My eyes slowly fluttered open as the sounds of metal grinding rattled my brain. I slowly adjusted my body in the wooden chair I was sitting in, the room no longer the small dining hall of the old man but more like that of a workshop or forge. Looking forward was the man in the black suit, Mr. Wyvern as I had heard, his suit still there but now with a biker's helmet on as he bent metal with his bare hands with ease.
As if on cue, he turned around and lifted the helmet off his head as he sat on the table a bit too close to the saw blade and other dangerous equipment.
"Good morning, young master." His face wore a soft smile as he placed the helmet next to him and adjusted his tie.
"Master?" I questioned.
"You are, after all, my master's student now, so I'll help you as I would help him," he says, putting on leather gloves and a visor before hopping off the table. "Come here."
"First I want to kno—"
"That wasn't a request," he said coldly without turning around.
So, I slowly stood up and walked next to him, looking over the mechanical gears and wires, circuit boards and chips that lay across the table.
"Raise your stump and your arm." So I did, and in response he wrapped measuring tape around my right arm and took notes before measuring my left stump. "Watch as I build you a new arm. Learn and remember what I say, so if anything ever breaks, you can properly tell me the problem so I can fix it faster."
He then slowly built the arm around my stump, cutting into my skin and bone, embedding metal and circuits, putting metal brackets and gears to make a moving mechanism for my arm to go up, down, left, and right, both at the shoulder, elbow, and the wrist. Linking the wires and their pulling mechanisms that allowed the arm to respond to my thoughts as he hooked up a transmitter to the end of my stump and a locking mechanism that could attach and detach the arm, the circuit boards and chips flooded out of the mechanical mess as he then pulled out a box and grabbed a strange dark blue metal out of it. "This here is Wyvryum, a metal I made myself using my powers of metallic manipulation. I can bend and move metallic objects like gold, silver, and steel at will. That painting you saw float had a metal frame. I don't have telekinesis." He explained as, with hand movements, he was able to bend the metal around the arm's frame with ease, clasping it in place, making the edges melt into each other so no screws were needed.
He lowered his visor and took the supports off the arm and tossed them in the trash, then made space on the table. "Next we're going to give you your power," he says, pulling out surgical equipment. "When a child gets their power for the first time, the gene mutates in a specific part of the body, then it spreads and becomes symbiotic with the person's. If a person doesn't have the gene, then they have no power. A simple concept. Its only flaw is that in rare cases a person can have the gene but lack the body part that the mutation is supposed to grow in." He grabs a syringe and injects me with something, but I'm too lost in thought and invested to care.
"So how do you plan on giving me a power?" I say, fully intrigued.
He tosses the syringe away and swaps out his gloves for surgical ones. "To put it simply, you have the gene already, so you have the natural strength, speed, and durability of a superhuman. You just lack the power. Your power was meant to come from your left arm, but because you were born without one, your body didn't complete the process. I'm going to trick your brain into believing that this bionic arm is your real left arm, then the mutation should take place around your body, allowing you to gain your power. This doesn't mean you'll need the bionic to use your powers; you just need it to unlock them the first time."
And like that, I slowly felt the effects of the injection as my mind started to go blank again. "When you wake up, don't leave the building until you've talked to Master." Then everything went dark.
I didn't know what he was doing to my brain. For all I know, he could be harvesting my organs, or chipping my mind with a tracker. Maybe I'd end up in one of those cages, and yet as I floated through the dark pool of my mind, an empty void, I felt a rush, a small thump in my chest.
I looked down at my flickering, ghost-like form. Each heartbeat sent a blue ripple across the darkness. I started to fall deeper, so I instinctively reached out, clawing at the sky, or was it the ground? I couldn't even tell which direction I was facing. Was there even a right direction to begin with? What was this place?
What if I didn't wake up? What if prodding at my mind killed it? I clawed upward frantically.
On the outside world, Wyvern sat at the desk, his hand inside my skull, his other in my bionic, and my hands grabbed his throat and strangled him.
"Fuck," he let out. "Is this kid trying to kill himself?" He gasped for air but didn't let go of me. He glanced left and willed metal cuffs to fly toward my hands and pin me back to the table. He almost let go to rub the pain from his neck, but if he did, then I would die, so he swallowed hard and kept his hand in my skull, prodding at what he had been told to prod.
Back on the inside, I kept clawing, the darkness falling through my fingers with ease. The feeling of grabbing onto something and yet nothing at the same time was maddening. My body still floated, my arms straining. Then I stopped. Mid-grab, I slowly relaxed my hand and stretched, allowing myself to fall and be eaten by the darkness. The thumping in my heart was not fear; it was a guide, and right now it wanted me to fall. So I fell, and slowly watched myself disintegrate in both third person and first person at the same time, my mind slowly breaking as I could both feel and not feel my limbs.
Then I jolted awake on the table, my heart beating. Around me the room was the same. My bionic was now fully sealed and the cut on my head gone. I looked to my left and saw Mr. Wyvern staring at me, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I noticed he didn't even blink. I moved my arm slowly, but he didn't flinch. I looked around and noticed random items suspended in mid-air.
Slowly climbing off the table, I walked around the room. Everything seemed to be frozen in time. Then I flinched and felt a sharp pain in my chest as everything started to move again, but it was all slow—far too slow. It was like everything moved at no more than a thirtieth of its speed. Mr. Wyvern's eyes slowly widened as he looked at the table where I was supposed to be. It took a good minute for them to widen, then his head slowly and steadily turned to where I had been standing, then slowly again to where I had been standing after that. His body seemed to move in a different frame of time to my own.
So, I walked for the door. He had said not to leave, but I couldn't pass this chance. Even if it was for a minute, I wanted to be outside again, although for him it would probably seem like a few seconds.
I headed out of the room and down twisted halls till I eventually found the dining room, the old man missing, yet the wooden door open. So I walked out and down the path back to the tavern. Crossing past the cages, I looked in and saw what seemed to be humans, but broken. One had an arm growing out of its head, another had three legs, and another had four heads, all of them heavily deformed like little nightmares.
I could feel my stomach churn the more I looked. I wanted to vomit right there and fall to my knees, but I couldn't. I watched them ever so slowly loom around in this distorted time field I had somehow created. So, I left. I walked back to the tavern. New people had taken seats midway through drinks as they too now moved in slow motion.
I twisted the sapphire door handle, its grip now less than before, and stepped out into the cold breeze, and I ran. I ran for no reason. I didn't know how long this dream would last, but I didn't want to waste it, so I ran through the busy streets, though to me they were nothing more than statues.
As I ran, I could feel more pain in my chest, and along with this I could notice the frozen effect lessening as people and cars started to slowly speed up. Not much, but just enough to be noticeable. Then I stopped and jogged backward and glanced into an alley where a man was midway frozen, robbing a woman, fear frozen on her face. So I jogged over and kicked the man over. As he slowly fell, I repeatedly punched him and slammed him against the wall as he slowly recoiled to each hit, and I jogged away.
I jogged back to the tavern and along the way noticed more crimes, small but still annoying to see, so I did what I could before leaving. By the time I got back to the sapphire handle, I collapsed onto my knees and vomited. The world snapped back to speed, and down in the city, multiple criminals I had beaten all fell to the ground, and their victims looked around in shock, not knowing what had happened.
As I looked up, I saw Mr. Wyvern standing over me. He picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder and walked into the tavern as I passed out yet again.
When my eyes opened, I was back in the dining room, and opposite me sat the old man, but this time I couldn't move, tied to the chair, the bionic gone. All that was left was the metal clasp that would've held it in place.
The old man turned to his left and switched on a small TV. On it, the local news played.
Breaking news: about one hour ago, four robberies, three purse snatchings, and twelve assault cases were filed to law enforcement, but when officers were dispatched, they found all criminal personnel knocked out and victims in bewilderment.
After a close look at CCTV footage around all the crime scenes, the same blue blur could be seen, running toward the criminal and away in a matter of seconds. And while this unknown individual has been labelled as a hero by the mass of victims, there is no registered hero with super speed in the Western Kingdom, deeming all these acts of heroism to be against the law.
The screen dies out, and the old man turns to me. "The good news is, they'll be looking for a lad with super speed. The bad news is that your power is heavily close to super speed to the untrained eye."
"What do you mean?" I cough out, struggling against the ropes.
"Ah, Mr. Wyvern thought you may do something stupid again, and instead of wasting my foresight to see if he was right, we just tied you down." The man says as I feel a figure looming behind me, loosening the ropes.
"Don't do something so stupid ever again," Mr. Wyvern says, standing behind me, not coldly but not lively either.
Before I can reply, the old man cuts me off. "Regardless, your power is not super speed, and you have to remember that your power is called Time Dilation: the ability to slow down time around you at different intervals depending on the user's will. I would assume your drawback to be a smaller top speed, though—probably hunger."
As he said that, I could feel my stomach growl. I hadn't realized how hungry I was till now, the sharp pains in my stomach and chest.
"Time dilation has both positives and negatives compared to speed, so you must learn them. For starters, a person with super speed can propel their body across surfaces at high speeds. This allows them to run up and down buildings against the force of gravity, as well as use the momentum to make large jumps," the old man explains, sipping tea that Mr. Wyvern poured him. "Time dilation, however, lets you slow everything around you, so to everyone else it looks like super speed, but you see everything in slow motion, whereas a speedster sees everything at a fast pace and simply moves faster. So, you wouldn't be able to propel yourself far or up and down buildings, but in an actual fight you would have far better control and be able to land more precise and lethal hits."
"To put it simply," Mr. Wyvern says, pouring me tea, "you're not as transversal as a speedster, but you're more useful in a fight." He finishes by pouring himself a cup and sitting next to the old man.
"I want to know something." Before they can cut me off, I place my hands on the table. "And I won't let you dismiss me this time."
Mr. Wyvern sighs, pulling a sword handle out of his pocket and raising it as metal chunks fly toward him, forming a sword. "And when I was beginning to think we could work well." But the old man raises his arm to pause him and looks at me.
"Ask, but know your limits. You're sitting in my home," he says, eyeing me.
I lower my hands. "What were those things in the cages? What on earth happened to them, and why do you keep them?"
Mr. Wyvern's sword disassembles, and he just sits down professionally as the old man laughs. "We were going to tell you that next," he chuckles a bit more, then his smile falters. "You know that a good chunk of society is made up of demi-humans, yes—half human, half animal—as well as humans who have become one with nature over eons to become spirits and mysterious mystical vessels. Well, humans were the last to adapt, and humans felt inferior. So a group of humans started kidnapping demi-humans and vessels, keeping them and trading them as slaves in the black market. But that wasn't enough. A different group started to run experiments on them to find the source of their powers." He glances at Mr. Wyvern. "My dear friend here was one of the few children who were experimented on, despite being a human, as he lived with a few demi-humans, and the underground swallowed all, unforgiving and painful."
"So you're part of them? You sound like you hate them, so why keep them?" I tense, ready to hear the worst.
Mr. Wyvern was about to answer, but he paused, long enough for the old man to take over. "Have you ever wondered why you can't see the East Kingdom over the Great Wall, or why the only maps that are even reliable show no way to enter the East without going through either the South or North? Well, that's not a mistake. In the center of the four major kingdoms, under the Plains of Ash, is an underground kingdom known as the King's Gambit—the land of scum. Despite their multitude of crimes, they too have rules they will not break, such as enslavement and unwarranted experiments on customers. Because of this, they hire Hunters: individuals who will act as hitmen and bloodhounds for the government of the King's Gambit."
He places a hand on Mr. Wyvern's shoulder. "Wyvern here is the Hunter I supply to the Gambit. His role is to kill these abominations that are created in the black market. It's how we make money."
As I'm about to speak, he raises his hand. "However, in the future I so wish to live in, these experiments do not exist, or at the very least can be undone. So I have Wyvern capture them and report them as dead. That way, we can do our own anti-experiments and try to fix what humanity has broken. Sadly, the least I can do is give them good meals. If I tried to give them beds, they'd eat them. If I tried to give them proper facilities, they'd destroy them. So they stay in the cages."
Silence fills the room as he finishes speaking. Mr. Wyvern's face darkens, and his grip on the hilt in his pocket increases. I myself sit and ponder. The old man still staring at me. "Did that satisfy your question?"
"Yes."
He stood up limply, balancing on his crutches, and walked away as Mr. Wyvern followed him, not before sliding me the teapot.