Point Zero Read online

  “That feels good,” Morgan said after a few minutes. “What are you doing?”

  “Pulling off some of the strain. You’re not emotionally clearing properly, and it’s building up layers of residue.”

  “Take it all off. Along with my clothes if you want. Part of me is begging for it. Jarod can even watch if you like,” she said sarcastically.

  “The jokes help, don’t they?” Wilson asked.

  “A bit. Sort of airing out the trash in my head, and there’s not so much left afterward. I get so horny sometimes, then moments later it’s gone and I feel so icky.”

  “Have you tried having sex? Or any physical contact?”

  “I’m not that far gone. Or are you suggesting that?”

  “You’d refuse even if I was,” he said, seeing her doing the same ‘airing’ process again, and from inside her mind it was obvious. “There it is,” he said, finally pulling through the layers of surface gunk that were choking her mind to find an annoying undercurrent that she couldn’t shake, and it was annoying her immensely.

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you tracking me?”

  “No. It feels good you poking around inside me, and I don’t care what you’re doing, just keep doing it. My head feels like it’s deflating.”

  “Your size increase.”

  “Thought that was my line,” she quipped.

  “You hate it,” he said, getting to the point he had guessed back in the lab. “Your agility advantage is gone, partially supplemented by your superior body. But you can’t move like you used to, and you never will. You have to learn another type of movement, and even if you get it up to speed, your mass is going to be an issue on redirects.”

  “Now that you mention it, I don’t really like that. I was hoping I’d train my way out of it.”

  “You’re not going to train yourself to be lighter. You’re already up to 193 pounds, and you’re going to add another 15 in muscle minimum.”

  “Guess it’s the tradeoff for all the extra goodies.”

  “Have you considered losing some of them?”

  Morgan blinked her eyes open, staring at Wilson’s midsection, but suddenly was not interested in the up close view. “Meaning what?”

  “No need, you’re already working it out…and the stress is pouring off you.”

  “I just got all this stuff, and you want me to bail on it?”

  “If you want to be a jack of all trades, you need the extra body volume. That’s probably why it happened naturally.”

  “Isn’t that the definition of an Archon?”

  “What division of the military does your increased size help in?”

  “Commando and swimming, with some minimizations in both.”

  “Are you the top rated Commando?”

  “No.”

  “Swimmer?”

  “No.”

  “Aquatics, Mechs, Aerial, Naval?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  “What are you the best at?”

  “Hand to hand dueling,” she admitted, not going to argue that Ginsi had an advantage. Especially not now with her new body, though Ginsi would be dancing all around her at this point…

  “Right there,” Wilson said as she thought it. “You don’t want to be a jack of all trades. You want to be Fiora. The supreme duelist. And to do that you need to be smaller, not bigger.”

  “We don’t fully understand these bodies, and I mean the medtechs. Shrinking me could do all kinds of damage.”

  “Waiting until later would be worse. You’re already a mess and need to rebuild, but you can’t do that unless you abandon your duelist persona. What’s more important to you?”

  “Losing my fitness with a shrinking process scares the shit out of me,” Morgan admitted. “But since I don’t have much fitness now to lose, you’re probably right. But I’m still scared of what could go wrong.”

  “We’ve done it with Knights and Esquires,” Jarod commented.

  “I know how it works,” Morgan said snarkily as she held still under Wilson’s head. “But you guys were crazy for taking the size enhancements in the first place.”

  “Why is it crazy?”

  “Because you weren’t designed for it,” Wilson said, reading her mind before she could say it. “And now you’re worried about messing with your new design and putting yourself into an unnatural state…but this is an unnatural state for you. Can’t you feel it?”

  “I feel all kinds of unnatural now. Take your pick.”

  “It’s your choice, Morgan. But now is better than tomorrow, and tomorrow better than the next day.”

  “I’d have to get rid of some psionics to keep the new Jumat tissue…which I am keeping, because it’s awesome.”

  “And that kind of feels like treason after all you went through to get them?”

  “It’s like going backwards, and I hate going backwards.”

  “Jumat is your go-to psionic. Has been since the beginning. Everything else is just a toolkit for you. Adjust the toolkit so it doesn’t get so heavy it slows you down.”

  Morgan sighed, realizing the wisdom in that and kicking herself for not seeing it earlier. “I’m really glad you’re around,” she said to Wilson, then glanced at Jarod. “You I’ll get even with later. You tattled about something or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Be glad he did, because I didn’t see this. I knew something was wrong with all of you, and this is at least part of it.”

  “All of us?”

  “Yeah. You’re progressing as fast as normal people. What does that tell you?”

  Morgan groaned. “I’m swimming in my own out-of-shapeness so much I don’t have a reference point. Just taking it one stroke at a time and knowing I’ll get there eventually.”

  “There’s always a risk, but I think you need to take a couple of days and do a personal inventory, then do a cannonball into the deep end. Patience and caution do not suit you. You’re best when you’re wisely reckless.”

  Morgan smirked. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

  “You know it’s not. But if I said those words to others less experienced they’d get the wrong idea. Jarod tattled that you weren’t kicking his ass as much as you should have been.”

  “Wish I could disagree, but all I could manage was a mild ass kicking against the four of them. My arms and legs move slow, even though I know they’re not. But my midsection is the worst. I feel so fat rather than nimble.”

  “Pick a height that is suitable for you. Doesn’t have to be your original. Then see how much tissue you can fit into that frame, what you can keep and what you can’t. I can already sense your choice. Why 5’11”?”

  “One inch more than Ginsi. But you knew that already. You just wanted me to say it out loud.”

  “Feel better?”

  “Yes. The Master is not going to be outdone by the Apprentice.”

  “Rise, Master,” Wilson said, letting go of her head and seeing her stand up taller than him, which still seemed out of place after so many months, though at least her skin hadn’t changed color like some of the others had and she still had her taunting ponytail, for it was a definite disadvantage in combat, giving an enemy such a handhold on your head. But when you were agile enough to dance around your opponents, you could get away with it and scoff afterwards.

  And that was definitely Morgan in a nutshell.

  “Will you set it up?”

  “I’ll be there every step of the way. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  “I think better in motion,” she said, thumbing over her shoulder to the track.

  “Get going,” Wilson said, with her turning and taking off with more vigor than he’d seen her running with before, then she disappeared around the gradual curve as the interior wall eclipsed the view of her on the 3 mile long track.

  “So you’re saying she’s going to kick more ass in a smaller body?” Jarod asked, not fully buying it.

  “If size was all that mattered, we’d make you King
Kong size, now wouldn’t we?”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Not without a lot of modifications beyond size, but theoretically there is no limit.”

  “Has anyone tried it?”

  “Not in Star Force.”

  “Somewhere else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it work?”

  “They died within 3 weeks as their body crushed itself under its own weight.”

  “I’ll pass then,” the Golden Knight said. “Am I done here?”

  “Yes, thank you. I wanted her to see you to provoke a reaction, but it ended up being different than I assumed. She wasn’t scared of you.”

  “I could have told you that,” Jarod said as if that was the stupidest thing ever as he walked off. The truth was, the Golden Knights were scared of her, save for Vermaire, and were immensely glad she was on their team, for they would not want to meet her on the opposite side in the battlefield. And in sparring, they always expected to get their ass kicked. That’s how they got better, with her highlighting their weaknesses and exploiting them, but it was always scary how someone smaller than them could light them up every time.

  And now Wilson said she was better off being smaller in her new body, and Jarod cringed at what that was going to feel like after she mastered it.

  It was going to hurt. A lot. Even for Vermaire.

  8

  July 16, 154931

  Solar System (Home One Kingdom)

  Earth

  It took three days for Morgan and the medtechs to finalize her rebuild, which wasn’t entirely unnatural. Her Human body had been designed to shrink when needed, mainly in her muscles, and it didn’t just chop off sections at random. It downsized as expertly as it had grown, but things like skeleton and brain tissue were not meant to do the same…but when the medtechs dug into her new genome they realized that everything in her could downsize on its own.

  That surprised both Morgan and Wilson, but both agreed that rather than try to figure out how to train herself into a smaller, faster form it was best if they took the quicker route in order to start to get her rebalanced enough to get a handle on her new body, for right now she was arguably a mess and going through this blind looking for a size reduction protocol was a challenge that Morgan did not want to take on. She just wanted to be normal sized again, then start her new journey from there.

  When they felt they had a handle on the new tweaks in her genome associated with the size alteration, Morgan reported to a specialized medbay and sat down on one of the elevated beds that was minimal in its design. Just a platform with a thin, but soft pad that looked like a piece of metal until you touched it.

  She swung her legs back and forth lightly, but with a high cadence, and it wasn’t because she was nervous. Morgan always felt the need to be in motion, even when sitting. Ninja skills weren’t her preferred avenue when it involved holding still, so she’d always be tapping, waggling, or swaying a little to defy the stillness.

  That said, she was also worried. This kind of alteration was crazy, but Star Force had done it many times with Knights that didn’t like the upgrade, as well as with other cases involving races that were too large for some reason or the other and needed reduction for health reasons.

  The medtechs weren’t in the room at the moment, nor was Wilson. Morgan was alone and having to wait…which she also didn’t like. If you were going to be reckless it was best to get on with it and not have to think about the stupidity of what you were about to do. You needed to go with it and own it, not have doubts. She’d already done her thinking earlier, and this was the logical path forward…but it was still stupid, and she’d pay for it afterward, but her fitness was already trashed, even if it had been replaced by a more capable newb body.

  Morgan understood the opportunities that afforded, but it also annoyed her that it happened without her permission. All her fitness that she’d built up over 150,000 years was mostly wrecked, and she was at a very vulnerable transition point, but this was a moment she needed to pass through…even if the others thought she was more crazy than normal, for they all liked the size upgrade now that they had it.

  So she was deviating from the group, and while that was a bit of a regret…as well as bailing after less than a year…she wasn’t going back to Human. Just a smaller Furyan. Though she was bailing on so many psionics she had unlocked and accumulated over the years, and that was the most scary thing about this.

  Aaron had removed his Ensek long ago to make more cranial room for his Ikrid, and Ensek was one on the list she was losing as well as the upgrades for it, but that didn’t affect her body from the neck down, and the hard choice eventually came to losing almost all her battlemeld abilities save for the first. That meant she also lost Jumatran and Jumabren, which were both Jumat abilities used in conjunction with another, and only with another, and she hated losing those most of all.

  But in the end the survivalist skills of the other psionics were more important to her dueling capability than her battlemeld skills. The coordination of it she’d keep, but all the other boosts that went with it she was getting rid of to make room for the upgraded Furyan Jumat tissue that she was not going sacrifice in the downgrade…rather it was going to pile up to even greater concentration in her smaller body.

  All her new abilities she was keeping, including the curious foot pads that she and 6 of the others had developed. They were a buildup of cells on the soles of their feet, but they didn’t seem to do anything. They weren’t too good for abrasion, and were located just beneath the skin, making her foot strikes even more unnatural when running and doing agility work. Without knowing why they were there she didn’t want to remove them, but so far no one had a clue what they were for, just that the genetic coding in it was screwy and not fully capable of being mapped out.

  Shrinking it wasn’t going to be a problem, for that part had already been deciphered, but it still bugged her that a lot of her body had unknown factors in it…not stuff that might pop up in the future, but stuff that was here now and nobody knew why.

  So this wasn’t just a gamble in terms of size reduction, for what if she needed the larger body for something else that was unknown.

  The door finally opened and Wilson walked in along with a quartet of medtechs, one of which was carrying a vial of liquid and another an armband.

  “About time,” Morgan chastised them.

  “Needed one small modification,” Wilson said, taking the vial from the medtech and handing it to Morgan. “Drink up, Alice.”

  Morgan looked at the small tag attached that simply read, ‘DRINK ME’ on it.

  Rather than laugh or frown, Morgan actual shed a couple tears recognizing the reference and realizing this was the moment.

  “I changed my mind,” she said, looking up at Wilson. “Keep me unconscious until it’s over.”

  He nodded, then put a hand on her large shoulder. “This is right for you.”

  “Let’s get it over with,” she said, popping the plug in the vial off then tipping it up and drinking all of the nearly liter-sized tube of murky liquid in one long draw, using her Lachka to swipe out the last few drops inside at the end, then she tossed it onto the floor and laid back face up on the bed as one of the medtechs came up and put the linkage armband on her that would allow the supersized Regenerator located in the wall direct physical access to her.

  It would both remove excess material as it was peeled off and dumped into her blood and lymph stream for excretion, as well as provide the necessary molecules for the new growth that had to be added to stitch together parts where things would be removed or to strengthen smaller parts that now had to pull more of a load.

  The machine made the connection instantly, but when the medtechs told it to render her unconscious warning lights popped up, drawing Wilson’s attention.

  “Your newfound powers are resisting the mental intervention,” he said, glancing down at her as he kept his hand on her shoulder, and would until she was thoroughly
out. “You’re going to have to lower your internal shields and let it do what it needs to.”

  Morgan blew out a breath, closing her eyes and committing to this no matter what happened. She wasn’t going to live as a giant and have smaller opponents dance around her in combat because her reflexes were dulled by the extra mass.

  Slowly she let herself become vulnerable, with all the stuff in her head spilling out into her conscious mind that she’d kept bottled up. More tears followed, but she didn’t care. She was the Master Chief now, and his mission wasn’t to do anything…just survive.

  The medtechs were going to take far better care of her than his augmentation butchers had, so it was just a matter of surrendering to the change that would lead her to where she wanted to be. She didn’t have to put any effort into it, just pass time.

  Morgan felt her mind slipping and didn’t fight it. She became stressed in the head, then her vision of it eclipsed and her senses cut out almost entirely.

  “She’s not going all the way under,” one of the medtechs said a few minutes later, “but she’s close.”

  “Give it time,” Wilson urged, monitoring her as well through his physical connection. “Dropping her defenses isn’t natural.”

  “We can keep her at this level throughout, it’s just not optimal.”

  “Patience,” Wilson reminded them, sensing an unraveling inside her very diminished mind. She was fighting this, but she was winning…he could feel it…and after a few more minutes she let go completely, and the Regenerator was able to assert full control over her body and keep her unaware of what was happening as the liquid she drank spread throughout her organic tissue.

  “We’re in now,” the medtech confirmed, and Wilson finally let go of her shoulder and pulled out a chair from a wall compartment, having it unfold next to the head of her bed. “This is going to take days.”