Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.65 (180) (Patreon)

Mike came to with a start. He immediately curled himself into a ball and started sobbing… large heaving sobs. The healer who’d resuscitated him didn’t bother to even pat him on the back, or offer any semblance of emotional support after his traumatic experience. Instead, she hopped quickly to her feet and moved on to the next dead soldier waiting for another chance at life.

Mike could hear the sounds of fighting off to his left. It was like a loud echo forcing him to remember what had happened. The bloody ground he was lying on shook occasionally from the artillery fire. Closing his eyes and clutching his hands to his ears, he tried and failed to block it all out. But his efforts to alleviate the pain he was feeling proved futile, as what he really feared wasn’t the battle going on around him, it was the empty void he’d just escaped.

He could still feel the shadow of that emptiness inside him. It was awful. And unlike a nightmare, he could remember everything.

Flashes and images from the memories of the kobalds over-running their position were like spell blasts going off in his head. He recalled with excruciating detail the feeling of his flesh splitting open under the kobald’s spears.

Rolling over onto his back, he stared up at the smoke-filled sky and tried to forcibly calm himself down by sheer force of will. The feeling of emptiness was fading quickly, his mind’s natural defenses repressing the trauma as best they could. Reaching up, he touched the side of his neck which had been ripped open by a kobald’s bite.

Feeling his heart rate slow down, he finally felt composed enough to sit up.

Looking around, he could see that his unit had been pulled back behind the barriers. Fresh, or at least fresher, troops were now holding their former position on the line. Even from this distance, he could see their strong backs piling up kobalds by the dozen. ‘They must be one of the rapid reinforcement units. I suppose I have them to thank for being alive’ he thought to himself, while not feeling particularly grateful at the moment.

Still sitting on his ass, he closed his eyes and focused on centering himself.

The mechanics of what he’d gone through weren’t unknown. He knew that he was just suffering the after-effects of what his remnant mind print experienced after his actual mind and soul were unseated from his body. He knew that had the healers not gotten to him in time, that imprint would have faded after his mind and soul lost their tether. It wasn’t like he hadn’t read the research… everyone over the age of 14 had been given the talk by a family member, or at the very least by someone from either the Center or one of the Faiths.

But none of that theoretical knowledge was much help to him at the moment. It couldn’t compare the visceral experience of having his center forcibly ripped from his body. The memory of those few minutes of being trapped in a body without a soul, the overwhelming feeling of emptiness… it was haunting. He could still feel the lack of identity, deep in his bones.

‘Calm down. You just need to let your mind reintegrate with your brain. Breathe, Mike… Breathe,’ he told himself while mentally reviewing the recommended coping techniques he’d memorized years ago.

His pseudo-meditation was interrupted by the captain’s loud voice overwhelming the sounds of battle. “Form up on me!”

Looking over his shoulder, he could see the battle-worn sergeant who’d been leading them standing next to an equally ruffled Captain Durza. He had to give it to them, neither of them shied away from the battle. But, judging by their still intact armor, they most likely had managed to survive their most recent disaster. ‘Lucky bastards,’ he thought sourly.

He forced himself to his feet, looking around for his weapons. Unsurprisingly, they were nowhere to be found. Glancing over his shoulder, he wondered if they were waiting for him under the pile of kobalds.

Joining what was left of his unit, he and the other surviving members of his unit surrounded the captain and sergeant in a half circle. When Mike saw how few men and women were left, he felt his shoulders sag a little in defeat.

Captain Durza’s voice was hard, with no hint of remorse or compassion. “As you all can see, we’re down to 12 members. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you that the 39th Search and Clear team is being disbanded. After consulting with command, we’re temporarily being merged with Penal Division 3.”

Mike wasn’t sure exactly what a Penal Division was doing out here on a battlefield, but it didn’t sound good. And the groans of complaint he heard from what remaining comrades he had practically confirmed his fears.

The captain held up his hand to quiet everyone down. “I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t like it either. But at least you’ll still be earning the combat rates you were getting while you were part of the S&C teams. When this battle finally ends, and we get back behind the walls, I’ll make sure to see what I can do about getting you all transferred. You all have enough levels and skills that leaving you with those useless sacks of disappointment would amount to nothing more than an illogical waste of resources. But, until then, keep your mouths shut, heads down, and follow orders. Am I understood?”

Mike along with everyone else replied, “Yes, sir.”

Captain Durza nodded once, then said, “Alright, follow me.” before heading off at a brisk pace.

Numbly following along, Mike absently patted his empty sheath. Frowning at the thought of having to settle for a sub-standard replacement, he tried to distract himself from thinking about it.

Whispering to the pile of muscle and hate that was walking alongside him, otherwise known as Carl, he asked, “What’s wrong with joining one of the Penal Divisions? Isn’t that where people with basic offenses like public intoxication and disorderly conduct end up? What are they even doing out here? Aren’t maximum sentences there like two years?”

The large man snorted, and replied, “Yup. But during battles like this, Penal Divisions are used for basic work details. They’re disposable troops or menial labor for bullshit duties. So, if we’re lucky, we’ll be posted in the back lines and ordered to act as support forces, digging latrines and ferrying supplies and such.”

Mike thought that sounded like quite an upgrade from risking his life in the thick of the fighting. Yet, he still felt compelled to ask, “And if we’re unlucky?”

Carl, who incidentally was still covered from head to toe in mud and blood, turned to look him in the eye and said, “If we’re unlucky, then we’ll be assigned to a front-line position with a bunch of useless bastards who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. So, we’ll most likely be holding the line with city-bred weaklings and people too stupid to pay their taxes. But, who knows, we might get lucky.”

Mike grimaced and replied, “Yeah… I’m not really comfortable relying on luck. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t end up here because I was suffering from an overabundance of good fortune. There’s nobody up in any of the heavens wasting their influence blessing me, that’s for sure.”

“Well, then you and I are probably going to be seeing each other in one of the infinite hells. Maybe we’ll end up in one of the succubus-filled pleasure domes and we’ll spend our brief afterlife getting what’s left of our minds melted with pleasure before some demon swallows our souls and barters our mind imprints for whatever passes for a few valens down there!” he said with a dark laugh.

The man’s gravelly chuckle set Mike's teeth on edge.

Although he hadn’t exactly been expecting an encouraging reply, he could have done without that particular image floating around in his head.

—--

While Nero, Nick, and Academian Quincy were chatting, the rest of the evaluation team had been busy converting the lab equipment into various testing apparatus’ to isolate and quantify Nero’s unique ability.

Or at least that’s what they were supposed to have been doing.

Apparently, it wasn’t so easy to create tests for an ability so outside the norm. But, Nero wasn’t complaining, as it was hilarious to see them arguing so aggressively in ‘nerd speak’.

One of the evaluators, who from context he’d learned was named Kyle, stood there with what could only be described as a ‘pout’ on his face. “How can you say that? I used the Tolfiger model for the spectrum calibration. It will work just fine if you give it a chance!”

Nero wasn’t sure exactly what they arguing about, but he understood the basics. Two of the other evaluators, Josiah and Connie, had tattled on him to Academian Quincy. And now poor Kyle was defending his work.

Josiah, with his chin in the air and his hands on his hips, declared, “There is so substitute for on-site essence tuning. A spectrum analyzer configured to theoretical models would be less than useless under these conditions. We need a variance under .4 at least.”

Connie, who was standing next Josiah in support, frowned as if she’d been betrayed. Turning to look at Josiah, she hissed, “I thought we were trying to get him to use the Kornikapin model? Why on earth do you want to waste time doing a local calibration? That would be a complete waste of time?”

Between the two parties, Scholar Idrius and Academian Quincy were standing in judgment. Meanwhile, Nero was standing on an isolated testing platform several meters away, thoroughly enjoying witnessing these powerful people having a ‘nerd fight’.

After the heavy, and mentally taxing lectures he’d just received, it was good to see a sight that he was familiar with. Pointless arguing over subjective opinions was something he understood. It soothed his soul to see these confusing people acting like the humanity he recognized.

While Nero was pondering over whether or not there was an essence of humanity, Academian Quincy stepped up to resolve the debate. “Everyone calm down. It doesn’t matter what model or calibration matrices we use, as long as we’re consistent with their application. If the essence filter and the collector both have the same calibration matrix, then we’ll have a reliable method to record Lord Walker’s perception of the ether.”

Nero almost burst out laughing at the sight of the evaluators all looking equally unhappy with Quincy’s apparently completely irrefutable point.

After that, the little group broke apart to go attend to the various machines which they’d be running. Nero, as a good little lab rat, kept his mouth shut and stood still on the platform. He wasn’t even remotely surprised that no one had bothered to explain to him what was going to happen.

Rather than spend more time mulling over everything he’d learned, instead, he lost himself in memories of another time. The situation he was in reminded him of one of the more comical interactions he’d had with the healthcare system back home.

He’d once had to go and get a physical for his company's insurance. He’d been forced to use one of the doctors from within their ‘network’, but he hadn’t really cared at the time. He had just been happy to get access to the ‘executive’ insurance plans (Being promoted to store manager had its perks).

Regardless, he’d made his appointment, arrived on time, and been shown to a waiting room without issue. However, not five minutes later, an older man with a stethoscope around his neck and wearing a doctor's coat, walked in while speed-reading his file. Briefly looking up from the manila folder, the doctor had greeted him by saying, “Alright, you can drop your pants, get up on the table, and lie down on your side.”

While confused, he’d still done as he was told. He hadn’t been to a doctor since he was a teenager, and he could only assume that this was the standard procedure for adult males in a doctor's office. He’d watched enough TV to know what was coming, or at least enough so that it hadn’t come as that much of a shock to him. Although, he’d thought he was a little young for a prostate exam, but whatever. After all, it wasn’t like he had been expecting chit-chat and a lollipop… he was an adult now.

The doctor had snapped on some gloves and then gave Nero the ‘ole how-do-you-do. It had been exceedingly uncomfortable, and Nero had struggled to mirror the doctor’s professional attitude. After it had all been said and done, Nero had pulled his pants back up and tried to keep his composure. He had taken comfort in the fact that the doctor was completely ignoring him while writing quickly in the folder.

Looking up at Nero, he then told Nero everything was fine, and there was nothing for him to worry about. Of course, that had been great news. The bad news, however, had been that the doctor kept referring to him by the wrong name.

It had turned out that the doctor had gone into the wrong room, and a 32-year-old Nero had NOT needed a prostate exam. The doctor had offered a perfunctory apology before storming off and yelling at some nurses, clearly blaming them for his mistake.

Nero still remembered feeling conflicted about whether or not he should have made a big scene out of it.

Yet, he had decided that the story was anecdote-worthy, so he’d figured he could let it slide. Not to mention that it wouldn’t have been too smart to argue with the guy who had been in charge of signing off on his ‘executive’ insurance plan.

While Nero was recalling that experience, he thought about how many times he’d told that story. Between bars and parties, first dates, and work functions, he must have told it a hundred times. It had always been met with chuckles, successfully breaking the ice wherever he’d told it.

But now that he was in a new world, a world with healing magic and a completely different healthcare system. Not to mention their incomprehensible lack of body issues. He would never be able to tell that story again. No one would get it.

Suddenly, he felt very far from home.

“Nero, are you listening?” asked Nick loudly.

Coming out of his thoughts, Nero looked down to see an annoyed Nick staring up at him with a frown on his face. All around the lab, he could see the evaluators looking at him with patient expressions on their faces, clearly waiting for him to do something, or maybe say something?

“Yup. I hear you. What is it you want me to do?” asked Nero, trying to keep his tone light.

Scholar Idrius, from her perch behind some type of control console, replied, “When the essence ejector on your right begins to emit its essence stream, we’d like you to identify it with as much detail as possible.”

Nero frowned. ‘That’s it?’ he thought.

“Um… Sure. I’m ready when you are.” he said, suddenly feeling very bored.

Glancing off to his right, he saw a massive machine come to life. It was about 7 feet wide and maybe 5 feet tall. It looked like one of those CNC machines he’d seen in one of those industrial documentaries. The major difference was what he was seeing it do to the ambient essence all around it.

Looking at what was happening with his field, he was very surprised to see the essence flows in the area begin converging on the humming machine. It looked like it was pulling in everything it could, before simply shooting it all out one of the exhaust ports on its side. He was about to question why they wanted him to identify a bundled essence stream of ‘everything’, until an ejector port he hadn’t noticed shot a concentrated essence stream directly at him.

Although he knew raw essence was harmless in this form, he still almost dropped to the floor to avoid being bisected. But, he managed to catch himself before he looked like an idiot and instead stood stiffly as the essence stream washed over him.

He barely needed to interact with the stream to recognize it. It was so concentrated, that it was nearly shouting its identity at him.

“It’s heat essence. Or thermal essence maybe? I don’t know what you wanna call it, but it’s an essence that deals with temperature,” he declared loudly.

Scholar Idrius flicked a few control nobs or switches, and then asked, “And this one?”

Nero felt the essence flow being ejected from the machine change, and he said calmly, “This one is some kind of plastic? Or maybe the essence of processing into plastic? Or acrylic?”

This went on for over 10 minutes, and Nero decided to pull out his trusty tree stump from his personal space so that he could take a seat. Aside from a few looks of surprise from the evaluators and a glare from Nick, nobody seemed to have any objections.

Essence after essence, he identified them all to the best of his ability. In a way, it was almost like trying to describe a series of cliches, or concepts. The concentrated streams were very loud, but not very specific with their metaphorical shouting. He wondered if this was what it felt like to take a Rorschach test.

Without any warning, Scholar Idrius suddenly changed gears. “Lord Walker, now we’d like to see if you can direct the essence stream coming from your right into the appropriated relay on your left,” she said, her tone never wavering in the slightest.

At this point, Nero had grown used to just doing what she’d asked, so he thought nothing of it.

He reached out to grab hold of the concentrated essence stream with his field. This one was something like ‘lack of friction’ or ‘smoothness’. He nearly started chuckling when he realized the irony of the essence stream being rather slippery. Yet, he persevered, and in no time at all, he successfully wrapped his essence field around it.

Looking to his left, he saw a series of small holes in a giant box-looking machine. Each hole seemed to have an essence associated with it. Or more like there was an emptiness that matched a particular type of essence. The feeling reminded him of the inputs he’d seen on spell-forms.

With nothing more than a simple glance, he located the matching receptacle. Then, with a slight flexing of his field, he corralled the essence stream into an arc. The moment it attached itself to the hole, he felt the stream accept its new path through the ether without issue. Within the ethereal plane, it now looked like the ejector on the right was launching a curve ball at the other machine, and the essence stream was displaying its trajectory.

With a smile at how easy that was, Nero refocused on Scholar Idrius and the rest of the evaluators. All of whom were now staring at him like he’d grown a second head, or just declared himself a vegan while eating a stick of beef jerky.

Nero’s smile withered and he suddenly felt like he’d somehow screwed up. Had he made a mistake?

Immediately reaching out with his field and checking, he couldn’t see where he’d gone wrong. To him, it was like they’d handed him one of those IQ tests for children - Put the square block in the square hole, Round block in the round hole, Triangle in the Triangle, etc. Easy. Simple.

Seeing that they were all still staring at him with expressions ranging from shock to what might have been pride, Nero suddenly wasn’t enjoying being a lab rat anymore. ‘So, did I fuck up, or not?’ he wondered.

Before Nero could ask, Scholar Idrius flicked a few switches on her console and called out, “Again, please.”

Nero, hoping he hadn’t just ruined his chances of being a unique, dutifully moved the new essence stream to its corresponding hole. ‘Is that a ‘not working’ or ‘broken’ essence stream? How the hell does that work?’ he wondered ironically, a little distracted by the odd conceptual type essence stream he’d just futzed with.

Once again, Scholar Idrius started cycling through various essence streams, having him direct them to a matching receptacle on the other machine.

Then she switched to having him try to do two streams at the same time.

That turned out to be much more difficult than he thought it would be. Somehow, the receptacles wouldn’t lock onto the streams unless he adjusted them simultaneously. How they stopped him from doing just one after the other, he had no idea, but it definitely made the test exponentially more difficult.

For the first time, he felt a little bit of a challenge, and he liked it.

After he managed to figure out how to do two at once, Scholar Idrius switched to three. Nero had to close his eyes and concentrate to pull off that level ether manipulation. It was like trying to thread three needles, while holding two in his hands and one with his feet. Difficult was an understatement.

Finally, when she calmly asked him to do four, he came out of the fugue he’d fallen into. He opened his eyes and just stared at her with an expression amounting to, ‘Seriously?’

Academian Quincy called out, “That’s enough.”

Nero watched him walk out from behind some monitoring equipment. Although the man was smiling, his expression could have either been congratulatory or conciliatory.

Nero suddenly realized why he was having so much trouble reading everyone. He could no longer feel their essence fields. Something about the platform he was on was isolating him.

He hadn’t realized he’d grown so used to ‘feeling’ what everyone was feeling.

Not willing to remain in ignorance, he nearly shouted, “Well? Say something dammit!”