once again. A new message glowed in my email inbox, which I read three times.
"Dear Thomas Ross, this is a reminder that you are required to report to the Washington State Induction Center for a medical examination, threat level assessment, and registration for military service. Reporting date: tomorrow, July 14, 2020.
Failure to report by the specified deadline will be considered desertion under a state of emergency. This offense carries criminal liability in the form of imprisonment in a specialized high-security facility for a term from 10 years to life."
That was it. There was no turning back. Tomorrow I would step into the world I had been preparing for over the past months. Tomorrow I would find out what my certificates, my maximized muscles, and the mental power of the [Trainer] were really worth.
Preparation was over. Service begins.