As much as this field trip is about changing his life, it’s also about changing hers, that being said, she definitely wouldn’t have the same kind of experience Tim was sure to. The sciences are mostly “nerd shit” to her, despite being a big dork herself, so her interest in the entire event would be pretty low.
Tim on the other hand is practically being catered to. Arch, the world's leading genetics company, is hosting an enormous “science fair” all throughout their “Crown Facility” in San Diego. Anyone who was anyone is showing up there and displaying some sort of science projects, but Tim isn’t nearly as interested in juggernauts like the Jones and Williams corporations, his focus is entirely on Arch itself.
Genetics is certainly up there in Tim’s interests, but his favorite thing is paleontology, specifically specializing in dinosaurs. His love for the ancient animals is one of the few good things his mother instilled in him actually. When he was much younger, on a court order, she had to attend rehab, and the facility was nearly a three hour drive away. His older siblings couldn’t watch Tim, so his mom would bring him along and have him play in the daycare there. He doesn’t remember much about it, but what he does remember are the long rides there and back.
His mother would point out the window at the passing scenery, and tell him to imagine there were dinosaurs there. Long necks and sharp teeth, T.rex and raptors, triceratops and “those flying ones.”
Raptors would dart in and out of the tall, grassy fields they’d pass, with sauropods slowly lumbering and eating the leaves off of trees. Big, purple and green T.rex’s would wander through fast food restaurants, getting into roaring matches with stegosaurus.
It’d be hours of uninterrupted, imaginative peace, one Tim finds himself slipping into as he the bus exits the freeway and drives alongside the ocean. Now he imagines the long necks of Elasmosaurus coming out of the water, mouths filled with squid and ammonites. A huge mosasaurus tail looms out of the water and splashes down with a giant crash, sending pretend salt water raining over the bus.
A car honk pulls him out of the vision, though he stares at the water for a while as his stomach feels like it's sinking down into the ocean, a shockingly deep amount of sadness taking him for a moment, before it turns into irritation.
Why be sad over court mandated moments he shared with his mother? There’s so much more for him in the here and now, and his anticipation builds back up for it as the bus passes the Arch facilities welcome sign.
Pride in himself and his accomplishments wells up in him as they get closer and closer, after all, he had earned this seat. The field trip wasn’t free after all. It cost 300 dollars to get a seat, and that was far more than Tim could afford. Besides, even if he could he’d feel dirty using his family’s drug money to get closer to his beacon of hope, so, he instead went for one of the 5 seats someone could win via writing an essay.
The essay could be on any scientific topic, but Tim feels like it was no coincidence he won as the only student to write a paper on paleontology in his school. Deciding on, what he found to be, the ridiculous debate of whether the Tyrannosaurus Rex was a scavenger or a predator. He sided completely on the predator, and, while he was sure the lizard king did scavenge, he thought the idea of something built like that being exclusively a scavenger is ridiculous.
He hopes he can have some fun and have a good conversation with some paleontologist on staff about how often paleontologists seem to forget animals do more than one thing as the bus finally pulls up to its destination. He presses his face against the glass and grins up at the Arch facility. Its exterior was, in all honesty, pretty boring. Big, grey, modern architecture rises high into the air and sprawls in all directions besides towards the ocean. Towards the massive complex’s interior, a giant spire of a skyscraper stood watch over the entire thing, with Arch’s big, minimalist logo sitting upon its topmost floors.
“Wish their logo wasn’t just a big boring A.” Tim says to himself as his row is finally able to get up. “Can’t judge a book by its cover though.”
Tim hops out of the bus, basking in the cool, salty ocean air for a second before rushing off to the entrance. The field trip allows for a shocking amount of freedom, the visitor groups are only loosely organized under chaperones, and they needed to report to them during certain times for planned activities and meals, but otherwise, the students were free to wander.
Tim considers that a good thing too, because upon entering the grand building the other leaders of the science greets the visitors, nary a dinosaur insight. The good stuff is farther in, so he begins to rush past everything else, until other things start to catch his eye.
The Jones corporation, for example, is showing off some heavy duty construction equipment that was, for all intents and purposes, a mech. Due to Tim’s love of things like Transformers and Evangelion, he can’t help but stop to take in the site of it. It definitely isn’t as cool as anything from fiction, it didn’t have a cool head or interesting equipment, it was more like the cockpit of a crane with arms and legs for more precise maneuvering of heavy objects, but still, mechs are mechs, and mechs are cool.
A little deeper in and his attention is grabbed again by the William’s display, showing off an experimental, all purpose, white, skin tight suit that reminds him of Spider-Man’s. Apparently it was meant to speed up soldiers gearing up, as the full body suit is meant to be collapsible into a small patch that will sit on the chest. It can read everything about the person too, tap into their biometrics and so it is also one size fits all.
Tim idly admires as crowds pass by, until a tall blond boy stands next to him for a moment, before approaching the glass display to look more closely.
“Interesting.” He says.
“Yeah it's neat, not really what I’m interested in but I like the way it looks.” Tim looks up to him, he figures the boy is a few years older than him since he’s a good deal taller.
“Hm?” The boy looks to him, then back to the suit, then back to him.
“The suit? It's interesting.” Tim blinks and raises an eyebrow.
“Quite, it having a cellular structure is fascinating. I’d like to see it collapse to better understand how the William’s keep its weight from being too disproportionate.”
“Cellular structure? Like... it’s organic? Biotech? Where does it say that?” Tim looks over the tech’s various descriptors.
“No no, on a micro level it isn’t structured like the filaments of cloth, more like a cell, it isn’t organic.”
“Where... does it say that?” Tim repeats.
“Ah, ahem.” The boy clears his throat. “Apologies, I’m merely speculating.”
“Yeah?” Tim questions.
“Yes.” The boy nods then holds out his hand. “Lance.”
Tim blinks at the sudden transition, but takes the hand anyways.
“Tim... So you into this, uh,” Tim makes a wide gesture to the suit, “Engineering stuff?”
“Yes.” Lance nods, leaving it at that.
“Just engineering or?”
“Hm, oh, apologies. No, most sciences have my interest, though engineering is one of the most useful. Robotics, software engineering, artificial intelligence, physics, etcetera.”
“Paleontology?”
“That I’m more passively familiar with, but I’m far and away from an expert. Though Arch’s genetic sequencers and cloning technology are interesting.”
“Nice, I’m pretty interested in the De-Extinction projects. Saving ecosystems humans have messed up, slowing down global warming by recreating the ice age ecosystem in Siberia. Pluuuus dinosaur parks, those ones are my favorite,” He winks. “Hopefully I don't have to wait long for that one.”
“I suspect you won’t, Arch’s technology seems even more advanced than they report.”
“Are you... a hacker or something?” Tim questions, this kid might just be playing advanced make believe, but he seems to genuinely know more than he should.
“I know how to hack, yes.”
“Is... that how you know about that suit and this other stuff?”
“I haven’t committed any corporate espionage, no, I am only a child after all.” The boy says matter of factly without much emotion in his words or expression.
“Uh huh.” Tim answers, fully convincing himself that this kid was somehow a hacker, and that that could be a fun friend to have around. “You want to check out the more dino centric stuff with me Lance?”
Lance blinks a few times in surprise. “I... suppose I wouldn’t mind.”
“Let's go then.” Tim leads Lance off towards the Arch exhibits in a gleeful hurry., glancing back at him to make sure Lance is keeping pace. Tim isn’t an extrovert or anything, not totally at least, but he still muses to himself a bit that he was playing the role of one adopting an introvert. From their brief conversation, Lance also gives off the impression he doesn’t have a whole lot of social graces.
Speaking of social graces, Tim’s melt away as his hurried pace accelerates into a run as the two boys reach the paleontology section of Arch’s show floor. Life sized, plaster skeletons of a T.rex and Triceratops locked in battle greet them, and they are far from the most impressive things there. Nearly complete skeletons of animals barely known just a few years ago occupy the space in staggering numbers, safely contained within vacuum sealed chambers.
An entire wing is dedicated to the one hundred and fifteen foot long colossus, Argentionsaurus, with the exhibits walls inlaid with smaller specimens from the area. Another’s theme is that of Late Cretaceous Egypt, with its crown jewel being the semi-aquatic Spinosaurus. Fossils upon fossils upon fossils, seemingly impossible discoveries upon discoveries turn Tim’s mind into a blur. He’s read about them all obviously, but it's one thing to read about something and another thing to see it. Skin imprints of Triceratops, mineralized brain surfaces, mummies that preserve the long dead animals in such detail we know what color they were.
He gazes up at a mount of his favorite dinosaur, the Therizinosaurus, resisting the urge to try and reach out to try and touch its man sized claws when Lance finally pulls him out of the daze.
“You seem very passionate about all this, I’m a bit envious.”
“Really?” Tim chuckles. “You seem to really know your stuff though.”
“I do, yes, but I’m hardly as enthusiastic or energetic. For me I’d describe it more as... obsessive.”
“I mean, I’m obsessive too.” Tim shrugs, “and you seem kind of low energy anyway. Just because you’re low energy doesn’t mean you’re not passionate.”
“Hm, perhaps.”
“Oh no way!” Tim practically squeals as a staff member walks around with a bizarre, shaggy creature. “It’s the Emusaurus!” He makes his way over to a growing group of people asking questions and petting the creature.
The Emusaurus looks mostly like its namesake, though a touch larger, with clawed hands, a long tail, and a toothy beak.
“Ah, I remember the news lines when they achieved it.” Lance notes as he and Tim are directed into a line to pet the animal.
“Seymour is precious!” Tim swoons. “Crazy that in just a few years they went from just turning on dormant genes in birds to figuring out how to get viable DNA from fossils.”
“Indeed, we’ve hit another huge spike in the acceleration of technology, depending on how long it lasts I wouldn’t be shocked if we’re terraforming and colonizing other planets in the next 5-10 years.”
“Really? That soon?” Tim jumps up and down as the line shrinks and shrinks until he’s finally face to face to the bioengineered marvel.
“Seymour is very friendly, no worries about him using those little teeth on you.” The bird's handler smiles, though Tim barely acknowledges her existence and he begins to pet Seymour, who shuts his eyes and gives a happy bellow that scarred a few younger kids.
“This is easily the greatest day of my life.” Tim grins, then stands to Seymour’s side so Lance can approach and pet him as well. “By the way, I sorta wanna show off around this part of the show but there’s a ton of time. Let's go check out something you’re interested in.”
“Well, Rebecca Jones is supposed to be here, I would like to ask her...” An alarm cuts him off as it blares through the building, an automated message begins to play over the speakers telling everyone to evacuate.
“What?” Tim looks around as people begin to file out. “Shit, is there a fire or something? How long is this going to be?” Tim asks as worry begins to swell up, this could ruin his shot.
“Hopefully it’ll be wrapped up soon, don’t worry.” Lance reassures him, but it ends up being fleeting as the ground begins to shake.
People begin to panic and make their way out faster and faster towards the many emergency exits as the ground wobbles and the huge displays groan. Tim stumbles for a moment before Lance catches and steadies him.
“Seriously? Does the universe have it out for me today or something?” Tim complains as the worry in him builds into a crescendo as he and Lance make their own way to an exit.
“Perhaps not.” Lance guides Tim’s attention to one of the groups gathering as they head towards an emergency exit.
In and amongst them are plenty of Arch staff, but one stands out amongst them all. Doctor Ophelia Moore, a renowned paleontologist and geneticist, up there with Arch’s best. Tim’s always followed her work, he has to easily be her biggest fan, but she’s recently become a sensation ever since she, along with Arch’s founder, announced the company was taking the first steps to resurrecting dinosaurs.
If Tim manages to evacuate alongside her, she’s the perfect person to strike up a conversation with. He knows all of her work, read her earliest papers, lost his mind after she found multiple completely opalized, nearly complete skeletons up north. It's a better chance than he could have ever hoped for.
He goes to rush over to her, when the ground rumbles again and he hears a scream. He pivots on his foot and sees Seymour’s handler hit the ground. The bird is in a complete panic from the shockwaves and begins to run off, deeper into the facility, pulling his handler along with him. Tim looks back to the exit, Doctor Moore getting closer and closer to it, then looks back to the bird. No one was stopping, turning around to help the girl being dragged.
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Surely the woman and Seymour will be fine right? Seymour can’t hurt her that badly, and surely the Earthquake can’t be that big of a problem, they’re in a multi-billion dollar facility built in California. Tim can definitely ignore it and go secure his future, Jane’s future, all of his friend’s future.
Even as he thinks about all that, he finds himself already running the opposite direction of the exit, of his future, and chases after Seymour.
“What are you doing?” Lance calls out as he runs alongside him.
“They need help!” Tim says matter of factly and speeds up into a sprint.
To Tim’s surprise, Lance continues on with him and they soon find themselves passing under the grand entrance to the paleontology hall and into the more open space that precedes it. Thanks to Seymour’s panic, he doesn’t run in a straight line and constantly turns in zigzag patterns, which allows Tim and Lance to catch up.
Tim jumps for the leash, hoping to grab it, but misses it and hits the hard floor, sliding across it. Lance manages to get in front of Seymour and puts his arms out, making Seymour jump backwards. Tim scrabbles up and makes another launch for the leash, this time grabbing ahold of it. As he grips it tight with one hand, he uses the still moment to help the handler slip her hand out of the loop, but then Seymour chooses a new path and begins dragging just him.
“Tim! Just let go!” Lance says as he gives chase again.
“What? I'm not leaving Seymour! What if something falls on him?” Tim calls back as he tries to get up while being dragged. Tim did say they need help, and he meant it. He’s a huge animal lover after all, so even if Seymour was just a random dog on the street instead of one of science's crowning achievements, he’d still be doing the same thing.
Seymour continues to drag Tim, Lance chasing after, until Tim spots the Williams’ suit display case. He goes to his side and pulls his knees to his chest, and just before they reach the case, Tim kicks his leg out and catches on it. Tim flexes his core as hard as he can as he anchors his feet to the case. Seymour stops and flails, nearly pulling Tim’s arms out of their sockets, until Lance catches up and takes part of the load.
Tim’s able to get to his feet and, together, the two boys pull hard on the Emusaurus, it pulling hard against them. They back up towards another display and quickly tie the leash to it, double, triple knotting it then let go. They both bend over, taking a pent to catch their breaths, then Tim laughs, raising a fist up to Lance.
“I think,” Tim gasps for air, “we’re going to be really good friends dude.”
“Yes,” Lance pants, and meets the fist with his own, “I’d like that.”
Tim chuckles and stands up straight, getting light headed for just a moment, before he goes to try and calm Seymour down. He approaches the modified marvel, but stops in his tracks as he notices something beyond strange. The floor under them begins to bubble and crack, a green light pouring up out of it. The floor lurches up as another tremor shakes the facility, sending Tim stumbling backwards into Lance. The bubbles pop, the ground groans, geysers of energy begin to erupt from it. One emerald plume erupts around Seymour, another pops next to Tim, catching his arm, and the ground begins to rise up in one final spasm.
The world slows to a crawl, and Tim turns towards his new friend and shoves him away, right before green light completely consumes his vision. For a moment, Tim thinks he’s going to cry, if he even has the time to before he dies. He was so close he could taste it, so close to saving himself, his friends, Jane, from their shitty lives. Instead, he’s going to die, die and leave Jane all alone, if only he could see her one last time, see Rowan and Alex one last time.
But death doesn’t come as the energy continues to burst forth, blowing apart the ceiling above Tim. Instead, for less than moments, it burns, it burns every cell in Tim’s body, burns him down to his DNA. It unravels it, then brings it back together, deconstructs it again, and then pours into it as the strands rebind. It hurts for only a moment, and then it feels good, really good. Even as time feels like it begins to slow, even as Tim watches his fingernail peels apart, then his finger, his muscles, his bone, rise up then reform, it doesn’t hurt. It's invigorating, empowering, it feels like life itself is surging through his entire body, filling him with power. Still, all of him melts away, all of his, and blacks out as his eyes, his face, his brain does so as well.
When he comes to his back is smashing into something, then he falls to the cold ground, whatever he smashed into collapses onto him, the thudding of whatever it was echoing in his ears. He gets up in daze, shrugging off the debris, when his ears begin to ring. The alarms that have been blaring become ear piercing. The pain rattles Tim and brings him slumping onto a wall as he covers them. He opens his eyes to get his bearings, but has to immediately shut them. Everything is so bright, it's like spending forever in a dark room then opening a door and stepping directly onto the sun. He tries opening his eyes again, only for things to be even more off. He sees past the glass of the Arch building’s entrance, out to ambulance and fire trucks arriving. He tries blinking, over and over, hoping it will fix his vision. It seems to zoom in and out, constantly telescoping. The vision, the hearing, it's making him feel sick, making him want to vomit, until the smell of something snaps his attention in another direction.
Sweat, fear, cooking meat, all next to the massive hole left by the pillar of energy. Lance is on his back nearby it, scooting away from something. A mass of brown feathers. Quivering, cracking, sizzling. It smells like a combination of cooking and raw meat, blood, and it’s dragging itself towards Lance with a sickening glop sound.
Tim hears the skin under its feathers bubbling and sizzling, its bones straining and cracking. Its arm snaps and deforms, then bursts into an explosion of sinew and blue scales as it becomes massive. The monitor lizard-like leg goes down and pulverizes the ground under its foot, its claws sinking into the ground as the hand spasms from pain.
The mass's tail flicks around wildly, growing and growing, smashing into the Jones Mech and folding the metal around its whip-like tail. It curls and writhes like a dying snake as it grows and grows. Its other arm snaps into the lizard shape of the first in less than a blink of an eye, its broken back legs scrape against the ground, unable to move its new weight forward. The muscles beneath the leg skin begin to writhe, bulge, then burst out, growing out of control, giant veins bulging, until they begin to contract, new blue skin coating them as they bend into the shape of monitor legs.
Its torso splits and its spine raises out of it, followed by blood and tendons as it grows to match the monster's new legs. It stands up on two legs, like a monitor lizard scoping, and bends over, as its tiny head explodes. A theropod skull blasts out, blood vessels spreading over it in a red, pulsing web. Skin and sinew crow up like a hungry fungus, until chunks of it are blasted away as a dilophosaurus-like crest pops from the top of its head. A jagged, broken beak formed on its lips as serrated teeth grow like cancer from its gums. One more crack of bone and rip of meat causes it to shriek in pain, its red throat vibrating, sending out a horrible shriek that the Earth has never experienced before. Its head drops and it pants, drool pouring from its mouth, it slowly lifts its head, and its yellow, pupil-less eyes flick down to Lance, its jaws opening wide.
Tim’s eyes lock eyes on the monster, drool pooling below it, bearing down on his new friend, about to devour him, and red hot rage erupts in Tim’s chest. He has to save Lance, he has to, and so his legs tense, and he leaps. Force blows apart the wall behind him as he rockets forwards, and he collides with the monster's head. A shockwave shudders the air around them, and the monster's head whiplashes from the force, tumbling into a roll, its claws scraping against the ground as it tries to recover.
Tim feels himself spinning in the air again, but something new kicks in that lets him right himself in the air and land, digging his fingers into the floor and sliding along it. It's like his sense of balance has become off the charts, like he’ll be able to land on his feet no matter where he’s thrown or where he falls from.
There isn’t time to think on it though, as the monster wails and charges at Tim. He throws himself out of the way of the coming jaws that nearly snap him up. He rights himself in the air again, but stumbles as he tries to get his footing and skips across the ground, this time sliding into the enormous hole that the pyre of energy created.
He falls multiple floors before he stretches out his hand and grabs the edge of a hole, his fingers burying into it, and then with a flex of his arms he sends himself up into the air, and then sticks a perfect landing.
“No way.” Tim says out loud as his new reality, straight out of fiction, finally dawns on him. He has powers, the explosion gave him super powers.
His excitement dulls as pain rips through his ears, the monster’s terrible shriek reaching him as it climbs down the hole and swipes at him with its massive claw.
“Uh oh.” Tim jumps out of the way and looks around for an escape option in a panic, the monster’s throat rumbling as it charges again, mouth open. Tim realizes he’s in some sort of basic, data entry office space, noting a few emergency exits. He leaps over the cubicles towards them and away from the snapping jaws, the monster taking to all fours to chase him down like a monitor lizard. Papers fly and gray paneling smashes into splinters as the monster scrambles through after Tim. He clumsily jumps away every time his feet find the floor, throwing himself to the side as it catches up, its snout grazing him and sending him spinning in the air as the monster smashes its face into the concrete wall.
Tim doesn't feel a thing as he spins through the dull work space, smashing desks and computers to bits until he’s able to right himself. Papers flutter down around, falling between him and the recovering monster, shaking the self inflicted stun off.
It blinks rapidly, wobbling like its light headed, drool still poured from its mouth. It stares down Tim through the raining papers and takes a clumsy step forward, then roars. Tim flinches in pain, but stands firm, staring back at the creature.
The monster takes a few tentative steps closer, lowering down to its belly, stalking forwards, letting out bird-like warbles from its throat. How does Tim get out of this? Run away? No, he can’t, it’ll chase him down and there’s people outside, and there could still be more inside that haven’t evacuated. Does he fight it? The prospect is more exciting than he expects, but his enthusiasm is tempered by the unknown. Is he strong enough to hurt this thing, is he durable enough to survive if it manages to wrap its jaws around him?
The creature snarls, its throat vibrates with a bird-like hoot. Its pace quickens from a stalk to a charge, its maw opening wide, ready to swallow Tim in one bite. He wishes he didn’t have to worry about that, being snapped up and swallowed in one gulp, he wishes he could be bigger, as big as a-
Tim feels something crack harmlessly against his head as he becomes twenty feet tall in less than an instant. The creature that once towered over him flies into the air as Tim’s head collides with its jaw, and then crashes down onto its back.
Tim stumbles, his posture different, locked, unable to stand up straight. He feels a part of him that shouldn’t be there, swaying, counterbalancing his weight as he tries to find his footing. His eyes flick around, trying to make sense of what just happened, until they settle upon broken shards of glass on the ground. A yellow eye stares back up at him, sitting inside an enormous, green and black head. The reflection shifts as Tim moves, revealing more and more of its hulking mass.
It's a T’Rex, Tim is a T’Rex, and that makes the blue reptile he’s been fighting resolve falter. It takes a few steps back, then screams, spit flying out of its mouth, splattering over the ground and Tim’s claws. He doesn’t expect it to suddenly shoot out at him, like a crocodile exploding from the water at its prey. Tim stumbles from the jump scare and nearly falls but catches himself and pivots on his heel, smacking the creature with his tail. It pins it to the wall, making It panic, claw, and snap its grotesque mouth.
Its mutated beak pinches Tim’s tail, never piercing the scaly hide, but hurting all the same. Tim roars and presses his tail and the monster further into the wall. Tim lifts up his massive leg and begins to run, dragging the monster across the wall, leaving a huge gash as cement is pulverized by the pressure, throwing dust throughout the room.
The creature struggles and thrashes. Freeing itself of Tim’s tail and crashes to the ground. It scrambles up, coughing on the settling dust as it raises up to shriek and snap at Tim’s snout. Tim backs off and retaliates, snapping back, his jaws finding the creature’s left crest. The bone crushing teeth hits the horn sheath and detonates it, bone and blood exploding in Tim’s mouth. The unpleasant metallic taste overwhelms his taste bud and he scrambles to try and get the blood from his mouth, his tiny arms flapping up to try and brush a stiff tongue that can barely even reach the dinosaur’s lips.
The creature recovers from the pain and paws Tim on the snout, making his eyes water. The creature goes for a follow up swipe but Tim pivots on one foot, doing a 180 spin and slapping the monster with his tail again, before his other foot comes back down, bursting a cubicle under it.
The creature flies and skids across the ground, burying its claws into the floor to recover. It scrambles forward, mouth hanging open again, drool coating its lips in a gray plaster, mixing with the cement dust in the air. It leaps at Tim’s throat, but he back steps and tries to propel himself forward in a headbutt. The creature goes to all fours under him, then scrambles onto his body, wrapping its tail around Tim like a snake and biting at his neck. Tim roars in pain and charges forward, trying to shake the attacker off, then jumps towards a wall, positioning his back towards it so the creature will be pancaked between himself and the wall.
This wall isn’t nearly as solid as he expected though, and the two burst through it into a huge elevator shaft, probably meant for moving heavy duty equipment between floors, and they plummet. Tim and the creature mutually flip the fuck out, each trying to desperately grab onto something, anything. Tim’s eyes spot the suspension cable attached to the lift far below, and wishes he had his hands to grab ahold of it.
Tim’s throat vibrates as he spouts unintelligible curses from a mouth not designed for human speech before it melts away and his lips make a very intelligible “fuck!” sound. He blinks in surprise and quickly reaches out for the cable, grabbing hold, stripping the metal as he slides down. Sparks fly from between his much stronger skin and the steel as it takes what seems like forever for him to finally lose momentum and slow down, and then he sees the monster still plummeting. He reaches out for it, nabbing it by its feathers as his fingers dig into the cable, forcing him to lurch to a stop. For a split second, it seems like it's worked, Tim is still and the monster is safe in his grasp, but only for a split second. Tim flinches as the feathers can’t support the weight of the mutant, and they pop out, the creature falling further and further into the seemingly endless hole, until it's out of sight.
“Shit.” Tim bites his lower lip as he hangs in the dark, the insane amount of adrenaline beginning to wear off. He has half the mind to climb down and check on the thing, but clarity is finally coming to him. Something absolutely insane, completely unfounded in anything but a comic book has just happened to him. He has powers, super strength, skin tougher than steel, and could turn into, at the very least, a Tyrannosaurus Rex. What was that explosion? Why hadn’t he died? He saw himself get literally torn apart by the energy. How did it give him powers? Is Lance ok? The staff and the visitors? It's far, far too much to process right now, so instead he decides to deal with what’s immediately relevant.
“First on the docket.” He says out loud and looks down to his naked body. “New clothes.”
Clamoring up the wire, he finally makes it back to the ground level, flinching at the sheer overstimulation of it all. Without the imminent danger to draw his attention, he’s now dealing with the full brunt of his new super senses. Smell is the strongest, he can differentiate nearly every person who’s been here within the past, who knows how long? People aren’t the only thing either, plants, bugs, different material he’d never even considered having a distinct scent all racked his brain.
He needs to focus, get his bearings, so he shuts his eyes and focuses. He picks up on one scent he’s familiar with and ignores the rest, the smell of clean laundry. He sniffs the air and begins to follow it, letting the focus drown out the piercing noise of the still blaring alarm and the countless voices echoing in the building from outside. His vision focuses, zooming onto the door his nose was leading him to, a security guard locker area.
He slowly opened the door and peeks in, empty, the guards likely all outside by now. Tim slips in and sniffs the air a few more times, walking up to a locker and ripping it off its hinges.
“Sorry Mortimer,” Tim said as he grabs the uniform and tosses away the nametag on its chest, “Both for stealing your clothes and because you have a turtle name.”
He quickly slips them on and looks into a mirror, the uniform much too big on him, Mortimer apparently being a pretty big dude.
“Definitely turtley enough for the turtle club.” Tim sighs as he rips off the sleeves and pants, tossing the scraps. He tears at the Arch logo and shreds it, then moves to go to the next phase of his quickly clobbered together plan, before stopping and looking at his reflection again, touching his cheek.
The bruise is gone.
“Ffff, that’s going to be hard to explain.” Tim bites his lip and paces, before looking back at the mirror, raises his fist, and punches himself. Even with his super strength, he doesn’t feel it, so he does it harder, again not feeling anything, then one more time with much more force. A pressure wave blooms from the punch and shatters any glass in the locker room, bending in locker doors, and sending Tim on his ass.
“Ugh.” He groans as he hops back up onto his feet, looks in what's left of the mirror, and watches as the already mostly healed bruise disappears.
“Definitely got a good grab bag of powers.” Tim whistles as the injury finishes fading. He’ll have to bet on nobody noticing his newly pristine condition when he gets home, along with the paramedics for that matter, which he plans on running into.
Making his way back near the entrance, he stops as he hears and smells first responders making their way in. He jogs into a hallway, looks over a column and thinks about his favorite dinosaur, the Therizinosaurus. In an instant, he no longer sees the decor around him as his head grows far above it all. Looking down, he admires the bizarre dinosaur's enormous, man sized claws, and turned his long neck to see his long tail. Turkey-like gobbles rise from his throat as he laughs from sheer delight, stamping his feet and swaying his tail, before he snaps back to reality with the growing sound of footsteps.
He works quickly, and swipes his claws at the column, smashing it to bits. He takes a few more passes until the debris is in more manageable chunks, then with a thought becomes a human once again. Once his head is out of the metaphorical clouds, he dives into the debris and covers himself with a few good sized chunks, trying his best to completely cover himself with the cement and plaster. Getting cozy in his makeshift nest, he blinks upon realizing that Mortimer’s outfit is still intact.
“Huh, how does that work? I should’ve thought about that being a whole issue but looks like it won’t be a problem. I wonder if anything in my pockets will also come back?” He muses out loud as he waits for his rescuers to come upon him, already picking up the scent of approaching dogs.
“Wait... was that thing Seymour?”
Echoes After the End (A Slow-Burn LitRPG Apocalypse)
“Only I knew they were coming.”
Conrad’s nights were haunted by endless nightmares, visions of otherworldly creatures and strangers he had never met. Since childhood, a twisted reality had stalked his dreams, blurring the line between illusion and truth.
The worst part? His most recent dream, more vivid than all the rest, hinted that his restless visions might not be dreams at all.
The day it began seemed ordinary, an evening ice cream stop after work. But when snow fell and the world dimmed, little did the people of New York know the start of the apocalypse was not signaled by a trumpet being blown, but by church bells tolling.
As chaos erupted, Conrad Graham felt only relief. He was not insane after all. Every detail matched what he had seen for years, the eldritch abominations above, this twisted reality, even the strange shimmering screen later offering humanity a desperate system to survive.
Yet Conrad knew this was just the beginning. And as the sole witness of what is to come, he must wield that cursed knowledge to endure the apocalypse and become more than just a dreamer.
What You Can Expect
- Strong to OP
- Morally grey MC who bends rules when needed, but still holds onto his own sense of right and wrong.
- Focused worldbuilding where elements like systems, evolving skills, and progression emerge naturally over time, gradually and surely shaping the world as the story unfolds.
- Slow burn, character-driven story with touches of slice of life.
- Romance (not harem).
- Death.
Schedule Notice
New chapters will be posted every day until November 14th.
After that, updates will follow a regular schedule: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1 p.m. (GMT-3).
[Participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]