Chapter 83

  Reboot

  Those were the words that rang out in Misha’s mind.

  While her psyche had been able to be aware, aware, and most importantly present during the entire metamorphosis of her body, she was only now able to slip back into her body.

  Burning blood.

  Worse, her mind felt like it was on fire.

  Her muscles were burnt and frayed.

  If anything, she felt like she had somehow lost muscle mass in the conversionary process.

  Mentally, her psyche understood that had she not been a Psycher, had she not been able to detach her cognitive thought processes away from her body, then she would have died.

  That or her cognitive faculties would have been rendered to a state of inability to process. Her mind, the tissues that made up the mind were overtaxed and frayed.

  For a moment Misha let the finality of such a fate wash over her.

  A fate worse than death for a true Psycher, one where their mind was lost and damaged, unable to be used while the body they were in forced a slow constrained death.

  This was part of why the art of rebirth was so important. So that she could shed away old or otherwise defective bodies, for those that would operate properly.

  Once again, the system message scrolled in her mind, though this time it felt less like daggers and more like sharp fingernails scraping against her cerebral cortex.

  Interestingly enough, Misha could feel the neurons in her mind repairing themselves. If she managed to maintain her mental connection to her core processes, a minor function of a Psycher, then she would be able to survive this process.

  All she had to do right now was focus.

  Her mind remembered her struggles in space, where traveling for hundreds and thousands of sectors had its toll on her outer layers of mental protection.

  By comparison, this level of detail was nothing.

  In fact, the act felt oddly comforting.

  Almost like she found an old worn pair of shoes that fit her feet perfectly. Or a glove that had once been too big, only to now fit exactly right.

  These were the way her body now felt to her.

  It wasn’t until the third time of seeing the now slightly annoying message that Misha was able to place a reason to why this suddenly felt so nostalgic.

  This was almost identical to the way her new bodies would feel when she was reborn.

  Realizing this, Misha felt panic set in, as she mentally went through the test list of features that such a rebirth entailed.

  There was the scoping of the muscular system and the cardiovascular system. The rewiring of the body’s energy supply to ensure that the brain receives the majority of generated energy. Finally, there was the neural re-writing of her brain that was made to better suit her own psyche.

  This last part, the neural re-writing was the most important feature, and one that all Psychers were told to over-clock during.

  Realizing that this might be a similar function, Misha herself began to over-clock her mind.

  That is, take and exert her will at an astronomical level to help direct change on the outside world.

  Her watch, her phone.

  She connected to both and began working both independently of each other. From the phone, she found that the area was a dead zone, or at least it should have been. Rather than letting her phone die, she changed the frequency of the energy being transmitted. Forcing her phone to transmit in the 6GHz range, using her mind to both sully the extra energy and support the extra strain that would normally be enough to fry a phone.

  With the extra energy, she was able to push a signal through the trees and surrounding forest to reach out to a nearby cell tower. From there, Misha’s mind was able to momentarily reach out to the information of the world.

  Like a vast ocean finally being allowed to fill a small but open fissure, Misha stared at the ocean of knowledge for a moment, letting information flow over and through her.

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  This was tough, but something that Misha knew must be done, if she was to fully push this body as hard as she thought it could go.

  Having gone through a similar process multiple times before, Misha was aware of her mental tolerance and what was enough.

  Then once her mind finally adjusted and flexed out enough to reach this level of knowledge, she stretched one further. Heading out and connecting from the communications pole that she was now connected to and pushed her mind forward to a base station controller.

  Flood.

  That was when the true knowledge of the world came to and flowed through her mind.

  She didn’t have to know or be able to understand any of the information that was now flowing past her. Instead, she knew she just needed to be able to stand there, and let the waves of knowledge flash over and around her. Much like sitting in a fast flowing current, she just needed to sit there and force the information to flow over and around her. She was an unmoving bolder in the sea of campus information, and yet her presence would only show up as a minor blip, to the local campus. A minor delay in loading times, a forced momentary refresh of an article or video.

  Everything and nothing was around her.

  Then finally once her mind was to the part where she felt comfortable, she pushed her mind one step further.

  Initially, she wanted to push her mind to connect to a second base station from a different network, but ultimately chose to stop at a different cell tower of a competitor.

  While this wasn’t the full flood of information, she had hoped to be able to withstand, it was still substantial and ultimately what she felt her mind could currently endure.

  Only now, once her mental stretching was complete, did she stop her mental exercises. She stopped her forced strain for information and pulled back within herself, slowly.

  She didn’t retreat from the waves of information, rather she fortified her mind to be able to expand out and contract back just as efficiently.

  Once again, there was the taste of burnt copper in her mouth, as her mind was pushed beyond its reasonable standards. But even still, this was nothing, as she could already feel the processes that her mind and body were going through right now repairing the mind, making the entire thing more stable for continued future use.

  Panting.

  There was of course one problem, her body was clearly running out of resources. Even now, she could feel her already taxed and compacted fat cells being burned away at an alarming rate. Her body was still converting the older proteins of her inefficient form into newer fuel sources, but even that was not enough.

  This was why, with the last of her fading consciousness, Misha used her last connection to the cell tower to send out an alert, a call for help.

  Ping.

  Her phone even managed to give out the exact geolocation of her current position. Somehow during this she managed to send out a call for help.

  Then slowly her over clocked mind began to fade, as even her Psycher reserve of energy was pushed too far.

  She was still alive, still stable, but she needed to retreat inward on herself, to fully protect the core of her consciousness, before she lost it entirely.

  Even now, she wondered if she pushed this shell too far too fast. This was a Bakshee shell, and despite clearly understanding the resurrection processes of Psychers, this shell was lacking in some clear ways.

  Still, it hadn’t entirely been for naught, as Misha could feel the effects and changes to her body and mind. Improvements that pushed the previously conceived limitations to new heights and limits.

  Though now, it would be a test to see if all her changes would have been in vain, as she now found herself stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  Well, not nowhere, this was a used nature trail, but one that might take time for someone to find her. But that was an issue for future Misha.

  As it was, she was almost certain that without help, she would be able to get back to consciousness in time, once her body had burned away and converted more excess fat and muscle into useable energy sources. Energy that she would then use to get to safety.

  But only after she had a moment to rest.

  This shouldn’t take too long.

  Darkness.

  ***

  (Darcy Renolds)

  Fidget.

  Darcy found herself fidgeting in the waiting room area of the Campus’s emergency hospital. Honestly for such a large campus, Darcy was still impressed with the facilities here, but that was to be expected with one of the most prestigious campuses of the world.

  Off to her right Jasmine also sat quietly.

  The TV was on, but the volume was down so low that the TV really just offered flashes of bright colors every once in a while. Flashes that would momentarily catch Darcy’s attention and reveal a giant yellow square, and a bright pink character designed for kids.

  Darcy’s mind would wander to the images for only a moment, particularly after the white and pristine waiting room floor would flash with colors and technicolor violence, drawing your attention once again to the big screen, only to then realize it was the same uninteresting image that seemed oddly unimportant at the time.

  Then again compared to her, everything seemed to be unimportant.

  Especially compared to the condition that she was in when they found her.

  It looked like she got attacked by a wild bear.

  Dried blood and slime congealed itself under her nose and around her mouth. Her shirt was covered in blood.

  The entire thing was enough to cause Darcy to have nightmares.

  When she first got the distress call from Misha, she had thought it to be a mistake.

  Yet, there was something odd about the message that clearly came from Misha’s phone.

  One word and coordinates.

  At first the entire thing seemed like a bad joke. Something one would send as a prank. For it took Darcy’s mind a moment to realize what those numbers were. They were her exact geolocation.

  Again, had it been sent by anyone else, Darcy would have likely dismissed the message, but this was Misha. She never joked.

  Actually, she almost never texted either, which was odd as the girl lived and breathed machines.

  This was why Darcy took a minute before attempting to call Misha, only to find her call was unreachable.

  Then when she blankly stared at what to do next, Jasmine called her.

  Ring.

  “Hello,” Darcy replied, confusion in her voice as she could count on one hand the number of times that Jasmine would call.

  “Did you get the message too?” Jasmine instantly cut in, her voice filled with panic.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what those coordinates mean,” Darcy said, explaining what she had gleamed from the longitudinal and latitudinal numerals that were displayed before her.

  “Her geolocation, that makes so much sense,” Jasmine replied, before hanging up abruptly.

  Call ended.

  Darcy was lost and confused for a moment, just staring at her phone that showed a time call of :37 seconds flashing in red lettering.

  Finally, after a few minutes, Jasmine called back, that’s when Jasmine said the three words that would both send chills down Darcy’s spine, and simultaneously leave her slightly relieved.

  “They found her,” was all Jasmine said.

  From there, a story was told as Darcy found herself instinctively grabbing her keys, her wallet, and heading out the door before she even knew what was happening.

  As she left, Jasmine filled her in on what had happened in those few minutes where Darcy just stared confusedly at her phone.

  Jasmine had been all over it, calling into campus security, relaying the coordinates. Stating that they were geo coordinates. That is when the operator said they already got the message and had a patrol heading out to the area.

  There was also something else that was concerning.

  Something that now caused this unsteady silence between the two.

  “Yes, apparently this is not the first female student to be attacked. And the campus security, and police will want to question us, about what might have happened,” Jasmine responded.

  Hearing the words, they still felt unreal.

  This wasn’t the only instance of such an attack on campus?

  Also, who would go after Misha, she was a juggernaut of power. The very embodiment of strength to Darcy.

  Then a worse thought came to her mind, if these people could get Misha, then they could easily get her as well.

  “Why aren’t they saying anything?” Darcy asked, but as soon as she spoke the words, she already knew the answer.

  “Why do you think?” Jasmine responded.

  And like that, it was clear that she and Jasmine had come to the same conclusion. That the campus didn’t let this information out, as they didn’t want to start students panicking.

  Yet it was already too late. As there was Misha and at least one, maybe two others who had been targeted.

  Flash.

  Once again images of explosions flashed across the floor, drawing Darcy’s attention to the screen where animated violence was once again unfolding. Darcy watched the violence with an incomprehensible stare for a moment, before once again dismissing it, letting her mind try to filter out every other distraction so she could just focus.

  Clip-clop.

  That is when the sound of polished shoes impacting the smooth tile floors could be heard, echoing throughout the open reception area.

  Hearing the new sound, Darcy and Jasmine both turned to stare at the source of the sound.

  There standing at full height was an officer in their mid-to-late thirties with a bald head heading towards the reception desk.

  Seeing the officer, Darcy’s heart froze as she knew why he was here. That he would do as Jasmine had said, he would come to talk to the two of them.

  But seeing his interaction with the front desk clerk, it was clear he would want to talk to the victim first. A victim that Darcy saw being wheeling in on a gurney right in front of her. That was how she knew where to wait here, for her to return.

  This was also how Jasmine also knew that this was the right area.

  Just as Darcy thought the officer would be heading in to talk to Misha, she saw the clerk point past the officer right at Darcy and Jasmine.

  With that, the officer turned to look at them, and Darcy felt her heart stop as she realized on officer would come and ask questions. Questions that she did not have any answers to, though she wished that she desperately did.

  “Hello, I am officer Traver with the Knoxville PD, I need to ask you a few questions…”