The fly buzzed idly about the room. It had come in through the window and landed on the foil-wrapped burrito.
Alex sighed and turned his head to the noise. The flapping of the fly's wings hummed at an irritating frequency. He rolled out of bed and grabbed a sock.
The fly rollled and dodged the attack, zooming up to the ceiling and hovering out of reach. Alex paused.
"I beat a boxer who's been training since she was 6, but I can't swat a fly?" He said quietly.
The irritation at the fly's buzzing was replaced by excitement. He had so many ideas of ways that he could attempt to enhance his body that he couldn't decide. Now, the universe had presented him with a solution.
Alex threw aside the sock. The fly was standing upside down on the ceiling looking at him. He wondered if its brain was capable of anticipating he would attack again.
Flies percieved time four-five times faster than a human. Their compound eyes worked at a higher flicker-fusion rate, allowing them to rapidly register visual changes. The small size of their bodies and nervous systems meant that electrical impulses only had to travel a short distance. This gave them quick reaction speeds to match their quickened perception of the world.
Alex lined up his palm with the fly. The unfortunate creature never could've anticipated what came next.
Alex's forearm squirmed and then leapt forwards. More than a foot of bone and tissue grew in only a couple milliseconds. Then, like a venus flytrap enveloping its meal, the skin of his palm rippled and stretched, capturing the fly in its folds.
His stomach rumbled loudly, with his other hand he grabbed the burrito and took a large bite. The hunger receded a little.
Alex could feel the fly squirming in his hand. He willed his forearm to return to its normal size, the shrinking process took a couple of seconds.
He concentrated on the fly. His powers began to work, slowly at first. Information about the creature was gradually transmitted and a 3-D picture formed in his mind. The model became more detailed, the miniscule hairs covering the flies body were added and the hundreds of lobular sections of its eyes became visible.
It took nearly a minute to complete the model. Once the process was finished Alex released the fly out the window.
'Phase two.'
He lay down in bed. The changes he planned to make would take time, patience and skill. He set a hopeful two week timeline. Pushing the distracting thoughts from his mind, Alex willed his powers to action and began to work.
The next morning he woke up feeling refreshed and energised. He didn't have to engage his powers to achieve this effect, after only a week of optimizing he'd started to feel a noticeable uptick in his energy levels.
The modifications he'd begun to make last night were still in the early stages, but they were stable. He estimated a 2-3% increase in his perception of time.
Alex had watched an interview of the famous hero Red Rush where the weary-sounding man explained how agonising it was to speak to reporters while perceiving time a hundred times faster than they ever could. The tabloids had greedily capitalised on a comment he'd made some years prior at a press conference, the hero had off-handedly said that sometimes even speaking to his girlfriend was painful for him.
To avoid turning life into a slow-moving and torturous spectacle, Alex didn't change his base perception of time. He was modifying the cells in his eyes and brain to process information more quickly, but he set the process as one that could be actively toggled on and off. He had linked the time-dilation to his sympathetic nervous system, meaning that it would be automatically triggered in a fight-or-flight situation. Being able to process information more quickly would help him protect himself in a dangerous or emergency situation.
Once the process of improving his perception was complete, Alex planned to modify his central nervous system to enhance his reaction speeds. The completion of both projects would allow him to percieve the world in slow-motion while moving at incredible speed.
Modifying his perception was a complicated task. Fortunately the fly had provided a relatively easy to follow template. Reaction speeds were trickier to modify, he'd already fine-tuned the conduction of electrical impulses and he couldn't simply shrink the size of his nervous system to mimic that of a flies.
Alex made a note to set aside time to research whether any other animals could offer some guidance on how he could go about speeding up his reaction times. The innate intuition of his powers allowed him to make changes simply by willing them to happen, but without scientific understanding and feasiblity to back them up, he could only rely on slow adaptation and trial and error.
He glanced over at the alarm clock on his bedside table.
8:47.
Alex cursed and hastily grabbed an apple and his laptop, shoving both into his bag. Not bothering to lock the door behind him he raced out the door and down the stairs.
His sprint turned a few heads as he bombed down the scenic paths to his lecture hall. He didn't know when he'd started smiling. The whistle of the wind and the way it made his hair blow about was a natural dopamine-high.
Alex was smart enough to know that messing with certain chemical messengers could have serious effects, he'd never attempted to artificially increase his dopamine levels and he never would. Sure the safety features of his powers might prevent any lasting harm, but he didn't want to see whether they stopped dopamine addiction too.
He arrived to the lecture not even breathing hard. He paused for a minute to add a flush of colour to his cheeks and a small amount of sweat to his underarms and forehead.
Damien grinned and waved at him, pointing to an empty seat beside him. The clock struck nine exactly.
"Cutting it real fine hotshot." Damien whispered.
Alex placed his laptop on the desk and held the power button. He turned to his friend and said with exaggerated niceness, "Is it hard to walk when you're kissing your own ass that hard?"
Damien snorted and made a tsking noise.
The professor at the front of the hall cleared his throat. He adjusted the microphone and said slowly, "Hello class, today we have a guest speaker. This is Dr Molay. She works for an organization some of you might recognise, I trust you'll give her your full attention."
The professor gestured politely to the podium and stepped aside. A sharply dressed woman in a grey suit took his place.
"Good morning, thank you for coming today. As Mr Garden mentioned, my name is Dr Molay. I work for the GDA." Dr Molay's voice was clipped and slightly cold.
All fidgeting in the room stopped. The usual sound of keys clicking on keyboards fell silent. The eyes of every student in the room stared at her without blinking.
Alex knew the GDA. Every person in the world knew the GDA. They were the women and men in all black with huge guns that burst out from armored vehicles when a villain decided to rob a bank. It was rumoured that they were recruited from special forces all over the world.
"Eyes on the screen please." Dr Molay said and clicked a button on a sleek laptop with no visible brand name. There were no cables connecting the laptop to the overhead prokector, but without delay a video began to play.
Gunfire sounded from the speakers. On the screen a half-collapsed building shuddered. Rubble cascaded down and the air was filled with dust.
A man breathed heavily. The camera angle moved forwards, swaying unevenly. The students quickly realised that the camera was attached to a person running.
The camera panned downwards and the students caught a glimpse of a white coat and smart shoes. The man running swore, the students faintly heard him mumble something about his ankle. The camera had panned because he'd tripped.
Dust clouds swirled about wildly. Something was whipping the air into a heaving turbulence mass. The man kept running, his gait had changed and it was apparent that he was limping.
The students saw another person appear in frame. A woman lay on the sidewalk, a bag of shopping spilled out on the ground beside her. Blood pooled around her head, a gash ran down from her eyebrow to her jaw.
The doctor swore again and limped towards her. The students heard him calling out to the woman. He recieved no response.
The camera angle shifted slightly. The doctor held the woman's wrist, feeling for a pulse. He cried out yes and quickly reached into his pocket, pulling out a vial of milky white liquid.
The doctor's hands trembled. The cork from the vial bounced and rolled out of frame. Liquid sloshed and poured onto the woman's head wound.
The milky white liquid fizzed against the woman's skin. Tendrils of smoke rose and the woman stiffened and cried out in pain. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly and it looked for a moment that she might wake up. After a few seconds her eyelids returned to calm and her face relaxed.
The doctor muttered something about coagulants and reached for his phone. His home screen showed a photo of him with his arm around the waist of a woman in a blue dress. Both of them were smiling.
A gunshot sounded. The camera angle changed again. Slowly at first, then more rapidly the doctor tilted forwards. The camera on his chest mushed against the shirt of the unconscious woman. His breathing softened. Before long the students could no longer hear it.
The video ended and the screen went black.
"Dr James Hart. The woman in the photo, his wife, is pregnant. He doesn't know yet." Dr Molay paused. Her expression remained impassive and neutral.
"He's dead."
There was a collective intake of breath in the room. Damien's seat squeaked as he shifted uncomfortably. The professor who had introduced Dr Molay looked like he wanted to stand up and say something, but in the end he stayed seated.
Dr Molay posed a question to the room, "Who can tell me what he did wrong?"
The questions asked in lecturers usually had a clear right answer. Opening a textbook and turning to the right page would offer the relevant information. Dr Molay's question was much murkier.
A hand was raised. The young woman's expression was uncertain, but determined.
"Yes, in the front." Dr Molay motioned for her to speak.
"The coagulating agent wasn't enough, he should've supplemented it with an emergency blood transfusion." The young woman offered her answer.
Dr Molay nodded and pressed a key on her laptop. Long and detailed lists of magnesium and platelet levels, anything and everything that was relevant to health, appeared on the projected screen.
"The woman's haemoglobin was six. Too low. You're correct, a transfusion would've been beneficial."
Dr Molay surveyed the crowd. There were no other raised hands. She approached the front row.
"Give me your answer." She said, looking at a student.
The student stammered, "I-I don't have one."
Dr Molay's gaze didn't falter. There was something cold and pragmatic behind her eyes, "Make one. That's why you're here, that's why you're on this course, to answer questions. That's how lives are saved."
The student swallowed and flipped through his notes with a trembling hand, "The-the blood loss was secondary, he should've focused on moving the woman to a safe location."
Dr Molay looked at the student, tilting her head slightly to one side. It was the look a person gave a pen or switch that had stopped working. It didn't seem right when applied to another human being.
"True, we can fix a ruptured artery with surgery. We can't fix anything if a person's in pieces."
She returned to the podium and looked across the crowd again, "Anyone else?"
Another hand stretched up. Dr Molay nodded for them to speak.
"Civillians should evacuate disaster zones."
Dr Molay blinked. Then she smiled, "Very good. Civillians should evacuate disaster zones. A white coat doesn't stop a bullet, as Mr Hart in the video found out. Professionals, our professionals were on the scene 110 seconds later, they would've found the woman and taken her for treatment.
Dr Hart's heroics achieved nothing. His death was reckless and unecessary. A little bit of power can make people think they're 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲. None of you are."
Alex had answered the question correctly. Damien nudged him in the shoulder and did a small fist pump underneath the desk.
"Was she okay, the lady in the video?" A student asked.
Dr Molay looked to the speaker. A young woman with kind eyes and quivering lips.
"No."