The sun was a brilliant slash of gold on the horizon, painting the skyscrapers of Manhattan in morning light. But in the soundproofed sanctuary of my private training room, it was still the dead of night.
I stood in the center of the padded room, the air still and cool against my skin. The power thrumming beneath my flesh was a tempestuous ocean, an entity so vast it felt alien, and yet it was as much a part of me as my own heartbeat. My previous self, the man who had woken up in this world what felt like a lifetime ago, was now a faded photograph.
[Morning, Boss!] the System's voice chirped in my head, its cheerfulness a comical contrast to the lethal potential I now possessed. [Sleep well? Or were you up all night dreaming of all the glorious XP you get to spend? Because I was. It was beautiful. A waterfall of pure data.]
"There's no time for sleep," I murmured, rolling my shoulders. The movement felt different, imbued with a sense of effortless force. "It's time for a Power diagnostic."
My Super Strength was now Tier 1. I walked over to a custom-made leg press machine in the corner, a monolithic piece of equipment built from tungsten and carbon fiber, designed for Supe-level strength training. The weight stack was a column of dense plates that went up to twenty tons. I loaded it to the maximum, lay down on the sled, placed my feet on the platform, and pushed. With a whisper of hydraulics, the twenty tons of metal moved with the ease of a child's toy. It was like pushing an empty shopping cart. The thought slid into my mind: I could have pushed the entire building over if I'd had the leverage. This was Homelander's strength.
Next, Super Defence. I retrieved the Spectre pistol from my inventory, its polymer frame cool in my hand. I had no way to test myself against a nuke just yet, but you had to start somewhere. I held the pistol to my forearm, the muzzle pressing against the skin.
[Uh, Boss? Are you sure about this?] the System asked, a rare note of synthetic concern in its voice. [I mean, I'm pretty sure the warranty covers catastrophic hardware failure, but still... might wanna start with a Nerf gun first? Just to be safe?]
Ignoring it, I pulled the trigger. The suppressed thump was loud in the silent room. The .45 ACP round struck my skin and flattened instantly, pancaking into a deformed disk of lead and copper that dropped to the floor with a harmless tink. There was no pain, no mark, not even a flicker of redness.
I then tried my carbon fiber knife, a blade so sharp it could sever Kevlar fibers on a molecular level. It skittered uselessly across my skin, the sound like a fingernail on glass, unable to find purchase. Getting frustrated with its impotence, I focused my new strength, pressing the impossibly sharp edge against the center of my palm and pushing. For a moment, there was nothing. Then, with a sickening crack, the blade snapped in half.
Satisfied, I moved on to the more exotic abilities. Fire Manipulation. I held out my hand, palm up. I needed an external source to command. I retrieved a simple Zippo lighter from my inventory, its familiar metallic click echoing in the gym. I sparked a small flame.
I focused my will on that flickering point of heat.
The flame detached from the wick, lifting into the air to hover above my palm like a miniature sun. It writhed and danced at my mental command, an obedient creature of pure energy. I made it expand into a roaring ball of fire the size of my head yet my skin felt nothing but a pleasant warmth. I compressed it, squeezing the energy down until it became a white-hot lance of plasma, thin as a needle and humming with power, sharp enough to cut steel.
I turned my attention to the twenty-ton weight stack from the leg press. I lifted my hand, reaching out with my mind. A low groaning sound of protesting metal filled the room as the entire stack lifted a foot into the air, trembling under the strain. I pushed harder, but it wouldn't budge. The ten-ton limit of the Tier 3 power was a hard ceiling. But it was real. I could move small sections of mountains.
Then, the next ability. This was the one that worried me. The patient I had taken it from at Sage Grove was a "Phaser," not a true teleporter. There could be flaws. Hughie's brief stint with the power had left him naked, a walking punchline. The last thing I needed was to pop into a Vought board meeting in my boxers.
"System," I asked, the word spoken aloud. "What are the parameters of this power? Are there any… side effects I should be aware of?"
[Side effects? Boss, you wound me!] the System replied, feigning offense. [Do you really think I'd give you a beta-test version of a power? When you plunder an ability, I optimize it. I'm like a master software engineer. I take their unstable coded mess, I debug it, patch the security holes, and give you the gold master version 2.0.]
The interface shimmered into existence before my eyes, showing a side-by-side comparison. On one side was a file for "Sage Grove Patient #1138," with flashing red notes like "uncontrolled spatial jumps," "matter integration risk," and "causes explosive diarrhea." Okay, maybe not that last one. On the other side was my version of the power, stamped with a big green "STABLE."
[Their powers come from an unstable source: Compound V,] the System explained, its tone shifting into a lecturer's cadence. [It's like running a high-end graphics program on a computer riddled with viruses. It might work, but it's gonna be slow, it's gonna crash, and it might even fry your motherboard. I purify the power, strip out all the Compound V garbage, and integrate the pure concept of the ability directly into your being. So no, you will not end up naked, or fused halfway into a wall. I have standards.]
"Alright," I said, a new wave of confidence washing over me. "Let's try it."
I focused on the far side of the massive gym, a hundred feet away. I visualized the destination, the specific spot on the padded floor, down to the scuff marks. Then I activated the power.
The world simply… changed. One instant, I was standing by the leg press. Next, I was on the other side of the room. My clothes were still on. My stomach was still where it should be. It was a seamless transition.
[See? Clean as a whistle. You've got a hundred-meter range with that thing now, by the way. Instant transmission. Very cool.]
A quiet satisfaction settled over me. I let the interface displaying my full list of powers shimmer before my eyes. Each one was a formidable weapon. Super Strength. Regeneration. Cryokinesis. But as I reviewed them, one stood out as glaringly redundant.
Carbon Skin. A Tier 3 power that granted me indestructible skin. It was the power I had risked so much to intercept from The Boys, the entire reason for my elaborate shadow play with Hughie and Translucent. But now… it was useless. Utterly, completely useless.
My Tier 1 Super Defence made my entire body, inside and out, from my bones to my eyeballs, functionally indestructible. Carbon Skin was like putting a cheap padlock on the main gate of a nuclear bunker.