Star Force: Trials (SF68) Read online

  “Hang on to it,” Kerrie pressed, with Scott transmitting to all of them so they knew what was happening internally. “3 red.”

  “Oh this is going to hurt,” Rio said as it bumped up to 4 red and he laid himself down flat on the floor in anticipation. 18 seconds later it went to 4 flashing red and the pain of tissue growth suddenly exploded inside of him.

  He yelled, both mentally and verbally, suffering through an insanely painful 8 seconds before he went limp and nearly passed out.

  “You got it,” Scott said, trying to numb up some of the residual pain for him as well as clear the whirlwind from his mind. “Easy now,” he said, looking up at the others. “He is cooked head to toe.”

  “Worth,” Vermaire said, pointing to the wall that opened up with a doorway. “Challenge over. We’ll call it a draw, but it looks like we all just won a new ability.”

  “Well said,” Jason agreed as Scott picked up and carried Rio towards the exit, then he looked up at Vermaire’s helmetless head. “So whose brilliant idea was all of this?”

  “You needed a real challenge. It was Wilson’s plan, though I made a few suggestions.”

  “I’ll bet you did,” Morgan said, walking up behind them with a slight limp after getting destunned and still having a few pins and needles working through her right leg.

  Vermaire raised an eyebrow and looked at her standing there in her underwear, as were several of the others. “For what it’s worth, he never expected you to be able to get through the swarms on your own. That was supposed to be something all of you had to work together to defeat, which was why he amped it up so much.”

  “You saw?”

  Vermaire nodded. “I didn’t think you could sustain the effort that long.”

  “Was this the end of the challenge, or did we have something more to do?”

  The Black Knight looked up at the clock that had 1:32 remaining. “This was to be your finish line, though you weren’t going to get there. I had you down. The rest were just a matter of time.”

  Paul mock coughed.

  “We’ll agree to disagree on that one,” Jason added, sharing the same sentiment. “Are there any more surprises awaiting us?

  “The scheduled Trials, but nothing like this,” Vermaire said, putting his helmet back on and walking towards the exit along with the rest of the Arc Knights. “Though Wilson has some worthwhile tests for your Clans that you won’t easily pass.”

  Morgan walked up behind Jason and put a hand on his shoulder so he wouldn’t follow the others out. “What happened to Rio?”

  “Not sure, but it was a full body ascension.”

  “Think he got Jumat?”

  “We can only hope. If not, it’s something totally new.”

  Morgan switched to telepathy so no one else could eavesdrop. That aside, we are going to get even with Wilson for this one, right?

  Jason smiled. Oh, we’ll think of something over the next few days. I can promise you that.

  Rio lay on a flat bed in the med bay with a host of equipment around him scanning his new tissue that, from his perspective, was so on fire that he had no idea what it did. He was in total body pain, but it was easing ever so slightly and from past experience he knew he just had to weather it for a while until it dissipated. He was in no condition to fight, let alone train, but was more than thrilled to have gotten a new ability, though the grimace on his face attested otherwise.

  “We have a match,” the medtech said to Scott and the other six Archons in the room with them, then swung the monitor over to show him. The tissue growths were not Jumat, as many had suspected, but were an enlargement of his Lachka tissue in his brain and duplicate particles across his entire body. There was only one psionic that had that structure, so it was an easy diagnosis to make.

  “Tier 3,” Scott told Rio.

  “Jumat?”

  “No. You got Ubven.”

  Rio laughed, which shot a super jolt of pain through every part of his body. “Damn. And I always hated Amumu.”

  “You’re our mummy now,” Scott said with a smile, realizing what the lingering Lachka field drop ability was going to mean for hand to hand engagements, especially large numbered affairs like they’d just been in. “And you’re going to absolutely wreck team fights.”

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