Displaced

Chapter 104

It took Blake a while to realize that the grey blurry ceiling in his vision was just that, a ceiling, and not some form of terribly bland afterlife. It took him a little longer to realize that this meant he was alive. It took him longer still to realize that he was stark naked.

The shock of it all was enough to make him try to sit up before he could think about what that meant. His body didn't respond, not even his upper half. Crippling fear gripped him as visions of a life struck with full paralysis flashed through his mind.

No, he realized after a moment of panic. He could feel the touch of something cold against his arm and back, as well as the bands holding his left arm prosthetic in place. With great trepidation, he willed his hand to close, and to his great relief, it slowly did. It just felt like he was moving through the world's thickest quicksand, the simple act of making a fist now a monumental endeavor.

That was what this was: utter exhaustion. Pain, too, an ache so pervasive that he hadn't noticed it until now, as it had almost become the new normal. Blake didn't feel like he'd been hit by a truck, he felt like he'd been hit by a cargo ship carrying freight trains loaded to the brim with trucks.

What the fuck had happened to him?

With a greater will and intent than last time, Blake tried to push his body up even fifteen degrees, but once again gravity proved to be a villain he could not vanquish just yet. He could, however, circumvent it. His bed liquefied and flowed, pulling in cantacrenyx crystals from the nearby wall.

Shifting into Hyper Mode to construct the necessary circuits and pathways, Blake felt a hot fire rip through his inner being. He gasped and dropped out of it immediately, his lungs heaving feebly.

Blake needed his power to move around, as his physical body wasn't up to the task at the moment, but he needed Hyper Mode to use it best. Without it, just making simple locomotion would take him a week. So, closing his eyes, Blake went under for a second try.

The fire returned, though he found it more bearable now that he was ready for it. Gritting his teeth, he forged ahead, building the circuits and motors, armrests and wheels. Soon enough, he dropped back into normal time with a breath of relief to find himself reclining in a cold, metal powered wheelchair.

But he was still naked.

Steering his wheelchair in a circle using a small joystick on the left armrest—his fake left arm being the only part of his body that seemed to fully work at the moment—he looked around for his suit. Where had he put it? And why had he taken it off in the first place? He couldn't remember, and that bothered him.

Blake eventually found his suit, or the remnants of it at least, lying in a heap in the far corner of his room. With an internal squawk of protest, he zipped his wheelchair over to take a better look. What he found immediately set him on edge. His suit looked as if it had been ripped apart, the metal clearly torn to pieces with brute force. Had he been attacked?

Quickly looking around his chambers again, this time Blake noticed the door, or what was left of it. Like his suit, the metal had been rent asunder by an unknown adversary, though Blake had a pretty good idea of the culprit. Only one person that he knew of was strong enough to tear through metal that thick. But if Gabriela had done all that... why was he still alive?

Blake needed answers fast, but first he needed clothes and a secure area. To start, he created some undergarments from tucrenyx, using the same microscopic mesh technique that he used every morning. Then, he willed the remnants of his suit to flow across the floor and up his leg. Finally, with a groan, he mentally stepped back into the fire in his soul. As fast as he could manage, he formed the scraps into the armor that he had grown so used to. He could have made it from scratch without the old bits, but the broken pieces had all the needed cantacrenyx crystals in all the right sizes already collected.