Flat Out by Wong Tao & Hanna K. T

Author:Wong, Tao & Hanna, K. T.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Starlit Publishing
Published: 2022-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen:

Sitting Ducks

7 Weeks Post-System Onset

7 a.m.

Sleep had been fleeting since our encounter with IRSHA a few days ago. Not to mention that our discussion with Mon’swkinon had made me highly paranoid—so much that I was seeing shadowy spies around every corner.

Despite everything, the more I overanalyzed the situation, the Dash’Kiri had been concerned. And I didn’t just think that concern was for us.

It didn’t help that another corpse came in last night, so mangled it was unrecognizable. That one was human; it was one of ours. But the patrol it belonged to didn’t stumble home until the early hours of this morning, exhausted and requiring immediate rest.

I’d seen how difficult it was for Mike to restrain himself from making them talk, but we weren’t military. Not technically, even if some of us did go to battle every day. We were just people playing at being soldiers for the most part. I’d tried to sleep and managed a couple of hours, but my imagination was far too active.

And so it was that I’d been up for two hours fiddling with my ocular implant settings. It wasn’t like I could reach into my head and turn dials or anything, but instead I needed to activate shit with my mind through yet another blue-screened interface.

There were settings that dealt with my ocular nerves, allowing me to adjust the severity and detail with which I saw Mana strands. Others adjusted my pupil sizes, the lenses within my eyes, and even dealt with Mana and normal light differentiation. Essentially, my eyes had sections allocated that could differentiate with the accuracy of a powerful microscope.

There were so many intricacies involved in how this worked, I was surprised there hadn’t been a tutorial when I got out of the surgery. From heavy usage monitoring to lingering ambient flows, Mana fueled everything we were becoming.

There were so many questions left to be answered. Like how it had broken through to our world, how we’d reached this saturation cap that turned us from a normally developing world into this dungeon-forming mayhem? It was all something I wanted to find out.

My Mana quest remained silent. No new notifications or discoveries. Not even reminders that I had it. Complete and utter radio silence.

Small blessing. It left me with plenty of time to start getting used to just how these new eyes of mine worked. Utterly, annoyingly finicky, and yet completely necessary. There was this sense of urgency in the air, around every single Mana manifestation I could see. It was like the world itself was screaming at me, but I couldn’t understand the language. Frustrating, and dread inspiring. Add this to wanting to hear from the patrol and no wonder I couldn’t sleep.

At least it was getting easier to distinguish when others were using Mana either actively or passively.

Fascinating, really.

Almost as comforting as the coffee I clutched in my hands while I adjusted my vision. There were so many varied settings, I could have looked off into the distance for days and forgotten to consume any type of food at all.

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