I unplugged the apartment phone before I started.
Closed the blinds. Killed the overhead light. Left only the one lamp in the corner with the green shade because the green shade had been there when I'd inherited the place and I'd come to associate it with a specific quality of concentration.
Sat on the floor with my back against the couch.
Pulled up the System fusion matrix.
[Compatible combinations identified.]
[Sonic Projection × Fear Induction — high compatibility.]
[Telekinetic Touch × Density Shift — high compatibility.]
[Pyrokinesis (Intermediate) × Electrical Manipulation — high compatibility.]
I'd run those three through the matrix in my head a hundred times in the last week. Each pairing was clean. Each one cost me two slots and gave me one. Net: minus three slots, plus three abilities at a tier I didn't yet have.
I'd budgeted forty-eight hours. I was hoping for seventy-two.
I picked the sonic-fear pairing first.
The fusion hold was a thing I'd learned in the Unbreakable session months ago. Hands flat on my thighs. Eyes closed. Two of the powers in storage named in the front of my mind at the same time, and held, and held, until they began to grind against each other and something inside the System made a sound that wasn't a sound and the two stored signatures dropped out of inventory and a single new shape came into the mind-space where they'd been.
The first attempt failed at minute thirteen.
The second attempt failed at minute seven.
The third attempt held.
I felt the fragment-leak come first, the way it always came — somebody else's memory taking a brief rental in my head. The sonic screamer in the basement fight ring had been at his daughter's school recital three weeks before I took him, and for a quarter of a second I was in a metal folding chair listening to a child play Twinkle Twinkle on a recorder. The fear man had eaten cold spaghetti out of a tupperware behind the wheel of a parked car at one in the morning the night before I caught him; for a full second I could taste cold tomato sauce and tinned olives.
Then the new ability arrived.
[Fusion: Terror Scream — B-Tier.]
[Description: Audible pulse. 5m radius. Triggers acute panic response in living targets within range. Cooldown: 8 hours. Cost per use: 60 PP.]
I tried it on the wall.
Opened my mouth and let it out in a low hiss — the System gave me the shape of it, a vibration at the back of the throat I'd never made before — and the wall paint in front of me developed three thin vertical cracks in the plaster, and the lamp with the green shade fell off the side table.
A neighbor's dog started barking three apartments away.
Nothing happened to me. Not in the head. Apparently you couldn't terror-scream yourself.
I logged it. Drank a glass of water. Ate a granola bar I'd left on the counter the day before. Lay down on the couch for forty minutes because my hands were trembling.
Then I did the second one.
Telekinetic Touch and Density Shift.
That one I'd been less sure about. They felt compatible on paper but the densities-of-objects and the moving-of-objects had different shapes in storage. The first attempt did the failure thing where the two powers refused each other and bumped me out of the fusion hold.
The second attempt did something I hadn't seen before. Locked me into the fusion hold for nine minutes and would not release. My pulse climbed. Sweat ran down my temples. I had to consciously walk through the System interface and cancel the operation, which I'd never done — there'd never been a need before, the fusion either took or it didn't — and the cancel brought a dull weight down on the inside of my skull that took twenty minutes to fade.
I drank more water. Ate three slices of cold pizza out of the fridge. Decided to break the apartment-only rule and ordered another pizza for delivery because I needed calories more than I needed adherence.
The third attempt of the second fusion took.
[Fusion: Force Mastery — A-Tier.]
[Description: Telekinetic manipulation with variable density application. Range: 8m. Mass limit: 200 kg. Cooldown: 4 hours. Cost per use: 80 PP/minute of sustained.]
I tested it on a coffee cup. Lifted it. Set it down. Lifted it. Made it heavier. Made it lighter than a feather. Set it down without touching it — softly enough that the ceramic made no sound on the wood.
I sat with that one a while. That was a quiet, dangerous power. I could think of seven extractions in my history that would have been cleaner with that ability. I could think of two specific people who'd be alive in different physical conditions if I'd had it on those nights.
The fragment-leak from that fusion was the worst yet. Both the telekinetic and the density-shifter had carried lives I hadn't wanted; the density-shifter had been thinking about his sister when I'd phased into his bedroom, and her face was clear in my head for almost a minute after the fusion locked.
I closed my eyes. Let it pass.
The pizza arrived at the door.
I ate the pizza. Slept on the couch for six hours.
The third fusion was the next afternoon.
Pyrokinesis Intermediate plus Electrical Manipulation Minor.
The first attempt nearly set the curtain on fire. The second one held.
[Fusion: Plasma Core — A-Tier.]
[Description: Generates and projects superheated ionized energy. Range: 4m. Cost per use: 100 PP per discharge. Cooldown: 6 hours.]
I went down to the parking garage of my own building at three in the morning and tested it on a concrete pillar in the corner where nobody parked. A short, contained pulse the size of a fist. The pillar got a black-and-white burn mark where the impact landed and the air smelled like an electrical fire for four minutes after.
I went back upstairs.
Stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at the man in it.
Jaw was leaner than it had been at the start of the year. Eyes were tired. The bruising on the throat from June was a faint yellow ghost still, four months on, that would be invisible to anyone who hadn't seen it dark. Hair longer than I usually kept it.
[Storage: 9/12.]
[Power inventory consolidated.]
[Net rank: C. Level: 58.]
[Combat capability: A-tier ceiling.]
I didn't smile at the mirror. There was nothing to smile at. The face in the mirror was the face of a man who could now do three things he hadn't been able to do four days ago, and one of those things was put a pillar of plasma into the chest of a person, and the man in the mirror was not the same man who'd lifted a roller wrench off a garage floor with his mind for the first time in 2015.
I'd gained powers and lost something I couldn't name and in my line of work this was called consolidation and it was supposed to be a good day.
I ate the rest of the pizza standing at the counter.
Went to bed.
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