Lance stared at a pair of heavy wooden doors. No way. Something felt off about this moment, but he couldn''t pinpoint what.
"You coming in or what?" Mike stood beside him, backpack slung over one shoulder. His Dungeons & Dragons t-shirt had a fresh marinara stain near the collar.
"Yeah, just..." Lance''s hand closed over the handle. He hesitated, his hand resting on the cold metal. Distant—that''s how this felt.
Like usual, the low-watt bulbs lined the walls, lighting up the floor''s old scuff marks. But the smell hit him hardest. The familiar scent of hops and fried food wrapped around him like an old sweater.
"First round''s on me." Mike headed for the bar, weaving between clusters of Qualtech employees.
Haven''t we done this before?
"The usual?" Mike lifted two fingers at the bartender.
"Guinness." Lance settled onto a barstool, its worn leather creaking under his weight. "How''s the AI optimization going?" He hated how easily the casual questions still came. He didn’t want to be fake. Not to Mike.
"Brutal. The algorithms keep spitting out garbage data." Mike''s fingers drummed against the bartop. "But hey, at least we''re not stuck debugging in that windowless cave tonight."
The bartender slid their beers across the counter. Dark liquid sloshed against glass walls, foam creating intricate patterns on the surface.
Something''s not right here.
Lance lifted his glass. The weight felt familiar yet strange, like trying to remember a dream while still dreaming.
"You okay?" Mike asked. "Or is that merge conflict still giving you hell?"
"Fine." Lance took a long drink of his Guinness, using the moment to gather his thoughts. The stout tasted exactly how he remembered. Too exact. "Just tired."
Laughter erupted from a nearby table. The sound echoed oddly, as if coming from underwater.
We''ve been here before.
"Maybe we should join the others?" Mike gestured toward their coworkers.
Lance''s vision blurred at the edges. The room seemed to pulse with each beat of his heart.
"Lance?"
His ears rang. The noise of the bar faded in and out like bad reception. He gripped the bar top. Tried to focus on Mike''s face. Kept missing when he tried to check his watch. The glass slipped from his fingers, but before it could shatter...
Mike caught it.
“Man, you sure you’re okay?”
"Yeah, just... bathroom,” Lance said, already stumbling out of the stool.
He pushed through the crowd. The hallway stretched before him, impossibly long. Lance''s hand fumbled for the doorknob, finally grasping metal.
The bathroom door swung shut behind him with a soft click. Lance seized the edges of the sink, knuckles white.
What the hell is going on?
He stared at his reflection, searching for answers in the familiar lines of his face. Everything looked the same, but it obviously wasn’t.
"Time travel?" Lance whispered to his mirror image. The words stared back at him, absurd yet strangely plausible. After everything he''d experienced with arma abilities, was it really so far-fetched?
An alien discomfort jolted his shoulder. The inky black mass still clung there, a reminder that this wasn''t just some fever dream or alcohol-induced hallucination.
This did happen. If it’s not time travel, am I in some sort of alternate reality?
As he pondered these implications, black veins spread from his shoulder. They bulged, thickened, pulsed.
"No, no, no..."
Panic clawed at his throat as the substance expanded, oozing down his arm like tar. He tried to brush it off, but his fingers passed through it as if it were smoke.
The growth accelerated. Within seconds, the blackness had engulfed his entire arm, creeping across his chest.
On his back, the baseball-sized spot swelled and split. It doubled, then tripled in size. Thick strands pushed out, like roots breaking through soil. Stuff like tar oozed out. He could feel it crawling down and stretching toward his spine.
Lance''s breath came in ragged gasps as he stumbled backward until he slammed into the stall door, but the impact didn''t even slow the spread of that black stuff.
Think, dammit!
He closed his eyes, desperately trying to access his Energy Cycling ability. If he could just redirect the flow, maybe he could—
His body locked up. That black stuff found his neck and suddenly his brain couldn''t process anything except raw pain. Lance''s legs gave out, and he crumpled to the grimy bathroom floor.
The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting eerie shadows as the substance consumed him. Lance''s vision dimmed, the edges of his consciousness fraying.
Is this how it ends? he thought. What a stupid way to die—in an alternate-dimension, time-warped bar bathroom. Classic cosmic irony.
[Dark Resonance detected hostile arma signature]
└─Target identified: [Morphoplasm]
└─Warning: Foreign arma attempting biological integration
└─Initiate disruption sequence? Y/N
He gawked at the words.
The text hung in his vision, crisp and clear, unlike the hazy bathroom around him. It cut through the pain, through the panic—like reading a phone notification about your car being towed while having a nightmare. His brain switched tracks with an almost audible click.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
"Um... yes?"
[Day 16]
Lance bolted upright.
His heart raced, memories of the black substance flooding back. He patted his chest, arms, face—nothing. No trace of that tar-like horror remained.
"Shit." He sat up. The world spun. He gripped the edge of... a bed?
As his vision adjusted, familiar shapes emerged from the gloom. His dresser. A chair piled with laundry from before the police had confiscated his apartment to confirm he''d killed in self-defense. The cherished glow of his alarm clock. [6:59 AM]. And every single thing he owned scattered across the floor for the third time in as many weeks - because apparently a supreme being made up of pure arma or some other bullshit had decided his apartment needed regular redecorating, whether by assassin, psycho, or earthquake.
After the initial wave of okay-I''m-not-dead passed, Lance fumbled for his phone, squinting at the sudden burst of light. No missed calls or texts. Nothing to suggest the night had been anything but ordinary.
So Mack hadn''t hijacked his body. Instead, his own stolen ability had tried to eat him alive. Pure dumb luck he''d snagged Dark Resonance last week—the kind of luck that definitely wouldn''t strike twice. Like every other appropriated ability, this one was already showing its teeth. Sometimes he wondered if the trade-offs were worth it, if maybe he should stop collecting these cursed "upgrades" before one of them finally killed him.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet touching cool hardwood. The floor felt solid, real. Not like the shifting unreality of the Rusty Nail. Good.
Was it some kind of hallucination? Lance wondered, padding to the bathroom. Or did I actually... He couldn''t finish the thought. He almost laughed at how his mind had gone straight to sci-fi explanations while dying. But that was the thing—he remembered dying. Not the vague memory of a dream, but every excruciating detail. His shoulder, arm, spine, neck were all sore.
The bathroom light flickered on. Lance clung to the sink, staring at his reflection again. Same old face. Also good.
He turned, craning his neck to examine his shoulder. The fist-sized spot of inky blackness looked different now—more dense, almost metallic—solid proof that not everything had been a figment of his imagination.
Lance prodded at it gingerly. The substance felt cool to the touch and it didn''t ooze or spread like before.
"Okay," he said to his reflection. "Let''s figure this out."
He closed his eyes, focusing inward. The familiar warmth of arma energy coursed through him, responding to his will. But there was something else now. A new current, darker and more potent.
Morphoplasm.
The name appeared in his mind, unbidden. Lance''s eyes flew open.
"Show me," he commanded, unsure if he was talking to himself or this new presence within him.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, text flickered into existence, hovering in his field of vision:
[Morphoplasm status check]
└─Current mode: [Solidify] Active
└─Genetic Optimization: 5%
Damn, just damn, I did it. Lance blinked rapidly and the text didn’t change.
"Holy shit," he whispered. "It worked."
A laugh bubbled up from his chest, half relief and half hysteria, and a third half utterly unreal. Yeah, I know that''s mathematically impossible, but these days nothing makes sense anyway.
His bare feet padded circles in the too-small bathroom, shuffling between shower and sink with each lap spawning wilder theories. Whatever had happened in that other place—dream, alternate reality, whatever—it had broken through the code barrier that had been limiting his progression. He could feel it: the next step in his evolution.
Forced adaptation, he corrected himself, hearing Dr. Patel''s voice in his head like a disapproving thesis advisor.
Lance twisted in front of the mirror, trying different angles as faint lines of dark energy rippled beneath his skin. It felt right, somehow. Like a missing piece slotting into place.
"Okay, Morphoplasm," he said, testing the words. "Solidify!"
He shut the world out, remembering Rick''s lesson. Control through surrender. Lance let his arma flow through familiar pathways while simultaneously loosening his grip on the dark mass. The two forces should have clashed—instead, they merged like parallel processes sharing resources. Nailed that analogy, he thought with programmer''s pride.
The substance spread across his chest in liquid ribbons, then hardened.
Lance rapped his knuckles against it. The sound rang solid, like tapping titanium. He pressed harder. Nothing. Not even a dent.
Look who just unlocked god mode, he proclaimed with a smirk. Three weeks ago, he''d been debugging payment processing systems. Now he was basically wearing alien armor. Talk about a career upgrade.
The enormity of it all began to sink in. He''d faced death—or worse—in that other place. And now he had a new power, one that might have saved his life. Lance had lost count of how many times he''d almost died these past three weeks, but this time felt different. This time he''d gotten something useful out of it.
And with it, more dangerous thoughts wormed through his synapses. Could Dark Resonance help him track down other arma users? Wonder if our friendly neighborhood murderer would show up on my radar, he thought with grim satisfaction.
But first, there was that phone call he''d been putting off.
Phone in hand. Search through contacts. Scroll past the dead ones. Hit call.
Lance paced his living room, phone pressed to his ear. Three rings. Four. He was about to hang up when—
"Lance?"
"Hey Alex. Been meaning to call sooner, just..." Lance trailed off, suddenly unsure what to say.
"Yeah. Been a hell of a month."
"How are you holding up?"
A long pause stretched between them. Lance could hear Alex''s breathing, slightly ragged.
"Not great. Had to identify... had to see them all."
Lance''s feet stopped moving. His free hand clenched at his side.
"Jesus, Alex. I didn''t know."
"Someone had to do it. Next of kin, you know?"
"Did they have any services yet?"
"Small ones. Private. Most families couldn''t... with everything going on..." Alex''s words dissolved into a shaky exhale.
Lance leaned against the wall, sliding down until he sat on the floor. "I should have been there."
"You were fighting for your life. Besides, what would you have said? ''Sorry your loved ones died because we all went for drinks?''"
"That''s not—"
"I keep seeing their faces, Lance. Every time I close my eyes. Emily''s smile. Dave''s stupid jokes. Mike..."
Silence filled the line, heavy with shared grief.
"I can''t do this anymore," Alex whispered. "Sitting in my empty apartment, staring at their messages, their emails. All these half-finished projects that''ll never... I just... I can''t."
"Alex—"
"Maybe if I hadn''t pushed for that happy hour. If I''d just let everyone go home..."
"Don''t. You couldn''t have known."
"Doesn''t make them any less dead." Alex''s bitter laugh held no humor. "Listen, I should go. Got another funeral in an hour."
"Wait, Alex. Let me help. Whatever you need—"
"Unless you can bring them back, there''s nothing anyone can do. But thank you for calling, really."
The line went dead.
Lance stared at his phone. Something in Alex''s tone had been off, heavy with an emotion he couldn''t quite decode. He''d been so caught up in his own survival, in mastering his new abilities, that he''d—what? What was he supposed to do with this? Save people? The concept sat there like an unsolvable equation. He knew the right answer was probably somewhere between "care more" and "help others," but those variables meant nothing to him. Give him a clear objective, a problem to solve, and he''d excel. But this? He had no protocol for this.
From his bedroom, Jiro whined softly, sensing his distress.
"I know, buddy. I know."
Lance ambled to his room and buried his fingers in Jiro''s shaggy fur, letting his dog''s presence steady him for a moment. In the kitchen, he measured out kibble—then dumped a third back in the bag.
"Marcus definitely turned you into a stress-eating monster while I was out," he said, poking at Jiro''s slightly rounder belly. "We''re gonna have a talk about portion control, you enabler." Jiro just wagged his tail, unashamed of his gains.