Chapter 92

WAVES

Alexander paused on the terrace, breathing it all in. Salt air carried the warmth of sun-baked stone, mixing with the faint scent of olive trees from the gardens. The evening held onto the day’s heat, gentle against his skin.

One of the aliens sat on the low wall bordering the terrace, appendages moving in what looked like stretching exercises. It noticed him and raised one limb in a very human-like wave. He nodded and waved back, then turned toward the path leading down to the beach.

His boots crunched on the stone steps as he descended. The evening Mediterranean stretched before him, darker blue fading to gold where the sun touched the horizon.

The Core had changed something fundamental. He could feel it with every breath, every thought. His powers didn’t fight each other anymore. Before, making them work together had been a challenge. He’d advanced it enough to make the senses intermingle without a problem, which had shown he was on the right path. But now they simply flowed. Separate streams when he wanted, a unified current when he needed.

The urge to check his status pulled at him. A simple thought would bring up the System interface, show him whatever changes the Cultivator’s Core had made official. But he suppressed it. Right now he wanted to trust the new intuition humming through his awareness. Wanted to understand what he could do without the System’s lens interpreting it for him.

Alexander reached the beach. Sand gave slightly under his boots. The waves provided a steady crashing rhythm, their sound filling the space where his thoughts usually churned.

Further down the shore, he could see the shattered remains of the boulder from his earlier gauntlet test. Chunks of rock scattered across the sand like broken teeth.

He flexed his hands, feeling the gauntlets shift with his grip. Time to see what he could actually do now.

Alexander planted his feet and reached for his chest plate with Metallokinesis. The familiar anchor point. He gripped it and pulled.

His body jerked upward. Smoother than before, less grinding resistance. But still that same jerky quality. Seize and shift. Seize and shift. He held it for maybe ten seconds before letting himself down.

Better. But far from good.

He’d tested all the individual anchor points before. The belt alone caused a strange sense of motion. Boots made him eat sand. Gauntlets left him dangling uselessly. The chest plate was the best solo option, but alone it wasn’t enough.

It was time to try combinations.

Alexander focused on the chest plate and belt together. He pulled with both anchors simultaneously. The lift was immediately more stable. Two points instead of one. He rose five feet, wobbling less. The jerky quality remained but the wider distribution helped. Fifteen seconds before his control slipped.

It was progress.

He added the boots. Three anchor points now. A line down his body’s core. He lifted with all three.

The stability jumped. His body rose smoothly at first, the triangle of force keeping him more centered. Twenty seconds. Twenty-five. But the same seize-shift pattern wore him down. His concentration frayed and he descended.

Better still. But fundamentally the same problem.

Alexander tried adding the gauntlets to the mix. Four points. The control became harder, not easier. Too many discrete anchor points to manage, pulling in slightly different directions. He could barely maintain it for ten seconds.

He dropped the gauntlets from the pattern, returning to the three-point system. Chest, belt, boots. That felt more natural. More sustainable.

But still wrong. Still that same jerky grab-and-shift motion.

Alexander landed and stood for a moment, frustrated. Why was moving himself so much harder than moving other metal?

He snapped open one of the compartments on his belt and pulled out a handful of ball bearings. With a thought, he sent them spinning through the air around him. They moved smoothly, flowing in a simple orbital pattern. It was easy. Natural, even. He couldn’t control each one independently yet, had to keep them following the same circular path, but the motion itself was effortless.

He reached out and let them fly into his palm, then put them back in the compartment.

Alexander stared at the closed compartment, thinking.

The ball bearings flowed around him so easily. Spinning, orbiting. Centered on... him.

When he’d turned the room full of cannons into a spiral, he’d imagined a vortex of his power flowing out from where he was.

He was the frame of reference. The fixed point that everything else moved relative to. That’s why controlling external objects felt natural. He could see them or sense them, track them, flow power through them continuously because they existed in relation to his perspective.

But that didn’t help him fly. Understanding that he was his own reference frame didn’t solve the paradox of trying to move that frame itself.

Alexander looked down at the sand beneath his boots. Could he use the earth as his reference instead? Anchor his perspective there, make himself move relative to it?

It felt wrong immediately. Foreign. Like trying to see out of someone else’s eyes. The power came from him. Flowed from somewhere in his body. He was inevitably, inescapably the center of his own power. And he was absolutely certain that was true for all of them, not just Metallokinesis.

Alexander walked over to a nearby boulder and sat down heavily. Understanding the problem didn’t give him a solution. He was his own frame of reference, and he couldn’t change that fundamental truth.

He stared out at the Mediterranean, mind turning over the paradox.

The waves rolled in. Rising and falling. Rising and falling. Steady and uninterrupted.

His breathing slowed. Matched the tempo without him noticing. The frustration began to drain away, replaced by something quieter. His mind stopped turning and he simply... watched.

The waves never stopped. Nothing grabbed at the water and shoved it forward. They just flowed. Continuous pressure manifesting as motion. Each wave rolled into the next without pause, without separation.

He’d been grabbing. Seizing and shoving.

But the ocean didn’t work that way.

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The realization came easily, like something that had always been true. External objects moved smoothly because he could flow power through them continuously. An unbroken stream.

But himself? He’d been trying to grab and lift in discrete pulses. Fighting the fundamental truth that he was his own reference frame.

The waves pulsed. Oscillated. Created continuous pressure that manifested as motion.

If he wanted to fly, then his power needed to flow like the ocean.

Alexander stood from the boulder, purpose sharpening into action. His frustration had burned away completely, replaced by quiet certainty.

He leapt from the boulder with a thrust of Metallokinesis, slowing his descent at the last second, landing on the sand with his feet planted. This time when he reached for his chest plate, he didn’t grab. He pulsed power through it. A steady rhythm. Not seize-shift, but flow-flow-flow.

His body rose off the sand.

Then dropped.

Rose again.

Dropped.

He was bobbing like a cork in water, the amplitude wild and uncontrolled. But he was maintaining lift. The continuous wave kept him airborne even as it bounced him up and down.

Alexander adjusted the pattern mid-flight. Less pull down. More push up. Creating asymmetry in the oscillation.

The bobbing smoothed into a gentle rise. He climbed three feet. Five. The motion still carried that rhythmic quality, but now it propelled him upward instead of just keeping him suspended.

He added his belt to the pattern, extending the wave through both anchor points.

The oscillations tried to sync immediately, both pulsing in unison. The bobbing actually got worse for a moment, the combined waves reinforcing each other.

Alexander adjusted instinctively. Offset the timing. Made the belt’s wave pulse slightly out of phase with the chest plate’s rhythm.

The oscillations harmonized. When the chest plate wave pushed up, the belt wave was pulling down. When the belt pushed up, the chest was pulling down. The opposing rhythms cancelled out the extremes, smoothing the motion into something steadier.

Two points of force working against each other in just the right way to reduce the bobbing. The ascent stabilized.

Ten feet above the beach now, and the improvement was dramatic. He could feel the wave flowing through both anchors, the rhythm syncing naturally.

The boots came next. Three anchor points forming a line down his body’s core. He staggered their timing like he had with the belt, each wave offset from the others.

The stability jumped. Alexander rose to fifteen feet, the gentle oscillation barely noticeable now. Like breathing. Like the waves themselves, continuous and natural.

He hung there, suspended above the beach. The evening Mediterranean stretched before him. The three-point wave system hummed through his chest, waist, feet. Separate but unified. Just like his powers.

Then realization struck him.

He was flying.

Not hovering. Not throwing himself around. Flying.

Alexander threw his head back and laughed. Pure joy erupted from his chest, echoing across the empty beach. The sound mixed with the waves lapping against shore, the sunset painting everything gold on blue.

The analytical part of his mind tried to catalogue the achievement, measure the success, but emotion overrode his logic for once. This wasn’t about testing or training or tactical advantage. This was wonder. This was something he’d wanted since the moment he’d first seen superhumans dancing across the clouds in battle.

He was flying, and it was beautiful.

Alexander forced himself to focus. Testing. He was supposed to be testing.

He maintained the hover, watching the sun sink lower. Thirty seconds. Forty-five. A full minute. His breathing grew harder, something deeper than muscle straining with the effort. But he held it. The three-point system made it manageable in a way the chest plate alone never would have.

When he finally had to rest, he descended slowly and touched down in the sand. Caught his breath. Then lifted off again.

This time he added lateral motion to the wave. Biased the oscillation sideways instead of just up. He drifted left over the beach, moving at maybe walking pace. Slow, but controlled. He adjusted the pattern and moved right. Forward. Backward.

The directional control felt good. Not combat-fast, but functional. Real movement, not just position holding.

Alexander rose higher, testing his limits. Twenty feet above the beach. The drain increased but remained manageable. He hung there for several seconds before descending back to fifteen feet.

He rotated slowly, testing the three-point system’s response to rotation. The wave pattern adjusted smoothly. Full rotation in maybe four seconds total.

Slow for combat. Completely telegraphed. But the fact that he could do it at all while maintaining altitude was progress.

And his hands were free. Completely free.

The realization brought another grin. He could gesture, manipulate objects, use his gauntlets. All while flying.

Alexander rotated again, this time raising both gauntlets. The joy bubbled up fresh as he spun, and when he faced the darkening sky he fired.

Lightning arced upward in a brilliant purple-blue streak. The bolt climbed maybe fifty feet before dissipating, leaving afterimages across his vision. He completed the rotation grinning like an idiot, not caring how much power he was burning or how impractical the display was.

He was flying and shooting lightning while he spun. Because he could!

The drain caught up with him quickly after that. Alexander descended carefully, reversing the wave bias. More down, less up. The controlled descent was smooth and gentle. He touched down on sand without stumbling.

His legs trembled slightly. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the evening cool. But he was grinning.

Alexander walked back to the boulder and sat down heavily. He stared out at the Mediterranean, watching the last of the sunset paint the water gold.

The wave technique worked. Not perfectly. Not fast enough for combat yet. He’d need weeks of practice to make it truly reliable, months to make it second nature.

But the foundation was solid. He could fly. Slowly, carefully, and with significant effort. But he could fly.

The Core’s integration made it possible. He understood his powers in a way that he never had before. And that was without considering the seize-and-shift method he’d been using.

Alexander flexed his hands, feeling the gauntlets respond. Chest, belt, boots for flight. Hands free for everything else.

It wasn’t mastery. But it was a beginning.

He sat there for a moment longer, catching his breath. Then another thought occurred to him. He’d tested Metallokinesis and Electrokinesis, but not Animachina.

The mysterious fourth power. The one he barely understood.

Alexander closed his eyes and reached out with it. Not toward the ocean or the rocks, but back toward the house. Searching for the one machine he knew would respond.

Droney.

The connection snapped into place immediately, as if the distance didn’t matter. Alexander could feel the drone hovering in the living room, could sense its awareness turning toward him like a sunflower following light.

Then Droney’s senses slipped into his mind.

Alexander gasped. Audiovisual data flooded his awareness. The living room from Droney’s perspective. Augustus at the stove, spectral hands moving. Aliens scattered across furniture. The holo display playing something with bright colors.

And beneath it all, a sensation that took him a moment to identify.

Contentedness.

Droney felt… content. Almost happy watching over the house. Fulfilling its purpose.

Alexander’s eyes snapped open, staring at nothing. The data feed continued for another heartbeat before fading, but the connection remained. He could feel Droney’s presence like a warm point of awareness in the back of his mind.

Technopathy and Animachina. Both working together.

The realization stunned him. Technopathy alone had never worked at this distance. It could sense over considerable range, but to work at such a distance and without line of sight required being able to operate through an existing network of data or electrical signals. But Animachina was reaching across hundreds of meters like the distance meant nothing, and Technopathy was piggybacking on that connection.

And there was something more. A sensation building at the edge of his awareness. Like he could almost... reach out and touch Droney. As if the connection was more than just data and emotion. As if he could extend his hand and—

A roar shattered his concentration.

Alexander’s head snapped toward the sound. Down the beach, maybe one hundred meters away, something was charging directly at him. Sand exploded behind it with each thundering step, a dramatic plume marking its approach.

He had just enough time to register the absurdity of the moment.

A monster. Charging at him. On a Mediterranean beach. While he was sitting on a rock testing his new powers.

Of course.

Annie.