Chapter 116: Chapter 116

"What’s the hurry?" asked the guy at the front. He had a golden circle printed on his black ball cap.

Hiu Fa’s grandfather shuffled to her and picked her up, ignoring them. Amethyst fluttered up to his shoulder.

That upset the pride of Golden Circle and he stepped forward. "Oy! I’m talking to you, old man!"

He brandished his phone out in front of him and from the ground sprung up tendrils of darkness.

The little girl screamed and clung to her grandfather while Amethyst flew at Golden Circle, squawking and clawing with sharp talons.

The young man had apparently not expected real resistance and yelped as he backed up.

"Ming-gor!" his friends called out.

"You little-!" Ming-gor made a slashing motion with his phone and the shadow tendrils forgot their original target and went for the bird.

Amethyst spun, evading their touch and swooped to fly around Ming-gor and his friends. The tendrils followed and entangled them together.

"Ming-gor!" called out one in a pitiful voice. He was shorter and fatter and probably the most bullied of the ’friend group’.

Ming-gor gritted his teeth and hit ’end’ on his phone. The tendrils vanished, dropping his friends to the ground.

"Bullying the weak doesn’t make you strong, you know that? It just makes you look stupid."

Everyone turned to discover that a woman had arrived at some point. She was in plain clothes but the way she held herself suggested at a more martial arts focused vocation.

"O-Officer Cha..." whimpered the shorter boy. He scrambled to his feet then helped another of his friends up.

A few metres away, Amethyst alighted again on Hiu Fa’s grandfather’s shoulder.

"Phones," Officer Cha ordered, holding out a hand.

Reluctantly, but also quite quickly, all the boys pulled out their phones and gave them to her.

"But officer, if you take our phones, we won’t be able to function." This was no exaggeration. The need for smartphones had skyrocketed in the past two years.

The woman glanced at them then methodically plugged each phone, one by one, into a device that looked like a phone-sized charging bank. After she’d let each connect for a second or two, she held them out.

Surprised and thankful, each boy took back his phone.

"Kun... peng?" said Ming-gor, peering at the new app at the bottom of the screen.

"You’re right," said Officer Cha. "I take your phones, you won’t be able to live. Use Kunpeng instead of The Unity. You won’t be able to bully people, but you’ll be able to do everything else you need."

The shorter boy clearly looked relieved but the others didn’t.

"But... I already paid for a month’s subscription..." moaned Ming-gor. "How much more is this going to cost me...?"

"Nothing," replied Officer Cha.

The young men looked at one another. "What?! You mean...?"

"I mean, you should all go home and rethink your lives. I know you all think you don’t have much choice but to treat other people like ATMs because it costs so much to live, but look, you doing that just makes everything worse. It makes your own lives worse." She waved her own phone. "It might not have all the bells and whistles you normally use, but give Kunpeng a shot."

Ming-gor and the rest of his friends looked at one another then gave a polite nod and headed off.

She turned and went to the old man and his granddaughter.

"Thank you, officer," said the old man.

Officer Cha shook her head. She’d had known the little brats for years. They hadn’t gone all bad and she just hoped they’d stopped before anything truly bad happened, but this was too far.

"Are you three alright?" she asked.

The old man nodded. "Yeah," piped up the little girl. The bird gave a twitter.

"That’s good. Have you thought the offer?" asked Officer Cha. "It’ll only be until we can figure all this out."

The old man gave sigh. "You say that, and I know you mean that, but we all know you can’t guarantee anything. This whole mess could take years to fix, or maybe it never will be. To ask me to move so far away..."

"It won’t take years," replied the woman.

She glanced around then took a step closer. "We’ve reached critical mass," she said quietly. "You know what that means." She eyed the bird on the old man’s shoulder and saw her perk up with interest. Even if the old man didn’t quite understand the significance, Amethyst did.

That feeling she’d been having. It was right. Things were about to change.

Rain drizzled against the closed windows and tapped noisily on the air-conditioning units though this did nothing to distract the room’s occupants.

"Day fifteen of the human morphology trial. Test seven. Test subject Misha. Species loong. The time is..." Yidi glanced up at the clock, "Two past one. Begin."

Zhan turned the camera and aimed it at the other end of the room where Misha sat curled in the middle of a large spell array. Beside him Bran was crouched on the ground rechecking the most recent changes to the spell. Misha made a clicking sound and lay his head on his paws. Bran gave his jaw a quick stroke then got up. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on n͟o͟v͟e͟l͟f͟i͟r͟e͟.net

"Ready to go," he informed the other two then backed out of the circle.

"All clear? Alright, three, two, one..." Zhan hit the power button on the console then slowly turned the dial next to it. One was a binary on-off switch while the other controlled the power.

At the four corners of the room, the custom built energy circulators hummed to life. Above them the single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling flickered. They hadn’t figured out how to avoid that but it was fine. The day was still young enough that, even with the weather, things were more or less visible inside.

Zhan continued to slowly increase the power to the circulators.

Through this, Bran and Misha kept eye contact until finally, tail swishing agitatedly, Misha closed his eyes and concentrated. Ripples went down his scales and swirled his fur.

This was their seventh time attempting some variation of this set-up, and the third major iteration of the entire process, but they all felt a measure of anticipation for the result.

Out of all of them, he was always the most stressed during each experiment. The first time it had taken a week of constant probing of the other three to convince him to ’okay’ it and while the amount of effort had gone down each time, his anxiety about it all had not.

It was his theory on the line, and his method to begin with, but, as always, his concern was first and foremost for his Misha.

For Misha’s part, he was always up to test this or that and it was Bran who had to exercise some restraint and common sense.

Zhan looked to Yidi who gave a nod. The whine from the power went higher and higher until the flickering lightbulb suddenly flashed brightly then exploded.

That was Bran but the other two humans were already on it, immediately tripping breakers and bringing the situation under control.

A strangely avian squawk made them all stop and drew their attention back to Misha.

He was standing now, scales still sparking with power, and he locked eyes with Bran.

"The power’s still connected," said Zhan, "if we don’t-"

Both Zhan and Yidi turned to Bran.

Bran swallowed hard. "Do it."

Misha trilled from the other end of the room. After all this time they all knew what that meant. Please.

"Alright," said Yidi, signaling Zhan who slowly started to turn the power up again.

The storm outside hard rolled in and the room was in near darkness, the one light source, the lightbulb, swinging limply from the ceiling.

A boom rocked the building and a flash of lightning blinded the room.

All three humans were forced to look away and when their vision swam back into view... there was no longer a loong opposite them.

Instead, there was a human.

Bran grabbed a blanket he’d set aside in the corner before the very first experiment and started forwards.

Behind him, Zhan tapped Yidi on the shoulder. "We should go," he said.

Zhan knew Yidi’s mind was full of tests and statistics but he knew better. He grabbed his friend by the shoulders and steered him to the door. "Later."

Now alone in the room, Bran slowed as he reached Misha’s naked body. He was lying, still curled on the ground with his eyes closed.

"Misha?" Bran asked softly, crouching next to him.

There was no response.

Heart in his throat, Bran carefully spread the blanket over Misha’s body then leaned closer. "Misha?"

Quick as a snake, arms wrapped around him, capturing him, then the whole world turned upside down as Misha rolled on top of him.