By 10:30 AM, I was no longer a man in an expensive suit. I was a sous-vide therapist slowly cooking in his own juices.
I walked down the oppressively grey, brutalist sidewalk of the commercial district, the mid-morning sun beating down on my shoulders. Although I have taken off the suit jacket of the bespoke three piece suit my Alter had ordered, was a masterpiece of Italian tailoring. It was also designed for a man sitting in an aggressively air-conditioned corporate boardroom, not a man walking to a discount hardware store because a teenager had melted his thermostat.
*I still fail to understand this profoundly pedestrian excursion,* my Alter complained, pacing the pristine, mahogany floorboards of my subconscious. He wasn't sweating. He was entirely theoretical. *We have twenty thousand untraceable credits remaining. We could hire a specialized Class-B thermal kinetic to recalibrate the apartment's ambient temperature in seconds. Instead, you are walking to a supply depot to buy a window unit. You are dragging a ten-thousand-unit suit through the plebeian grime to save eighty bucks.*
"I am establishing a cover," I muttered under my breath, wiping a bead of sweat from my brow. "A ghost doesn't hire a licensed kinetic contractor to fix his AC. A ghost buys a plastic box that plugs into a wall and doesn't leave a paper trail. Besides, it builds character."
*You have entirely too much character,* my Alter sneered. *It is bleeding into your aesthetic.*
I ignored him, turning the corner onto a sprawling commercial avenue lined with heavy, reinforced concrete storefronts. I was looking for a place called *Apex home Appliances and Supply*.
I didn't find the hardware store. Instead, the hardware store found me.
Or rather, the front window of the store exploded outward in a shower of pulverized, reinforced polycarbonate glass.
*CRASH!*
I didn't flinch. I didn't dive for cover. I simply stopped walking, manually clamped the heavy, lead-lined vault of my apathy shut, and projected a localized thermodynamic void.
A massive, armored man wearing a kinetic-dampening vest came flying backward out of the shattered storefront. He sailed through the air, crossed the sidewalk, and slammed into a thick concrete light pole with a sickening, heavy *CRUNCH*. He slumped to the pavement, completely unconscious, a faint, muddy-brown aura of localized brute-force fading from his skin.
*Oh, wonderful,* my Alter drawled lazily. *A mugging. Or a turf war. Please tell me we are going to keep walking. I refuse to get blood on these oxfords.*
I stared at the unconscious man, then looked at the shattered window of the hardware store.
A sharp, high-pitched *whine* filled the air, like the sound of a jet turbine spooling up. The smell of burning rubber and scorched ozone hit my nostrils.
A sudden, violent gust of wind ripped across the sidewalk, scattering the shattered glass.
Standing in the center of the broken window frame, holding a heavy, industrial-grade plasma torch she had clearly just retrieved from the back aisle, was a woman.
She was wearing a sleek, heavily modified friction-suit made of matte-black aerogel, designed to withstand extreme aerodynamic drag. A pair of tinted, low-profile tactical goggles rested on her forehead. Faint, crackling trails of kinetic yellow energy were rapidly bleeding off her shoulders, the physical byproduct of moving at completely unnatural speeds.
I stared at her. The absolute, unshakeable bedrock of my clinical apathy cracked for a fraction of a second.
I knew that messy, chaotic pony of bright blonde hair. I knew that sharp, slightly crooked jawline.
It was Dulcinea Lace. Dulci.
In my timeline, back on Earth, Dulci was the receptionist at the dental clinic down the hall from my psychiatric office. She was a woman who drove a beige sedan exactly five miles under the speed limit, chronically apologized for bumping into furniture, and got visibly anxious if her soup was served too hot. She was famously, reliably, entirely harmless.
The ten plus baddie standing in the shattered window frame was currently cracking her knuckles while a yellow, Class-C kinetic aura radiated from her skin with lethal intensity.
*A speedster,* my Alter diagnosed instantly, accessing the municipal databases he had memorized last night. *Class-C, Ranked 39 in Sector Four. A private contractor specializing in rapid asset retrieval and aggressive kinetic pacification. Lethal, efficient, and highly expensive. Do you know her?*
"She used to water my office fern," I whispered, completely bewildered.
The armored man on the sidewalk groaned, his thick fingers twitching as he tried to push himself up.
Dulci didn't even look at him. She vanished.
It wasn't a teleportation. It was just sheer, terrifying velocity. A yellow blur crossed the ten feet of sidewalk in less than a blink. A sharp, localized sonic *crack* echoed through the street as her combat boot connected squarely with the armored man's jaw.
The man dropped back to the concrete like a sack of wet cement, out cold.
Dulci sighed, a heavy, dramatic sound, and pulled a small, government-issued biometric scanner from her utility belt. She tapped it against the unconscious man's neck, waited for the green confirmation *beep*, and then casually strapped the plasma torch to her thigh rig.
"Well," I said aloud, my voice slipping into its standard, deadpan drone. "You're actually early for once, Dulci."
The yellow aura around her flared violently.
She didn't turn around; she pivoted on a microscopic dime. In a fraction of a second, the distance between us vanished. A heavy, friction-burnt combat boot planted itself squarely on the concrete inches from my toes, and a sleek, incredibly sharp vibro-knife was pressed directly against the knot of my Italian silk tie.
I didn't blink. I didn't raise my hands. I just looked down at the humming blade, then back up into her fierce, heavily lined eyes.
"Who the hell are you?" Dulci hissed, her voice low and dangerous, completely stripped of the bubbly receptionist warmth I remembered. "And how do you know my comms handle?"
I stared at her.
My brain was running a frantic, terrifying calculus. I was a glitch. I didn't exist in this universe. Which meant Dulcinea Lace, Ranked 39 private contractor, had absolutely no idea who I was. To her, I was just a random man in a very expensive waistcoat who had just casually dropped her first name in the middle of a bounty retrieval.
*You are an absolute idiot,* my Alter sighed, sounding profoundly embarrassed for me. *Talk your way out of this, Helian. Quickly. If she vibrates that blade, your head will detach from your neck before the pain receptors even fire.*
"I asked you a question, suit," Dulci growled, pressing the humming blade a millimeter closer to my throat. "Are you with the Guild? You tracking my bounties?"
I manually clamped down on the rising spike of terror, suffocating it beneath my apathy shield. I couldn't act like a friend. I couldn't act like a victim. I had to act like the one thing she would actually respect in this dystopian nightmare.
I had to act like I was her boss.
"Lower the knife, Ms. Lace," I said. My voice was completely flat, a slow, monotonous hum of absolute, unbothered authority. "It's ruining the fold of my collar."
Dulci's eyes narrowed. The yellow kinetic energy crackling around her shoulders stuttered slightly, confused by my utter lack of a fear response. "Give me a name, or I give you a tracheotomy."
"My name is Dr. Aristdale," I lied flawlessly, adopting the corporate identity my Alter had forged. "I am an independent cognitive consultant specializing in high-yield Ego integration. And I know your name, Dulci, because I read your file this morning. Class-C. Ranked 39. Highly efficient, but prone to unnecessary collateral damage."
I slowly raised my hand and pointed a single finger at the shattered hardware store window behind her.
"For instance," I deadpanned. "Was it entirely necessary to throw a two-hundred-pound man through a pane of reinforced polycarbonate, or were you just feeling dramatically inclined this morning?"
Dulci blinked. The humming vibro-knife wavered.
The sheer, staggering audacity of my reprimand short-circuited her combat adrenaline. She was a lethal speedster used to terrifying her targets. I was treating her like a reckless intern who had just jammed the office photocopier.
"He... he threw a heavy-ordinance wrench at me," she defended automatically, before catching herself and scowling. "Wait, why am I explaining myself to you? What does a cognitive shrink want with a pacification contractor?"
"I was assessing you for potential employment," I bullshitted, leaning back slightly, projecting an aura of immense, corporate disappointment. "My practice frequently requires the... retrieval... of highly volatile clients. I need someone fast, discreet, and capable of operating outside the purview of the Anomaly Task Force."
Dulci slowly lowered the vibro-knife, slipping it back into her thigh sheath. Her yellow aura dimmed, pulling back into her skin. She crossed her arms, looking me up and down, evaluating the immaculate white shirt under the bespoke waistcoat and the absolute, thermodynamic void of my psychological presence.
"You don't have a signature," she noted, her sharp eyes scanning my chest. "You're completely cold. A blank. I've never seen an Ego burn that quiet."
"It's a prerequisite for my line of work," I replied smoothly. "If I broadcasted my emotions, my clients would accidentally level the city block. I have to remain entirely objective."
"And what did your little assessment conclude, Doc?" Dulci asked, a smirk playing at the corner of her lips. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by the cynical, mercenary professionalism of Sector Four.
"I concluded," I said, stepping past her toward the shattered hardware store, "that while you are undeniably fast, your lack of subtlety is a liability. I can't have you shattering windows every time a client refuses to pay a co-pay. We'll keep your resume on file. Have a pleasant afternoon."
I didn't wait for her response. I casually crunched over the pulverized glass, stepped through the ruined window frame, and walked into the dusty, dimly lit aisles of *Apex Home Appliances and Supply*.
I didn't look back. I just kept walking, my heart hammering a frantic, terrified rhythm against my ribs, completely masked by my deadpan exterior.
*A masterful display of pathological lying,* my Alter applauded slowly, genuine respect echoing in his voice. *You leveraged my corporate forgery to completely disarm a lethal mercenary. You didn't just survive the encounter, Doctor; you actively gaslit her into feeling unprofessional.*
"Shut up," I thought back, my hands trembling slightly as I shoved them deep into my pockets. "I just almost got decapitated by my old receptionist."
I heard a sudden *whoosh* of air behind me.
A small, matte-black business card fluttered over my shoulder and landed perfectly in my breast pocket.
"If you ever need someone to drag a client to the couch, Doc," Dulci's voice echoed from the sidewalk, already fading into the distance. "Call the number. I charge triple for discreet."
I pulled the card from my pocket. It had a sleek, yellow lightning bolt embossed on the front, and an encrypted comm-link number on the back.
I stared at it for a long moment, the sheer absurdity of the multiverse finally settling over me. The universe hadn't just changed the rules; it had recast all the actors.
"Well," I muttered, slipping the card into my wallet. "At least she finally learned how to be on time."
I turned down the aisle labeled *CLIMATE CONTROL*, grabbed the cheapest, heaviest, most analog plastic window AC unit I could find, and hauled it toward the terrified cashier hiding behind the counter.
"Ring it up," I sighed, dropping the heavy box onto the counter. "And hurry. I have a corporate empire to build."