Chapter 15
My hands on the steering wheel had gone clammy. My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird.
What was I supposed to do? Who were these people? What did they want from me?
Thoughts spun in a panicked whirlwind, each one more terrifying than the last. Was I really going to die? This stupidly and ingloriously, barely a week into my time here, just when life was starting to turn around?
Okay. Okay. Inhale. Exhale. Calm down.
I forced a deep, ragged breath into my lungs and felt them burn. Panic was not going to fix anything. Logic. I needed logic. If they had wanted to kill me, they probably would have done it already. They could have opened fire on the car at any one of the intersections. But if they were simply watching, that meant they had a different goal. That meant I had time. I needed to lose them.
How did people do it in those cool spy thrillers? Sharp turn into an alley? Punch the gas and break away? As luck would have it, my head rang with useless emptiness. Every sensible thought had evaporated, leaving me alone with a panicked, malfunctioning brain.
Thoughts. Right. The Intellect Potion. My trump card. I would definitely come up with something under its influence. But to take it, I needed to buy myself at least a few minutes first.
I spotted a small café with open windows ahead. Keeping my expression neutral, I smoothly changed lanes and pulled over. I got out without looking back, as if the stop had been planned all along, and went inside. I ordered a salad and coffee, the most mundane thing I could think of. While the order was being prepared, I took a seat at a table by the window. The black Land Cruiser did not drive past. It parked a little further down on the opposite side of the street. They were waiting for me to come back out. Apparently, walking in and making a scene in the middle of Manhattan was not their style. That bought me a window.
I excused myself to the restroom. Cold water on my wrists brought my feverish pulse down a notch. I looked at my pale reflection in the mirror, pulled a vial of the Potion from inventory, and drank the tart, near-tasteless liquid in one swallow.
The effect did not kick in immediately. I returned to my table, and for the first few seconds nothing happened. Then, it was as if someone had reached into my skull and turned a dial. The panicked noise began to fade, dissolving into clear, distinct signals. Emotions retreated to the background, transforming from all-consuming terror into just another variable in an equation. My brain accelerated to a pace I had no natural name for, fully detached from the ordinary flow of the world. All that remained was the problem, and the solutions.
Problem: A group of unknown pursuers in a tinted black Toyota Land Cruiser. Targets: Unknown. Composition: Unknown.
Surveillance Analysis: Average or below professional grade. High-level professionals such as S.H.I.E.L.D. or the FBI would not use the same high-visibility vehicle for extended surveillance. They would run a box formation, rotating cars constantly. These tactics were crude and direct. Either this was a deliberate show of force, or it was simple incompetence. Probability of a deliberate meta-trap, that they wanted me to notice them: less than five percent. Too elaborate for amateurs, too clumsy for professionals. Discarded as unlikely. Conclusion: I was not dealing with a top-tier government intelligence agency.
Motive Analysis: I needed to examine all of my recent unusual actions.
Ghost Orchid, approximately seventy percent probability. A unique mystical resource. Taking it was the most conspicuous thing I had done in this world so far. The flower likely had guardians, and they had spent several days tracking me down through conventional means: cameras, witnesses.
Selling the gold, approximately twenty-five percent. Less likely. Gold was a standard criminal target, and anyone who had tailed me from a pawnshop would more probably have attempted a straightforward robbery rather than running a discreet surveillance operation. Still, it could not be ruled out entirely. Perhaps they believed I had an ongoing source and wanted to take it from me.
Another factor entirely, approximately five percent. My interaction with Parker? A brief exchange with Osborn? My nature as a transmigrator? Too many unknowns. I filed this as statistical noise until more data emerged. Conclusion: The most probable cause was the Ghost Orchid.
Persona Analysis: If the Orchid was the trigger, then the people watching me were those who knew of its existence. The circle was narrowing but still wide. Descendants of the Lenape? A magical order? A gang using it in their rituals? The Hand? I probably would not have spotted the Hand. I needed to look for clues in what was already visible.
A black Land Cruiser. Full tint. Front side windows. Also fully tinted. I paused on that. That was a direct violation of New York State traffic law. I quietly opened my phone's browser. "New York Window Tint Law." As expected: front side windows could not transmit less than seventy percent of light. Full tint was prohibited. With one exception. A single one: a medical certificate for severe light sensitivity.
My brain immediately built the chain. Severe light sensitivity. Medical conditions: Porphyria. Albinism. Systemic Lupus. Sun allergy. In the Marvel universe, there was at least one sentient race with exactly that diagnosis. A nocturnal species with superhuman strength and speed. And a pathological aversion to sunlight. Vampires.
The hypothesis instantly accounted for everything: their unwillingness to leave the vehicle during daylight, their preference for brute force over subtlety, and their interest in a mystical ingredient like the Orchid. They had no obvious reason to care about gold in such a raw, unprocessed form.
Result: Greater than eighty percent probability that I was being followed by a vampire clan for taking the Ghost Orchid.
Alright. Operating on the assumption that they were actually vampires, what then? My brain, liberated from fear, began running the options. Direct confrontation was a guaranteed death sentence. Their physical capabilities were orders of magnitude beyond mine. But they had weaknesses. Sunlight. Possibly silver.
Those physical advantages, though, all paled against one critical vulnerability, one I probably would not even have registered without the Potion running through me. Now, with my mind operating at this level, I was calculating hundreds of possible scenarios, filtering out the losing ones, and searching for the single viable path. And I thought I had found it. The plan was reckless, built on one assumption I had never tested in practice. But it existed.
"Your order, sir." The waitress set a plate of salad and a cup of coffee in front of me, pulling me briefly out of the tactical current.
I thanked her and began eating slowly, using every second to turn each detail of the upcoming operation over in my mind. Vampires in this world were not the brooding hermits of teen romance fiction. They were apex predators, killing machines capable of mentally dominating their prey. That last trait made them especially dangerous. One glance, one command, and I could hand over everything they wanted without resistance. Direct contact had to be avoided at all costs. My plan did not involve dialogue. It did not even involve eye contact. It was going to be me or them, and there was no middle ground.
After finishing the meal, I left a few dollars on the table and walked out. Calmly, without rushing. I got back behind the wheel of the Honda and pulled onto the road toward Hell's Kitchen. The black Land Cruiser eased smoothly into traffic behind me.
Despite the extremely inconvenient problem of supernatural predators on my tail, I was not exactly a helpless target. I had several asymmetric advantages. The system. A chemically supercharged intellect. And the fact that they did not know my new address. That last one felt temporary, and I knew it. Once I dealt with these bloodsuckers, relocating was going to demand serious thought.
"Khaaaa." I exhaled in sharp irritation. My brief vacation in this world was over before it had properly begun. I had not come close to the level of power and security I had been building toward. Which meant what, exactly? It meant I was going to have to accelerate my development under pressure, risking attracting even more unwanted attention in the process. "Just fantastic. Why couldn't you stay home, you miserable devils," I muttered at the empty car, eyes fixed on the road.
Glancing periodically at the rearview mirror, I watched the Land Cruiser maintain a steady distance of seven to ten car lengths. They were professional enough not to crowd me, but not professional enough to disappear from my awareness entirely. I was leading them. Guiding them straight into the ground I had chosen.
There it was. The familiar abandoned lot where I had sorted through the ores from the Miracle Box. A five-story skeleton of a building at the edge of the neighborhood, weathered and crumbling. On one side, a tall concrete fence created a natural corridor. No cameras, no random pedestrians. And most importantly, the pitted, uneven ground in front of the entrance: the kind no sane driver would push an ordinary vehicle through at speed. The perfect arena.
I turned into the narrow alleyway squeezed between the building wall and the fence, a near-perfect dead end. I killed the engine. Then, without stepping out of the car, I executed the first part of the plan. With a focused mental effort, I placed the Honda in inventory. For a split second I felt the disorienting lurch of a sudden drop before my feet hit the ground.
Not wasting a moment, I slipped into the dark doorway of the abandoned building and pressed into the shadows. I was now bait inside my own trap. All that was left was to wait. They had to come in. The space was too tight, the dead end too complete. The moment I stepped out of that doorway, I would be within arm's reach of their vehicle. But for now: stillness. Stay low. Do not give anything away before the moment. Navigate by sound alone.
I did not have to wait long. Six minutes later by my internal clock, the silence broke with the rumble of a powerful engine. The sound of heavy tires grinding over gravel and rubble grew closer. Then a massive black SUV eased slowly into the dead end, rocking over the uneven ground.
It stopped exactly where the Honda had been a minute earlier. Through the gaps in the wall and the shifting shadows, I could make out their silhouettes. They were probably confused. The target had simply ceased to exist. What if they were all wearing a heavy coat of sunscreen, prepared for exactly this kind of exposed situation?
There was no time to let them think. No time to wait for the engine to cut off or for them to throw the car into reverse.
Now.
I burst out of the doorway with purpose. Two quick strides, and the world narrowed to a single point: the black metal flank of the SUV. I lunged forward, and the next moment my fingers made contact with the warm, dust-filmed body panel. In that fraction of a second, I compressed every desperate hope I had placed in this plan into one focused mental command.
A thousandth of a second.
The world seemed to blink. The massive black SUV, which had just filled the entire space of the dead end, simply ceased to exist. It vanished along with its passengers.
For several long seconds I stood completely still, staring at the void where a two-ton machine had just been. The air still held the tremor of its engine, but the engine itself was gone.
"Too easy," I muttered, genuinely stunned that a plan built on so many untested assumptions had not just worked, but worked perfectly, cleanly, without a single variable going wrong. Even running on the Potion, I could not quite keep the amazement out of my voice.
Fortunately, my mind, still running on its chemical boost, did not allow anything as indulgent as shock or triumph to take over. Instead, it immediately pivoted to cold, dispassionate post-analysis, running failure scenarios it had not been needed for.
Scenario Alpha: The targets were living humans. What if there were no vampires in that vehicle and the inventory had refused to accept them? By the time I registered that my trump card had failed, I would have had roughly 0.7 to 4.3 seconds before they processed their situation and returned fire. The only viable tactical move in that window would have been to drop the car on top of them directly. Brutal? Yes. Ruthless? Absolutely. But not malice. Cold survival mathematics. Under the Potion, I would have done it without hesitation.
Scenario Beta: The system classifies vampires as living beings. A philosophical paradox. I think, therefore I am. I am, therefore I live. Could the system view vampires as a corrupted but still functioning life form? Entirely possible. The response in that case would have been identical to Scenario Alpha: drop the Land Cruiser on them and pray that the daylight flooding the dead end would work in my favor and slow their reactions.
Scenario Gamma: I was wrong, and they were professionals. The worst case. What if they had sensed the setup and bailed from the vehicle early? What if they had simply waited for me at the exit of the building, blocking the only way out? Here I had gambled on their complacency, on their predatory overconfidence and the twisted internal logic I had just turned back against them. The gamble paid off. But it had been a gamble.
I forced that line of thinking to stop. Filling my head with what-ifs after the fact was the same kind of counterproductive spiral as the old story about the falling log that almost killed the youngest daughter. The immediate threat had been neutralized. But would I ever find out who they were, where they came from, or who sent them? Not anytime soon. Which meant others could be waiting in the dark. I had attracted unwanted attention, made mistakes, and now I had to account for that. It was time to stop being a background character.
Leaving in the Honda was obviously out of the question. If I drove it home, they would have my address within hours, and uninvited visitors would probably show up that same night. Buying myself even a few days was critical right now. The car would stay in inventory. I climbed over the concrete fence and exited the abandoned lot on the far side, walking out onto the street like a perfectly ordinary resident of Hell's Kitchen. Then I headed for the nearest trusted hardware store, and this trip was radically different from every previous one.
I was no longer counting every dollar. I was investing. The cart filled with more than pipes and wire this time. A welding machine, a set of precision screwdrivers, a soldering station, an oscilloscope, advanced tool kits, materials packages, canisters of chemical reagents: everything needed to transform an empty garage into a functioning laboratory. Several thousand dollars went without hesitation or regret. I arranged delivery to the house, left the store, and took the subway.
After riding to the station closest to my new home and circling the block a couple of times to confirm I had no tail, I went inside. The delivery had just arrived and was already sitting in the garage. My new temple. My forge. It was ready.
The system's internal screen surfaced helpfully in my mind. Current balance: 200 OP.
Target: reach 250 OP. Primary objective: unlock two key Arcanum blueprints for survivability in my current situation, the Muscle Stimulator and the Protective Field Generator.
I paused briefly at the alternative development branch. The Poison discipline? Tempting, but the risk analysis raised immediate red flags: high OP cost, complex and potentially exotic ingredients for synthesis, unpredictable effects on non-human targets, and a real risk of accidental contamination in my improvised lab. Rejected. Priority: survivability and direct physical enhancement.
Time to get to work. I had to build at least one of those two things today.
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