Overclocked -CH9- (Patreon)

The other group continued to walk toward Wrench as he inspected this new screen.

Reading it over quickly he felt like it was something he’d seen before, but he knew he hadn’t. This was something quite new to him, even if his Fixer senses were telling him this wasn’t an issue.

Using his left hand Wrench tapped at the screen and found it responsive.

On the right side was a list with entries that felt a lot like warning indicators or Hab test responses.

Wrench glanced up to the oncoming mob and found that he had maybe two minutes before they reached him. Perhaps one.

He’d make use of it the best he could.

Lifting his hand he tapped at the top entry in that list that read “Lymphatic System increase-”

The approximation of himself faded away, then flashed back onto the screen but different. It showed a silhouette of himself, a number of green lines, green dots, and a small purple blob shap on the right side of the model.

A slow orange color began to fill up certain areas of the doll. Primarily in the head and chest.

The right side of the window list had fled and been replaced with more text. An expansion on what he’d tapped into in fact.

Lymphatic System increase in the immune response due to foreign substances.

Uh… oh.

Oh!

I didn’t add anything to the system to help promote everyone’s health.

They weren’t used to me, and I wasn’t used to them. It’s very likely everyone is right on the verge of catching a cold. I’ll have to go add some Hume-mune to the filter.

With so many people joining, I’ll have to be particularly generous with it.

Wrench tapped the orange spot and glanced back to the oncoming mob. They were only half a minute away now. They were quite loud and talking amongst themselves. There was no way they hadn’t noticed him either.

A bar appeared in the middle of the screen.

Apparently his Lymphatic response to this situation was already at fifty percent. Which meant he was in the early stages of repulsing something, but it wasn’t full fledged yet.

Great. I’ll… see about pushing that to a hundred later and then beyond. See if I can’t knock this out before it even happens.

Without thinking about it, Wrench cleared the window, then the system window, and was back at the starting screen. Keeping his thoughts to himself, and trying to let his Fixer nature guide him, he quickly tapped into the Cardiovascular system. He ramped up his oxygen efficiency, primed blood-flow, and set his heart-rate to a point that it’d be ready to jump into combat.

He felt the changes as they happened, his body rapidly warming up as his heart rate leveled out at a higher rate.

“And who the hell are you?” demanded a voice.

Looking up, Wrench found a group of twelve Brawlers in front of the group. Everyone else had fanned out behind them. Those twelve all had the look of people eying something they wanted to squash beneath ab oot.

The rest all had a strange look to them.

Unsure, concerned, worried.

Wrench noted that that they were one and all quite attractive. Clearly from a higher end facility much like where Dusky and the others had come from. These good looking people made Wrench feel a lot like a toad.

He was no specimen of “good looks” to say the least.

“I’m Wrench. I’m the Fixer-Brawler in charge of this Hab. It’s my Hab. My Hab, my rules, my School-Hume. If you want something, you come to me. You want a pen? You come to me. You want to talk to my School? You come to me. You want food? Come to me. You want ANYTHING, you come to me,” stated Wrench, dismissing the window. Mentally he tried to ramp up his Respiratory system, Skeleton, Endocrine system, and Nervous system just as he did previously. He also pushed at his Muscular system to be highly responsive and ready. “You don’t come to me? I’ll come to you. It won’t be very fun.”

Pushing his body into an extreme fight response that put him at the peak of his physical condition.

The only thing he didn’t shift, was his awareness. His minds cognitive ability to understand what was going on around him.

Being in a slow motion effect while having a conversation didn’t seem to be a great idea.

“What if I don’t want to come to you?” asked a handsome man with blond hair and bright blue eyes. He was muscular, tall, and looked like he needed to be a main character for a story that consisted of nothing but him bedding an endless line of women.

“Then I’ll kill you and dump your corpse on the filter. My Tongsta told me to kill as many as I needed to, but to try not to go overboard,” Wrench said simply, then pointed his short sword at the Brawler. “Wanna test me? Or do you want to be my subordinate. You’re welcome to step up and try.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna do that. I’ll fucking kill you right here and now, then take your stuff,” declared the Brawler. He pulled out a club that was belted to his side and began walking toward Wrench.

“Hurry it up then. Dragging you to the filter is going to be a chore,” growled Wrench. “Anyone holding your stuff by the way? After I’m done with you I want to claim all your belongings and I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way.”

The man kept moving forward and laughing. He was carrying himself in a way that reminded Wrench of people he’d fought with often in his other life.

Where they had a great deal of experience but no formal instruction. Using whatever had worked best for them, rather than what’d been drilled into them.

They could be hard to deal with as you could never tell what they’d do.

Once the man was within range Wrench dialed his Nervous system up, throwing his mind into the slowed down state that made combat less of a chore to deal with. Where he could react at seven or eight times the speed of a normal person when he combined it with his Muscular and Skeletal system responding to rapid shifts and changes.

The man’s club was already on an upswing by the time Wrench saw the slow-down of the real world. An attack that was disguised in the way the man had been walking and carrying himself.

I need to make an example here. That fighting me is asking to die.

If I can stomp that point home here, hard, and without any room for questioning, this’ll be easier later.

Sorry friend, you’re going to die badly.

As the club came up, Wrench stepped inward toward the man. Closing the distance and screwing up the arc of the attack. Since it was moving low toward up, there wasn’t much the man could do to curve it with Wrench’s movement.

Stabbing to the left with his sword, Wrench timed the attack to correspond with the man’s strike. Aiming specifically to slip the blade between the long bone’s in the man’s forearm.

Adjusting the speed of the attack to hopefully hit the right timing, Wrench had an idle thought about how strange this all was. That what he was doing realistically was far outside of what one would expect in the realm of reality.

Behind his eyes, he could feel the instant pang of pain that being in this state caused him. No matter how often he used it, it always seemed to drain him quickly. Causing him headaches and a great deal of pain.

The short sword perfectly intersected the man’s forearm. Sliding into the flesh without much resistance and then spearing out the other side.

As soon as the blade struck, the club fell out of the man’s hand. A look of pain and shock spreading across the man’s face.

Before the club could hit the ground, Wrench jerked the blade forward. His muscles screaming against the rapid and absolute usage, nearly defying the amount of force they could handle with how fast the movement was.

Slamming down into the elbow joint the sword came to a stop.

Wrench wrenched the short-sword free and pulled it back.

By the time he’d withdrawn it completely the club finally hit the ground.

Standing in front of the much taller man Wrench was within spitting distance at this point. A perfect opportunity to really dial in the violence and make a point.

Slamming his left fist into the man’s stomach, right in the pit of it, Wrench drew his right arm backward with his sword. As the breath was knocked out of the Brawler he hunched forward.

So sudden was his reaction that his chin slammed into Wrench’s shoulder with an audible clack of teeth cracking together. Wrench was in midstep backward with his left foot at the same time.

Twisting his body around Wrench brought the pommel of his weapon across and into the Brawler’s temple. The hardened buttcap of the weapon striking solidly with a thump.

The man’s head whipped to the right, moving with the force of the blow. Wrench’s hand continued past, the sword ending up on the left side of his body.

Moving his hand forward Wrench got the edge of his weapon beneath the man’s head and at his throat. Jerking the weapon to the side and applying as much pressure as he could, Wrench did his best to slit the man’s throat.

There was a sound of meat being sliced, followed by a strange whistling noise. Then a gurgling, bubbling sound was the man started to fall toward the ground.

Wrench quickly disengaged the slow-motion like effect, letting his mind unclench itself. Things that’d been moving slowly only a second ago, were now moving at full speed again.

The Brawler was in the grass, the burbling noise revealed to be his windpipe filling with blood as he laid there. Bleeding out rapidly since he’d been nearly decapitated with the force of the slash.

His hands were scrabbling at the earth as if it could help him.

Wrench pulled his booted foot back and slammed it into the man’s head once. Then a second time.

And a third.

On the fourth he finally went still. Unconscious or unable to sense anything now.

“Alright,” Wrench said with a short exhale, looking to the rest of the group. “I gotta kill anymore of you or is that enough? Someone bring me his belongings as well.”

Everyone was wide-eyed, staring at Wrench differently now.

“I apologize for my subordinate,” remarked a man with brown hair, green eyes, and once more looking a lot like a main character from a terrible book. Wrench quickly labeled him as “Pretty-Face” in his head. “I should have told him to back down.”

“Yeah, you should have. That means you’re an issue too. You’re an problem for me to fix,” Wrench said, pointing the bloody sword at the man. Long red drips fled off the edge and tip as he did so. Vanishing into the grass below. “You’re on notice captain pretty-face. I’m going to end up killing you before you all leave I’m betting.

“For now, you get to live. Because I don’t want to drag two corpses to the filter right now. It’d hurt my damn back doing that. You’re responsible for your people as the leader, you’re responsible for his death. You could have saved him, you’re responsible for it.

“In fact, now that I think about it, you can drag this piece of shit to the filter. It’s in the far side over that way. You can leave his belongings here at the gate to the pens for me.

“Now… like I said earlier. If you want something, you ask me. You want to ask me something, you be here at the start of the day before I go to work. Anything outside of that, I don’t fucking care.”

The pretty-boy had an odd look on his face as he stared down the line of the sword at Wrench.

“No? Great,” Wrench growled. Then he stuck his sword into the ground and bent over. He started to strip the body of the Brawler of everything. Taking anything he had on his person. “He got any fillings I need to get out? I’m going to have to crack his head open for the implant anyways but I’d rather not waste my time.”

“His… implant?” asked one of the Brawlers.

“I can recycle it for something else. Well? Fillings?” Wrench demanded, pulling the pants off the dead man. He had to be quick with that before they really died and shit themselves. Even going so far as to take the dead man’s underwear. “Oh, by the way. My laws are enforced here.

“I don’t tolerate assault, robbery, rape, or murder. I don’t tolerate anything, really. Just leave each other alone, don’t make someone want to come complain to me about you.

“You want to test me? Give someone in your group a reason to complain to me. I’ll fucking kill anyone who violates my laws or just aggravates me. I can check all of it with security cameras that are literally everywhere. Don’t test me. Don’t. I won’t give you a second chance.

“This is my Hab, I’m the goddamn tyrant in charge, and you’re all little more than a resource for me at this moment. Fuck this, none of you said anything about fillings.”

Wrench rolled the man over, picked up his sword, and then began hacking at his face.

He’d just knock his lower jaw off and most of the lower part of his skull

The implant would come with it.

***

Tossing all the clothing he’d taken from the Brawler into the Fabrication machine, Wrench flicked the switch from creation to conversion. Moving to the panel he hit “revert” on the screen and then left.

It’d take a little time for it to be broken down into base materials and then spat back out into something more useful. In this case, rolls of cloth-like material he could turn into other things.

“Dusky could use some new clothes. She’s my woman. They all treat her as my woman. They want her to ask me for favors,” Wrench rationalized. “If I give her gifts for no reason, I can start to signify what I want from her. That I want more than just a bed-buddy.”

Nodding to himself, Wrench then entered the hall. He turned and began heading for Security. He wanted to get a look at what the new arrivals were up to.

His School wasn’t very happy about not being able to go out, but they all agreed with him and his concerns. Going out into that group was asking for trouble. Thankfully their pens were much better decorated than they had been, they could get sunlight in the cafeteria, and all their entertainment and toys were with them here.

Reaching Security, Wrench sat down in one of the chairs at a monitoring station. He reached out and started to tap his way through the monitors. Looking through each of them for a few seconds before moving to the next.

There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary that he could tell.

Everyone that he saw so far were mostly sitting around, talking, moving around the fields, and generally enjoying themselves. He could see that there were a number of Brawlers near the entrance to the pens and the ducts as well.

They didn’t appear to be hostile.

They were just watching.

Waiting.

“To be fair, I’d want to know if I were outside as well. One should always know where their boss is,” remarked Wrench with a chuckle.

He suddenly noticed there was someone sat down next to the heavy steel door of the ducts. The security lockout wouldn’t let anyone but him in unless her permitted someone else entry.

Given the angle of the camera and the distance, he couldn’t make out her features. She looked to be just sitting there, playing with her fingers and idly wasting time.

Thinking, Wrench realized that if there were people who wanted to talk to him, he’d likely need somewhere to do that. Talking to them right there in the entry would make it harder for them to speak openly.

Someone could easily be nearby and trying to eavesdrop on a conversation.

Thinking, Wrench considered the possibilities available to him.

Letting someone into the pens was a possible. Using one of the nearby rooms that were close to the entry point or the cafeteria itself. Except that would make it easier for his own School to hear the conversation.

The next possibility was inviting them into the ducts themselves. There was an empty storage room right off the entry that he could use.

Convert it to a makeshift conference room, add a small snack dispenser, as well as a few amenities.

Offer them snacks and drinks just for being here. As a treat or something like that.

Getting all that together… that’d only take me a short while to make that happen.

Maybe thirty minutes.

Then I could invite her in and see what she has to say.

Then… people would want to come talk to me about anything worth while. I’d just have to start asking them at the door what they wanted to discuss and go from there.

I’ll just stick an intercom on the entry and tie it into the conference room or Security and… there we go. That’d work splendidly.

Nodding his head, Wrench stared at the woman for several more seconds.

Then he started back through all the other cameras. Nothing stood out to him and he didn’t seem to have anything to worry about for the moment.

“Let’s get to work and then invite her in. See what she has to say,” murmured Wrench, levering himself out of his chair.