Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 273: Hits the Fan

“Behold!” Perry said, holding up the new-and-improved Mimic Litmus Test 9000. It had been a serious pain in the ass marrying both a mild sedative and a variant of Astra’s mending to the regular test to prevent extreme pain, seizures, and keep the subject safe.

And most importantly: not Trigger them.

If 5% of people who got tested went on Trigger Rampages, way more than a few people would die.

And it still worked on mimics!

Nice.

“Yes, I saw it the entire time we were working on it.” Gna’kis said.

“Eh, you just don’t understand my flair for the dramatic.”

“I practically run all social media. I think I know drama.” Gna’kis corrected him.

“Anyway, how fast can we scale up production?” Perry asked. He’d have to make an entire facility dedicated to mass producing it. In order for his plan to work, he had to do multiple rounds of testing, both large scale and small. Eventually, he’d finish things off by testing everything – literally everything – from the birds and the bees to the pavement they drove on.

First couple rounds could be used to confirm his ally pool was untainted, then expand outwards from there, doing a new round of testing for everyone already tested each time.

A pain in the ass, yes, but the mimic was basically the worlds worst communicable disease, and there wasn’t really any leeway to be casual about things.

It was going to be a brutal suppression of human rights to make sure everyone did what they were told, got the shot when they were told, and didn’t try running away.

But I’m willing to have them make that sacrifice.

“Production should scale up…” She narrowed her eyes. “That was a –“

“Trick question!” Perry said, holding his hands apart and summoning the scrying orb for Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.

When he collapsed the summoning, all the infrastructure they needed to mass produce the test was in place.

“Get it started,” Perry said, twirling the inaugural vial of test between his fingers. The Demon Lord of Sinful Technology was the only one competent enough with tech to be his assistant.

“Yes sir, right away sir,” Gna’kis snarked.

“Yes sir!” Lam saluted.

“You know this is cutting into my Onlyfans time?” Gnakis asked, grudgingly getting started.

“Don’t care!” Perry replied, raising his hand.

Portal.exe

Perry stepped through the portal holding the vial, stepping into his Chicago highrise. Moment of Truth, he thought.

He had enough to inject his whole family right here. Start at the center and work your way out.

Once he confirmed with his eyes what he knew with his heart, he could finally breathe easy.

BEEP~

Perry’s phone gave off a quick chirp before cutting out, causing him to glance at it before he felt the vibe.

Something’s wrong.

There was a…stillness in the air that crept into his spine and raised the hair on his neck. He read the message on his phone.

Signal Corrupted.

Perry’s eyebrows rose. His dad’s phone got the signal corrupted? Not too fucking likely.

Paradox’s Probability Dodge.exe (16)

Just to be safe, half of Perry turned around right then and there.

They didn’t make it.

Eight points of view winked out like someone had turned out the lights. Someone didn’t want him leaving.

Calming his mind, Perry arranged the behavior of the eight remaining versions of himself from ‘completely ignorant’ to ‘deeply suspicious’.

He needed to sound out the objective of whoever or whatever was attacking him.

The two on either side of the spectrum, the most blatantly ignorant and most blatantly suspicious, winked out as Perry walked into his living room.

Whatever was pruning possibilities was good at detecting over-acting.

Four left. Perry thought as he tentatively entered the living room.

On the sofa, where he’d proposed to Nat and Heather months ago…was his family.

Gareth sat on Nat’s lap, while Sera was on Heather’s, wiggling uncomfortably.

Annette sat off to the side. The angelic babysitter’s knuckles were white as she drew on Gareth’s drawing board, quietly quizzing Gareth on the numbers.

The chalk in her vest pocket was in her off hand. The one that would teleport the kids to safety.

Nat and Heather were pale and stiff. Still alive, obviously, but scared half to death.

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In the corner of the room was Solaris. The super’s usually immaculate hair was ruffled, and specks of blood hid under his fingernails and the seams in the crow’s feet around his eyes.

The world’s strongest super motioned to the nearby chair.

“Why don’t you take a seat?”

“What is this, a scene from ‘to catch a Paradox?” one of Perry quipped.

That viewpoint blinked out.

Well. I guess we’re in the shit now, Perry thought, his three remaining lives silently sitting down. Tom Franklin wasn’t in the mood.

“Heather tells me you’re developing a test to identify the mimics?”

“Yes.” Perry decided it was best to give Solaris simple, yes-or-no answers until he navigated the volatile situation.

“And, did you succeed?” Solaris asked, glancing down at the vial in Perry’s hand.

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” Solaris said. “I was only just recently made aware of the threat they posed,” Solaris gestured to his head with trembling fingers. “My…Anchors felt that I couldn’t be trusted to deal with them, due to recent circumstances.”

“I see.” Perry said.

“How does it work?” Solaris asked, steadying his hands on the couch.

“It rapidly vibrates their shapeshifting abilities, causing them to go slightly out of control,” Perry said. “Bit like a taser makes you lock up.”

Perry tried not to react when he felt Solaris get up and leave, aiming to appear in front of him. An instant later, it happened, Solaris flickering two feet away with a syringe, faster than Heather or Nat could process the change.

“Let’s test it.” Solaris said, filling the syringe from the vial that was no longer in Perry’s hand.

“Sure.” Perry said.

Perry tried not to flinch when the needle went into his arm, nearly bending when it met his tough skin.

He couldn’t know for sure if Solaris had snuck anything in there, but he didn’t have any sort of choice.

Cold filled his arm, and his whole body began tingling, and the air around him began vibrating, then his perception of reality, then his body itself.

“This….sucks,” Perry muttered through clenched teeth as everything around him, including his heart and nerves, wobbled in and out like he was a gong that had been struck in slow motion.

Against his will, his three copies combined back into one, their separation nullified by the injection.

“I’ll bet.” Solaris murmured, watching Perry with unnerving intensity.

Once the vibrations began to subside, Perry let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. No more stressful than a trip to the dentist.

“Ah, but you know what? We need a control group.”

Solaris disappeared and returned with Guile a second later. The stealth-based super’s hyperweave was torn away, exposing a surprisingly young face, albeit swollen and bloody.

“Let’s try him.”

Guile met Perry’s gaze. “ParadoX! Solaris has betrayed-“

“Shut up,” Solaris muttered, leaning down and injecting Guile with the needle.

A moment later Guile began to convulse, melting, growing, sprouting wings, extra eyes and mouths, all at once. Heather and Nat clapped their hands over the twin’s eyes.

“Hmmm.” Solaris mused, looking down at Guile with pitiless eyes. “I guess you did it. Yes. It works well.”

Solaris glanced up at Perry. “How soon can you test all of Franklin City?”

“Tomorrow.” Perry overpromised, heart hammering in his chest.

“Excellent. I’ll handle the logistics,” Solaris said, moments before he flickered between Perry’s family on the couch, injecting each of them with the Mimic Test.

Gareth grunted, Sera didn’t even notice, Annette went still and Natalie squeaked in alarm.

Heather…hissed and slapped her hand over her shoulder before her body grew spikey, while parts of her face drooped.

In that instant, Perry felt Solaris’s intent turn towards killing her.

The chair behind Perry exploded into shrapnel as he lunged forward at seven hundred times faster than a normal human could move, intent on placing himself between Heather and Solaris, whose hand had just begun to twitch.

There was an arm around his throat.

“What are you doing?” Solaris asked, his voice now behind Perry even as the after-image of the super faded from Perry’s eyes.

“She’s. A Shapeshifter.” Perry gritted out as the arm around his neck tightened. “Not a mimic.”

Solaris glanced up, to where a trembling Natalie was covering Heather with her own body, one of her metal-controlling rings flaring with power as the brass-haired girl melted into the sofa, shaking violently.

Gareth and Sera tumbled to the floor, where a trembling Annette scooped them up, her knuckles white around the emergency escape chalk Perry had given her.

“Shapeshifter? Who was she again?”

“Wraith.” Perry said.

“Not ringing any bells.”

“Heather Skinner.”

“Karnos’s kid?” Solaris mused. “Right. Shapeshifter.”

The powerful super gave a long glance back at Heather, who hadn’t grown any new limbs, eyes, tentacles or faces, only uncontrollably changing the shape of what was already there.

“My mistake.” Solaris said, the immovable arm unwinding from Perry’s neck before retrieving a little leather-bound journal from Solaris’ hyperweave and jotting down a note.

“You umm…”

“Making corrections.” Solaris said, brandishing the journal. “Gotta read through every night and practice them to make connections between neurons again.” He tapped his head. “Brain’ll patch itself back up faster that way.”

“Right, Solaris said, relaxing as he scanned the six of them. “Looks like you’re all clean.”

He turned his attention back to Perry.

“I apologize for scaring your family, Paradox. There have been some…interesting developments among my Anchors recently, and I wasn’t interested in repeating them with someone as powerful as you.”

Perry glanced down at Mimic Guile who was slowly recovering from the serum.

“How many-“

“All of ‘em.” Solaris interrupted, his eyes dead.

Perry felt a chill run down his spine.

“What about my-“

“Couldn’t find her. Probably some sort of luck magic.” Solaris said before clapping Perry on the shoulder. “Which means there’s still a chance for you to put her down yourself. Pretty sure your dad is still…whatever he is, wherever he is. The man is slippery as hell.”

For a moment he looked nostalgic before refocusing on Perry.

“Tomorrow, I want sixty eighteen wheelers of serum on the streets of Franklin, loaded top to bottom,” Solaris said, motioning high and then low to illustrate his request. “Single dose, ready-to-use packaging.”

I’m gonna need a bigger factory, Perry thought.

“Understood.” He said.

“Excellent.” Solaris said, clapping Perry on the shoulder before reaching down to pick up the mimic of Guile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“He’s insane,” Mimic Guile said, looking at Perry with desperation. “You’ve got to-“

Solaris vanished, taking the doomed mimic with him.

Weak at the knees, Perry stumbled back to where his chair was and collapsed into the pile of shredded wood.

“That could’ve gone worse,” Perry offered, his mind running at full speed.

Paradox’s Probability Dodge.exe (16)

Perry split into sixteen instances.

“Could’ve done a lot better, too.” Nat whispered.

As a throwaway test, Perry had one of his duplicates speak:

“Don’t say anything. He’s still listening to u-“

That duplicate went blank.

Perry was almost too exhausted to be terrified, sitting with his back against the wall. So they were under surveillance. Awesome. Having his Anchors turn on him had finally caused Solaris’s paranoia to cross over from ‘extremely suspicious’ to ‘pathologic.’

“I think…I need to go back to work. Sixty sixteen wheelers isn’t gonna happen by itself.” Perry said, resting his shaking hands on his knees.

I need to prep my gear for a fight with Solaris. The shit has hit the fan and I’m not sure Solaris can be trusted to make good decisions anymore.

“Is there any way you can do that…without leaving?” Heather asked, her voice uncharacteristically quiet and trembling.

Rather than respond, Perry stood up and wrapped his arms around the mother of his children. Nat followed suit a moment later, engulfing Heather from all sides.

They waited until the trembling subsided.

“I don’t think I can.” Perry said quietly. “But I swear, I’m gonna get us through this okay. Okay?”

“Okay.” Heather squeaked.

Even at my maximum speed, seven hundred and twenty five times faster than a human can run is still three thousandths of one percent of the speed of light. I don’t even hold a candle.

Perry was strong for a super. Very strong. He wasn’t astronomical, though. Not yet. But he was smarter than Solaris. There had to be a way he could pull everyone through.

In the meantime…he had to buy some time.

“I’ll be back in the morning.” Perry said, kissing Heather on the forehead.

Portal.exe

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