Slumdog Hero

With monumental effort, Fii pulled her powers inward, wrapping them tightly around herself like a cocoon. The process felt like trying to stuff a hurricane back into a bottle—her gravikinesis fought against the restraint, wanting to pour outward and reshape everything it touched. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she compressed the wild energy, forcing it to settle into something resembling control.

The wild fluctuations gradually subsided, though the damage remained—a landscape transformed by momentary gravitational chaos. Rocks embedded in impossible places, jutting from sand at angles that defied physics. Sand frozen in wave-like patterns, as if an ocean had been flash-dried mid-storm. A ten meter section of dune completely inverted, its peak now a crater while its base formed a perfect pyramid in the air above.

She collapsed to her knees, trembling with exhaustion and pain. Her skull felt cracked, every pulse of blood through her temples like hammer blows against fractured bone. The taste of copper filled her mouth—not just from her nose now, but seeping from the corners of her eyes, her ears.

"You okay?" Luke asked, crouching beside her.

"No," she managed, wiping blood from her face. It smeared across her skin in rust-red streaks, already drying and flaking in the desert heat. "Something's wrong with my powers. They're not... working right out here."

The words fell short of the reality. Wrong implied a simple malfunction, like a broken tool. This felt deeper—like the fundamental nature of what she could do had shifted, become something foreign and dangerous. Every time she reached for her gravikinesis now, it responded with teeth.

"No kidding," Serena said, looking at the bizarrely transformed landscape around them. "I've never seen anything like that before."

Luke stood slowly, his gaze moving across the altered terrain. "It's like reality itself got scrambled." He pointed to where a boulder hung suspended three feet above the sand. "How is that even staying up there?"

Fii followed his gaze. The floating rock tugged at her senses—she could feel the gravitational anomaly holding it in place, a twisted knot in spacetime that shouldn't exist. "I think it's getting worse every time I use them," she said, struggling to put the sensation into words. "Like they're connecting to something they shouldn't."

"The tears?" Serena asked, wincing as she probed her shoulder wound. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage Luke had applied earlier.

"Maybe. Or something behind them." Fii pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, trying to ease the throbbing. "It feels like... like my powers are reaching through holes in the world, grabbing onto things that don't belong here."

The thought chilled her more than the desert wind. What if her gravikinesis wasn't just manipulating local gravity anymore? What if it was tapping into forces from elsewhere—the same elsewhere those Netherlings came from?

"That's why the ground went crazy?" Serena asked.

"I think so." Fii looked around at the altered landscape, the evidence of her unintended destruction. A trail of impossibly twisted metal marked where her powers had caught a piece of expedition equipment, stretching it like taffy before abandoning it in a pretzel-shaped sculpture. "I think I need to stop. Completely."

The admission hurt almost as much as the headache. Her powers had become part of her identity, the thing that let her protect people, fight back against the forces crushing the slums. Without them, she was just another street kid with more attitude than sense.

"That complicates things," Luke said, understating massively.

Serena created a small hard-light patch over her wound, grimacing at the effort. The golden light flickered, weaker than usual. "We need to find shelter. Treat this properly."

"And figure out what the hell we're going to do if those things come back," Luke added, scanning the horizon.

Fii nodded, forcing herself to her feet. The world tilted sideways for a moment, vertigo making her grab Luke's arm for balance. Even that simple movement felt strange—her body's weight seemed inconsistent, heavier in some places, lighter in others, as if the gravitational chaos had left echoes in her bones.

"The place I saw," she said once the dizziness passed. "It's past those rocks." She pointed toward a distant ridge, its jagged peaks wavering in the heat. "Looked like some kind of depot."

"How far?" Luke asked, already doing tactical calculations.

"Few hours' walk, maybe? Hard to tell distances in this place." The images from the cylinder had been crystal clear but lacked context for scale. "There were vehicles there. Supply caches. Might be abandoned, but it's better than wandering around waiting to die."

"Are there more of those things between us and it?" Serena asked, struggling to her feet.

"Probably." Fii didn't sugarcoat it. "And I can't fight them without..." She gestured at the transformed landscape around them. "Whatever just happened."

Luke studied the horizon, his expression grim. The Ridge seemed impossibly distant, separated from them by kilometers of open desert where they'd be exposed, vulnerable. "We adapt. That's all we can do."

They gathered what scattered supplies they could salvage from the gravitational chaos. Luke's equipment bundle had survived mostly intact, though his targeting system now displayed readings that made no sense. Serena's water reserves had remained stable within her hard-light containers, but maintaining them clearly cost her now—she gritted her teeth with effort that should have been effortless.

The transformed terrain made for treacherous walking. What looked like solid ground might suddenly give way to patches where gravity pulled sideways or not at all.

Fii led them through the maze of anomalies, relying on gut instinct more than her compromised powers. Each step required conscious thought—where to place her feet, how to distribute her weight, whether the sand ahead was actually sand or something else wearing its shape.

Without her powers as a constant background presence, the world felt different. Flatter somehow, despite the obvious evidence of gravitational chaos around them. Like losing a sense she'd grown dependent on. The weight of her own body seemed wrong—too heavy, too substantial, too limited by ordinary physics.

"Stay close," she murmured as they picked their way between a cluster of floating stones. "Some of these gravity pockets are still active."

Luke tested each step carefully, his military training adapting to the bizarre terrain. "How long do you think they'll last?"

"No idea." Fii watched a pebble drift slowly upward past her face, carried by a current of altered gravity. "Could be hours, could be permanent. I've never done anything like this before."

The admission sat heavy between them. For all her growing skill with gravikinesis, this was uncharted territory. She'd torn holes in reality without understanding what she was doing or how to fix it.

The ridge loomed closer as the day progressed, heat shimmering off the rocks in ways that had nothing to do with temperature. Fii caught glimpses of other distortions—patches where light bent wrong, where the air itself seemed to fold and crease.

Behind them, she occasionally caught movement at the edge of vision. Not the obvious presence of the Netherlings from before, but something more subtle. Flickers of motion that vanished when she turned to look directly. She didn't need her powers to know they were being followed.

"They're back there," she said quietly, not turning her head. "Staying just out of sight."

"You can feel them?" Luke asked, hand drifting toward the compact sidearm he'd salvaged from his gear.

"No. Saw something moving. Shadows that don't match the rocks." The loss of her gravitational awareness left her feeling half-blind, relying on ordinary senses that seemed inadequate after months of expanded perception. "But they're not attacking."

"Waiting for reinforcements?" Serena suggested, breathing heavily from exertion and pain.

"Or maybe..." Fii stopped, scanning their back trail. A pattern had been nagging at her for the past hour, pieces clicking together. "Have you noticed we keep getting pushed this way? Every time we tried to go a different direction back there, one of them showed up."

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Luke's gaze sharpened, tactical awareness kicking in. "You think they're herding us?"

"Look at our path." She traced their route with her finger, pointing out the subtle ways they'd been guided. "Every obstacle that forced us to change direction, every clear route that opened up—it's all leading the same way."

The realization sent cold fingers down her spine. They weren't just being followed; they were being managed. Guided toward something specific with the patience of predators who knew their prey had nowhere else to go.

"Into an ambush," Serena concluded grimly, her face pale beneath the desert grime.

"But why wait?" Fii chewed her lip, tasting dried blood and grit. "They could've jumped us a dozen times by now. Hell, when I lost control back there, we were sitting ducks."

Luke considered this, his expression darkening. "Maybe they want us somewhere specific. Or maybe they're waiting for something."

"Like what?"

"Like for you to use your powers again," he said quietly. "Think about it—every time you've fought them, your abilities got stronger, more unstable. What if that's what they want?"

The thought made Fii's stomach clench. What if the Netherlings weren't just hunting them—what if they were cultivating her somehow, pushing her toward increasingly dangerous uses of her gravikinesis? Each encounter had escalated, each use of her powers more destructive than the last.

They stood in silence, the implications hanging in the hot, still air. If the Netherlings were intelligent enough to orchestrate something like this, what else might they be planning?

"Let's keep moving," Luke said finally. "But carefully. Eyes open."

They continued toward the ridge, tension stretching between them like a tripwire. The Netherlings maintained their distance, visible only as occasional distortions in the air or unnatural movements of sand and pebbles. The psychological pressure was almost worse than a direct attack—the constant awareness of being watched, evaluated, guided toward an unknown purpose.

Near midday, they reached the base of the ridge. A narrow pass cut through the rocks, barely wide enough for them to walk single file. Perfect ambush territory, but also the only viable route through the stone barrier.

"I don't like this," Serena muttered, studying the narrow opening with obvious unease.

"Me neither," Luke agreed. "But it's the only way through."

Fii's head throbbed worse than ever. Something about the pass made her teeth ache, made her skin crawl with static electricity. Even without actively using her powers, she could sense something wrong with the space ahead—gravity shifting in ways that made her inner ear protest.

"There's something wrong up ahead," she said, pressing a hand to her temple. "The gravity's... twisted."

"Can you tell what it is?" Luke asked.

She shook her head, immediately regretting the motion as pain spiked through her skull. "Not without using my powers more. And that might make everything worse."

Luke took the lead, Serena following, with Fii bringing up the rear. The walls of the pass rose higher as they proceeded, blocking the sun and casting them into shadow. The temperature dropped immediately—an almost shocking change from the scorching desert.

"This doesn't feel natural," Serena whispered, her voice echoing strangely off the stone walls.

She was right. The pass was too perfect, too straight—as if something had sliced through the solid rock like a knife through butter. The walls were smooth, almost polished, showing none of the weathering patterns Fii would expect from wind and water erosion.

They'd gone about fifty meters when the hair on Fii's arms stood up, her skin tingling with invisible electricity. The air ahead of Luke seemed to bend and warp slightly, light fracturing around the edges like looking through a cracked lens. Pebbles near the distortion vibrated slightly, occasionally lifting before dropping again with soft clicks against the stone.

"Stop," she hissed.

Luke froze mid-step. Ahead of him, the pass appeared to continue normally except for the subtle visual distortion—but every instinct Fii possessed screamed danger.

"What is it?" Luke asked, not moving.

"Something's there. Right in front of you." Fii squinted, pointing at the warping air. "Look at how the light bends. And the rocks—they're moving on their own."

Luke studied the distortion carefully. Now that she'd pointed it out, he could see the slight shimmer, the way light refracted wrongly through that patch of air. Like heat distortion, but colder somehow, more deliberate. "Like at the basin when those things came through the door."

"A trap," Serena concluded. "They've been leading us right to it."

As if summoned by her words, chittering echoed from behind them—a sound like metal scraping against stone, multiplied by dozens of throats. Fii turned to see three Netherlings blocking the way they'd come, blade-arms extended and gleaming in the filtered sunlight. More appeared along the ridgeline above, at least six of them, looking down with multifaceted eyes that reflected the light in disorienting patterns.

"Surrounded," Luke stated unnecessarily.

Serena's hands glowed, hard-light constructs forming around her clenched fists, though the golden energy flickered weakly. "Options?"

Luke assessed the situation with cold efficiency, his Guardian training cataloging threats and possibilities. "Fight our way back, though they've likely prepared for that. Try to climb out, but they hold the high ground and we'd be exposed. Or..." He glanced at the distortion ahead.

"Go through," Fii finished, staring at the warped air. "Into whatever's on the other side."

"Bad idea," Serena said immediately.

"Agreed. But the alternatives don't look promising." Luke studied the Netherlings. They weren't attacking, just watching. Waiting with the patience of creatures that had all the time in the world.

Fii stared at the distortion, something niggling at the back of her mind. The cylinder in her pocket felt suddenly heavy, its weight pulling against the fabric like a lead weight. She pulled it out, looking at the swirling patterns across its surface.

The iridescent designs were moving faster now, almost frantic in their intensity. As she held it closer to the distortion, the patterns seemed to reach toward the warped space, as if recognizing something familiar.

"The cylinder's going crazy," she said, holding it up. "It's reacting to that... thing, whatever it is."

As she held the cylinder closer to the distortion, the air between them visibly connected—ribbons of light stretching from the cylinder to the warped space, creating a bridge of energy that pulsed with each heartbeat.

"What are you thinking?" Luke asked, recognizing the look on her face.

"I'm thinking Tricon was studying these tears for a reason." Fii turned the cylinder in her hand, watching the patterns respond to the motion. "Maybe this thing isn't just for storing data. Maybe it's... a tool."

"To do what?" Serena asked.

"I don't know." She stared at the cylinder, then at the distortion in the air. "But those Netherlings really want us to go through there, and I'm guessing it's not because there's a welcome party on the other side."

One of the Netherlings above made a sharp, clicking sound. The others shifted in response, moving closer to the edge of the ridge with predatory grace.

"Whatever we're doing, we need to decide fast," Luke said.

Fii looked at the distortion, then back at the Netherlings. A crazy idea formed—desperate, probably suicidal, but they were running out of options fast.

"What if this isn't just a beacon?" she said, holding up the cylinder. "What if it's meant to interact with these tears somehow?"

"Based on what?" Serena looked incredulous.

"Based on the fact that it's going berserk the closer we get to that distortion." Fii held the cylinder toward the tear, watching the energy ribbons intensify. "I'm not saying I understand the science. But the expedition was studying tears, right? They had to have built tools for it."

Luke glanced between her and the advancing Netherlings. "Worth a try. Got any better ideas?"

The Netherlings suddenly surged forward, chittering urgently. Whatever she was about to do, they clearly didn't like it.

Fii thrust the cylinder toward the distortion. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the cylinder began to glow brighter, the patterns swirling faster, almost frantic. The air around it rippled like water, the distortion responding to the cylinder's presence.

What happened next was visible to all of them—the space within the pass bent and folded, light fracturing and reassembling in impossible ways. Rocks embedded in the walls briefly floated free before settling again. The temperature fluctuated wildly, freezing cold one second, scorching hot the next.

"It's doing something," she muttered, turning the cylinder slightly. The distortion shifted in response, edges reshaping like clay in invisible hands.

"How are you doing that?" Serena asked, eyes wide with amazement and fear.

"I have no idea," Fii admitted. "Just... trying things."

She twisted the cylinder again, and the tear rippled more violently. The ground beneath their feet trembled, small stones raining from the pass walls. Gravity fluctuated, making them momentarily lighter before slamming them down again with crushing force. Instinct rather than knowledge guided her movements as she probed the distortion with the cylinder. The Netherlings charged forward, clearly alarmed by what she was doing.

"Whatever you're doing, do it faster!" Luke shouted.

Fii gave the cylinder one final twist. The tear shimmered, its edges momentarily stabilizing into a clear oval of distorted space. Through it, she glimpsed sand and rock—different from where they stood, but not the alien landscape she'd half-expected.

"Go through!" she shouted as the Netherlings closed in. "Now!"

Luke hesitated only a fraction of a second before plunging forward, disappearing into the distortion. Serena followed, throwing one last hard-light barrier behind her to slow the creatures.

Fii backed toward the tear, cylinder still extended into its depths. The Netherlings slowed as they approached, suddenly wary. One tested the edge of the distortion with a blade-arm, then jerked back as if burned. Where its limb had touched the tear, space itself seemed to fracture, splitting into prismatic shards before reassembling.

Whatever she'd done with the cylinder had changed something fundamental. The tear wasn't leading where it had before. The Netherlings understood this—and didn't like it one bit.

Fii took one final step backward, into the tear. Reality warped around her, stretching and compressing simultaneously. For a timeless moment, she existed everywhere and nowhere, her consciousness spread thin across impossible distances.

Then she was falling, tumbling through open air, the cylinder still clutched in her white-knuckled grip. Sand rushed up to meet her, and she hit hard, air exploding from her lungs.