Psycher Chronicles

Faulty Wiring

(Misha Tulley)

In her previous bodies, there was one thing that Misha never truly experienced. That sensation, was blind rage.

Of course, Misha had heard about the condition, one where rational thoughts were overrun by the primal instincts to kill, to destroy a life that had threatened her otherwise peaceful existence. However, there was a difference between hearing and feeling. Having heard about the angry condition that induced a state of "rage" on a target was seen as something barbaric. Particularly as a Psycher, looking back, it seemed that her mind was not wired that way, or her species had evolved to no longer think or experience the world under such myopic actions.

Yet, now that she was manifested into a human body, one with different nerves and reactions, she felt things come alive in her mind. The impulse she felt was "rage" blind, unrelenting, and craving for blood. No, not just blood, but a tenfold repayment of the blood that was now coursing down her face.

Badump, badump.

Blood that seemed to roll out and pulse with each rhythmic beat of her heart. Blood that she could see out of the corner of her right eye. Blood that all but demanded repayment in kind. Being unaware of the altered state of mind that came with the release of such overwhelming endorphins Misha reacted as she normally would in such dire situations. That is a situation where she felt her life was truly threatened.

Even in the darkened room, even with her mind reeling from the force of the blow she received while processing past memories of a weapon designed to take down rulers. Even with all of that going on, Misha's mind could easily find her attacker, he had multiple mechanical devices all over his body that highlighted where he was. A watch clicking away on his left wrist. A dormant phone resting in his right pocket waiting to be turned on but still responsive enough to indicate its presence to Misha's highly sensitive mind. Then finally, there was the ultimate the odd headpiece that he wore that both glowed with green light, and thrummed with energy. All of these devices gave an immediate form to his body, a body that Misha's mind now wanted revenge on. Then her mind heard the frantic cries coming from Darcy, one of the people that Misha would consider to be a friend, that is someone who you feel sad when they are not part of your life, despite having their own path and trajectory.

It was Darcy's frantic cries and panicked breathing that sparked the ultimate rage in Misha. Rather than stopping to think, as would be her normal process, she reacted.

Fwoosh!

A flame burst to life starting under the glasses, under the watch, and under the area where the phone was. From there her mind adapted the flames to burn inwardly, the mad cries of the monster oddly added righteous fire to her attacks. Rather than cries for sympathy, Misha heard something else within those cries, justice. Blood for blood, but with compounded interest being applied. Interest gained from striking her while she down on the ground and defenseless, interest accrued from his stalking Darcy, but mostly interest added from the throbbing she now felt within her pounding skull.

Badump, badump, badump.

Even now with her mind focused, she could feel that there was a fracture within her skull. A facture that had numerous splinters and fragments that broke apart, a few of which threatened to impale themselves into Misha's brain. If she had Telekinesis or other manipulative powers, she would be able to deal with them slowly. Unfortunately, Misha never developed such talents, as her skillsets lay elsewhere, otherwise her attacks now wouldn't be so desperate. For in addition to the pain she now felt, she was also dealing with the fact that if she halted or faltered for even a moment, her chance at revenge might be over. That was why Misha was relentless with her focus and her flames, forcing the flames to double their intensity and double inwards. A process that once she started, seemed rather easy to continue.

Pop.

Then as if by magic, part of the pressure that had been building up within Misha's mind relaxed as she felt part of her skull get forcefully pushed out of her body. Blinking for a moment, to clear away the pain receptors that had been on fire until a moment ago, Misha felt her mind now able to take on two or more linear thought processes at the same time. The first was a simple mental exercise of keeping an already lit flame alight and focused on burning away the item that she desired. This was something Misha often did on the ship, having to get rid of waste that could not properly be disposed of. As she was not allowed to leave her section of the ship that often, she would focus on optimal ways of removing trash while still listening to the ship for signs of needed actions. This process was so common that after the flame was started and she moved the flame inward so it wouldn't destroy more of her ship and home, she realized that this skill would apparently still be valuable to her, even here.

Crackle.

By now the flames were hot enough to cause flesh to melt and bones to crumble and crackle under their own weight. This next part could be done relatively quickly as the main target of her rage was already gone, leaving behind only the charred remains of the source of her rage. With the immediate threat to her and Darcy taken care of, Misha's mind began querying her organo-tech to see how critical her condition was.

Only, her mind had a question about the answer she found, when she stumbled across the odd lines of code that the organo-tech seemed to use to describe her current condition.

These were the lines of code that were constantly being run, tested, fixed, then retested to see what future changes needed to be made. It was odd seeing how her body used reserve energies from fat deposits first to provide the energy needed to force the apparent rapid repair protocols, which equated to how her fractured skull popped back into position. Then there was a line-by-line breakdown of fragments being found, identified, and pushed back into place to then be sealed, before the next piece was scanned for and moved back into place, before it too could be healed back into place.

The entire process amazing to not only now experience, but to read about as well. From this, Misha wondered if she could create or force similar healing effects on other organo-tech users? Then she wondered if that would be the Bakshee equivalent of using Healing Magic, which would just be a way of showing how much information the standard Bakshee have lost in understanding related to their own designs. Of course, in this case Misha's interpretation of Magic is akin to the idea of anything that seems both miraculous and unexplainable would fall into the realm of Magic, by people that don't know any better.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Still, her in depth knowledge of her Reaper coding made it so she was fairly certain with time she could mirror and force similar changes to others. At the very least, her mind was now intimately aware of the process to call for a quick body scanning, along with a basic understanding of what the next stages would be. If one of her friends suffered a skull fracture in the future, she was relatively certain she could call forth these code segments again and try to do something similar for her friends. All of this was to say that Misha now had other areas to study. Areas that could prove that organo-tech was indeed the clearly superior evolutionary process.

In her mind, she already associated what could be referred to as casting spells as having pre-loaded execution scripts that would perform corrective processes. These thoughts and more rolled through Misha's mind, as her mind seemed to be filled with a sudden source of clarity. A form of exceptional thinking that could only be gained at short irregular bursts, except this impact to her front right temporal lobe seemed to have unlocked a greater capacity for deeper thought processes.

Fading light.

Dim.

Darkness.

Then just as Misha's mind was expanding with newfound codes that had been unlocked thanks to her Tier X specialization she achieved in her Reaper class, the illumination that had been burning brightly a moment ago suddenly dimmed. Leaving the room in a complete darkness that caused her more rational mind to kick in as her mind quickly began going through different processes to take care of. Her mind kicked to life and found that the breaker in the back had been turned off, causing the darkness, while a second power supply had been engaged to keep the doors sealed tightly. For a moment Misha thought about turning on the lights from the main room, but then her more rational mind kicked in and told her to not stand out in this process.

Walking back, Misha flicked the switches on, only after seeing that no one was watching. Making sure not to leave any fingerprints or residual traces of her DNA anywhere back in the kitchen that smelled like mold and rot. It was clear that this place was one serious state inspector away from being shut down, but then again it was clear that this was not the actual job the previous owner wanted.

There was likely more going on here, but Misha didn't have time to go too far into her musings as she quickly rushed out to see Darcy. Who had apparently fallen to the ground in a near catatonic state. Her tone panicked as she tried to understand what was happening. In near real time, Misha could see Darcy's eyes going wide with fear and panic as she was unable to process everything that had happened.

Misha used her innate connection to this world's communication network to come up with the most possible answers. Looking for similar cases and scenarios that might explain how a body could burn completely, while leaving the body behind she found her perfect answer in an online journal source, which she began quoting from almost immediately.

This rationalization of what happened was enough to calm Darcy down, while emergency dispatchers were also alerted to the area. During this time, Misha went about staging the scene, which simply involved her grabbing the attempted murder weapon from the floor. A weapon that was clearly coated in her blood.

Yet, upon touching the previously dormant object, this time Misha felt the organo-tech machine whir to life from within her fingers.

Tingling sensation.

Seeing the messages flash in her mind, Misha felt shock at first. Then her shock quickly surged to panic as the organo-tech weapon began to merge into her body. As soon as the weapon merged, she felt the way the weapon could be designed to form from her skin as a thought. Then the weapon, could be used as a more powerful adaptation of her class's base abilities, where she could steal Attributes from Bakshee class holders who were reset. In this case, the weapon was an overall upgrade, as she would no longer need to keep harvested targets alive to keep reaping minor upgrades. With this weapon, she would now be able to seemingly reap more Attributes from enemies that were slain by the indicated weapon. At that thought, her mind went wide, especially after seeing the fact that she now had one hundred Attributes to distribute throughout her four main Attributes. Attributes that had all been perfectly enhanced at least eight times over.

While this wouldn't be enough to get her to her full rating, it was still enough to place her at elite status. A status that could then be used to hunt down more dangerous enemies.

Seeing the possibility that having such a weapon afforded her, and seeing that it had nothing to do with any of her empty Tier upgrade slots available, keeping it as a formable weapon was a no-brainer. Especially considering the fact that there seemed to be no end to the number of shapes and dimensions it could take on. The only truly limiting factor was that it could not be larger than the original size of the object that it came from. But this was nothing, as she found in its dormant state, it could act as a bracer that rested along the outside of her wrists, ready to be summoned at a moment's notice.

Misha was just about ready to distribute her hundred stolen Attribute points, when she heard and felt the telltale sounds of an emergency response vehicle coming.

With those sounds, her plans for change were momentarily paused, as she prepared to tell the EMTs and police officers who were on the way what really happened, and then to eventually meet up with Darcy who was still clearly shaken up after having seen that monster get burned to cinders right before her eyes.

Misha almost felt she should be sad by the developments, but sadly couldn't find the energy to care, her mind racing wildly as she did everything within her power to try to get through this part as quickly as possible.

***

(Officer Frederick "Freddie" Pearlman)

"Got anything for me?" Officer Pearlman asked the responding EMT supervisor who stayed on scene to investigate the body. There was a brief stare between the two, as a moment of first recognition, and then embarrassment crossed Officer Pearlman's face as he remembered the incident that last brought the EMT lead to his attention.

"Hey, officer roadside assist, how can I help?" The senior EMT responded, giving a nickname that Freddie instantly hated, but tried to dismiss before others heard.

"Wait, what is this about Roadside assist?" Officer Clarence asked, a giant smile coming to his face as he seemed to know a good story was about to come his way.

"Oh, this guy went loopy on the side of the road a few days back. We got called seeing an officer needing assistance, when he apparently was just lost out on the backroads before the old farmhouse." The EMT cut in, describing the place perfectly where Officer Pearlman seemed to have missed an hour of his day.

"Oh, the alien abduction incident?" Clarence asked.

"Alien abduction?" The EMT parroted.

"Yeah, on account of old Pearly here losing an hour of his time, and all recordings for that hour were somehow missing."

At that the EMT looked back at Pearlman who clearly looked flustered at the way this conversation had gone wrong.

"You were abducted as well? Man we should have done our Alien suppository rape test check, you know, to make sure you were okay." The EMT managed to say with a straight face.

"Seriously, there is a body here, can we not focus on that incident?" Officer Pearlman asked, trying to change the subject.

"Yeah, you're right, this is serious." The Senior EMT stated, changing is posture going from joking to serious in the matter of two heartbeats.

"You're right, we have another victim here, though I have my theory of what happened." Officer Clarence responded.

"The Wick effect?" The EMT asked.

"Well that is one option, but we can't be narrow minded with our investigations, which is why we need to keep a clear head and open mind to what could have happened." Officer Clarence continued.

"Do you have anything else that could have caused this?" Officer Pearlman asked, his eyes questioning the sudden change of Officer Pearlman, but relaxing slightly as he seemed to be in his professional tone.

"Yes, I have two theories about what could have happened."

"Two? Well let's hear them," Officer Pearlman stated, taking notes on his pad as the senior officer spoke.

"Yes, faulty wiring could have provided the initial ignition, which might have caused the panic alarms to be set off." Officer Clarence began, pausing long enough for Officer Pearlman to catch up with his notes.

"And the second theory?" Officer Pearlman asked, ready to continue coming up with theories that would be investigated into this death that was looking more and more like an accident.

"The second one is the one I think to be most likely to have occurred."

"And that would be?"

Without missing a beat, Officer Clarence responded with his one word theory. A theory that he felt would help crack this case wide open and put it all to bed.

That one word, "aliens."

Officer Pearlman opted not to write that response down, despite it causing the EMT supervisor to break out into a fit of uproarious laughter.