Sidekick by Carl Stubblefield (spicy books to read TXT) 📕

him a way to selectively and remotely increase certain stats. With not knowing who would be visiting the island, having the ability to augment a stat or two on the fly depending on his opponent might be just the advantage he would need.

Finally, boosting the training arena’s tier would allow more combat options and utilize his skills in more interconnected ways. He had just invalidated a lot of his prior training with his rash decision on a guiding principle.

Can’t think that way, Gus. You’ve just got to modify it. You can do this. That’s your preferred play-style in FPS. Just be a ghost and take them out one by one.

If he truly was going to try a non-lethal approach, he would have to get much better at stealth and surprise attacks. He had a mere 200 FP left after all was said and done. He would have to win some more battles to complete the rest of the items on the checklist, but he was done for now.

He needed to get familiar with what these new options meant for him. He focused on accessing remote sensing, but Gus did not immediately notice a change until he zoomed out his minimap, finding much more range in his outer zoom function. The island looked so tiny when put at the full range, a circle with a 200-mile diameter with the island in the center. He could even see that he was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, but there weren’t any landmarks that could give him a definitive frame of reference. There was another island close by that he hadn’t even noticed, hiding off the coast behind the volcano.

At first, he was detecting birds and even aquatic mammals who had surfaced briefly for air. He had the system filter out these inputs. He tried his new Psi-bond skill which allowed him to modify his display and minimap to sense Nth, and he saw only a green dot centered on the island. This cleared the minimap of any other inputs that were not a threat to him on the island.

“Nick, can we remotely close any outside access to the manor?”

“There are storm doors that can shield the windows, and I can drop the bulkhead again.”

“Let’s do it. I doubt it will do much, but every little bit should help.”

That finished, he decided to tour the brig so that he would be able to access it quickly and intuitively. The quicker he could move any invaders into a cell, the less likely he would have another battle on his hands. Especially one waged without powers.

Given the total size of the manor, Methiochos must have been expecting some resistance or need for discipline, as there were over fifty cells in the large facility. The cells themselves had matte black walls, with ivory floors, illuminated from below so they glowed. There was a large, clear window in front of each cell that had to be made of transparent plastisteel. It left no real room for privacy or clandestine escape attempts.

There was a gated slot where food could be transferred from one side to the other, that always maintained one side separated from the cell. Gus wondered if some supers could stretch through a simple slit, or morph into some kind of gas. Come to think of it, Mercurio from the space station battle probably could have worked his way out if the slot was the standard flap like a mail slot. Gus imagined him stretching his body, feeding it through the small opening to reform himself on the other side. If he could even manage to shift with the dampening field, that was.

Perhaps that was why the field encompassed the entire prison. To prevent effects outside the cells from damaging or opening the door, or breaking the windows. Gus felt reassured that if he managed to catch a couple supers, they could be contained here.

He tried to talk to Nick and heard nothing; the silence was more eerie than he would have expected. He would have to ask how Nick perceived the experience on his end while Gus was in the brig.

Paying attention to his body, he felt… average. He jumped and tried a kata and found himself much less smooth and coordinated. Apparently, even the stat boosts provided by Nth were dulled here, or maybe they were totally inactivated. He attempted to fashion an ether weave and it was similarly non-responsive.

He walked closer to the exit, feeling his perception and ability to affect the ether get more and more tangible as he reached the elevator door to exit the brig. He entered the lift, yet while the doors were open, he still couldn’t access his abilities. They were a hair’s breadth out of reach, and felt oddly slippery. It was unsettling to say the least.

He pushed the button to his suite, and the elevator shifted into motion. Only when it left the brig did his powers return slowly, like a flashlight with low batteries. With some distance, his Nth began to reassert themselves.

Getting an idea, he pushed the button to stop the elevator on the brig level again to test something. He made an ether weave, as if he was securing someone and then returned to the brig. As expected, once the doors opened, his control over the weave relaxed, and it fizzled and shrank away like a balloon did when inflated and released. He would have to drag people to cells, which would be more of a hassle than he’d have liked—but good to know now rather than later.

From this perspective in the elevator, Gus looked up and saw a guard control room above all the cells that had evaded his attention before. Since the roof of the cells was made of the same transparent material, prisoners could be monitored from there as well. He should check that out later, he decided, and made his way out of the manor’s prison.

It felt unnatural to be without his powers again, and some primal instinct just needed