Chapter 127. Putting Hyperfocus to the Test

The monitor displayed a dry list of departments. A document that would determine the course of my next few years. As Leon had warned me, there was no way back once I committed. The moment I signed the papers, the government would start pouring tens of thousands of dollars into my retraining while simultaneously granting me access to Top Secret files. And people did not walk away from organizations like that by handing in their resignation on a Friday evening. This was a classified military hierarchy, not an insurance company.

I had serious doubts that I could even count on a standard early retirement based on years of service. The country was effectively under a state of emergency. As long as unstable portals filled with alien filth continued opening across the States, no pragmatic staff officer would let a trained specialist sit around on Florida beaches. There were far too few Awakened in the population. They were a scarce resource, and no one was going to waste it just to make someone comfortable.

I was fully aware of the magnitude of the decision before me. I understood exactly what was at stake, so there was no reason to rush. I closed the email client, shut off the monitor, and went to bed.

I never managed to fully recover after the sudden attack. On top of that, listening to Leon and Selina go at each other like a pair of fighting dogs drained my mental reserves almost as effectively as physical exertion. I needed to clear my head and give my brain a chance to reset. The departments were not going anywhere. The official notice said it in black and white: I had three business days to confirm my choice. If I failed to respond, the assignment algorithm would select a position automatically. The deadline was further proof that the Corps had no intention of cutting even heroes with Bronze Stars on their chests any slack. The government expected maximum output from the Awakened in the shortest possible time.

That brought another question to mind: what happened to underage Awakened? Were they expected to combine combat deployments with school, or were they immediately recruited into active service? Working inside portals was an enormous source of stress, and making a teenager take an organic chemistry test after clearing a sector struck me as the height of bureaucratic stupidity.

I filed the question away for later. I would have to look into it at the first opportunity.

I had no other plans for the rest of the night. I waited for Maggie to return from her walk so I could make sure everything was all right and that one impulsive colonel had not tried to drag her into his operational schemes again. After exchanging a few words, I closed my eyes and gave my body the command to sleep.

I woke in the middle of the night. According to the digital clock, only three hours had passed. Damn. With my new metabolism, I could forget about the ordinary human habit of "killing time by sleeping" for good.

My body was fresh and completely ready for work, but I did not sit down at the computer to send my response to the ministry. It was not laziness or fear. Those mental weaknesses had burned away long ago with the changes to my brain chemistry. I simply did not have enough information. Leon and Selina viewed everything through the lens of their own interests. What I needed was a clear, unbiased perspective from someone on the outside.

I spent the rest of the night training, methodically building up my internal S-Power reserve without rushing.

Morning light cut through the blinds just as I emerged from a state of hyperfocus. A slight mental backlash left a dull ache at the back of my skull, but I suppressed it instantly. A simple, logical idea took shape in my mind.

"Read this and tell me what you think." I turned the monitor toward Maggie when she entered the room with a cup of tea.

From the outside, asking a civilian with no understanding whatsoever of military structure or the specifics of the Awakened might have seemed foolish. But Maggie was the only person around me whose common sense was not warped by military regulations or personal gain. Without her clear-eyed, practical outlook, I would never have become the person I was.

"What do all these abbreviations mean?" She ran a slender finger down the list from the first line to the last. "What exactly are they offering you?"

I gave her a brief, straightforward explanation of each position. I left out all of Leon's vulgarity and Selina's pointed sarcasm, sticking to the facts and the actual duties.

Maggie listened without interrupting, took a sip from her cup, and nodded toward one of the lines. "Obviously, you should go with the Federal Bureau of Awakening."

"Why?" I folded my arms across my chest and watched her face carefully. It was not the most obvious choice. "Convince me."

"Look at it yourself," she said calmly. "All the other options are extremes. Either you're running around the woods with a rifle, hoping luck is on your side, or you're sitting behind a desk at headquarters, drowning in paperwork until you're old and gray. Internal Control Police is the perfect middle ground. We've watched enough cop shows, Tom. You know how the system works. They don't sit in trenches, but they get great hazard pay. And half of them probably go their entire careers without ever drawing their weapons."

"I might not be that lucky." I looked her straight in the eyes. "Unlike street criminals, the people I'd be dealing with would be Awakened. People with unpredictable powers and highly specialized abilities."

"Are there really that many of them?" She gave a slight shrug. "How many Awakened are there in the whole country? A couple thousand? And only a handful of them are going to turn to crime. You'd have to be a complete idiot."

"Why are you so sure?"

"Because it's obvious." Maggie set her cup on the table. "You'd have to be a complete idiot to rob an armored truck or break into a bank when the government is willing to pay people with superpowers huge amounts of money just for being who they are."

"People don't commit crimes just for money, Maggie." I leaned back in my chair. "There have always been plenty of other motives. An Awakened could use their powers to quietly get rid of their wife's lover. Or settle a score with an old boss who spent years treating them like dirt, right up until that Pentagon notice changed the whole balance of power."

"You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be, and you’re looking at it from the wrong angle." She pulled the keyboard toward herself, opened the browser, and brought up Department of Justice statistics for small towns within a couple of minutes. "Here, look at this. In towns with a few thousand residents, serious incidents happen two, maybe three times a year. For you, that’s a dramatically lower risk to your health than regular sweeps through unstable portals."

"Working for the FBA won’t make me completely exempt from combat deployments," I pointed out. "As a reservist, I’ll still be called in for portal clearances two or three times a year. But I see your point."

"And that’s not all. A desk job is practically the worst thing for you now." Maggie gave me a critical once-over from head to toe, then nodded approvingly as if she were inspecting something she was thinking of buying. "Look at yourself in the mirror. You’re pushing seven feet tall, and your shoulders barely fit through a doorway. Now picture Rambo in his famous headband, entering data into Excel or carrying test tubes around a lab. Doesn’t that look ridiculous?"

"Maybe a little." The corner of my mouth twitched as I pictured myself back in my old accounting office. "So your main argument is that I’d look out of place in a white shirt and tie?"

"I’m thinking about how your potential coworkers would react," she said with a sigh. "Picture yourself surrounded by pale, slightly pudgy office clerks. They’ll see you as a threat right away, hate you, start whispering behind your back, and report every little mistake you make to management. Do you really want that?"

I nodded silently. Her argument hit home. In all the chaos surrounding the Corps and the portals, I had forgotten just how toxic an ordinary corporate environment could be: constant office politics, people undermining one another, and endless attempts to dump responsibility on someone else. I used to steer clear of office wars because I knew how to blend into the background and stay out of everyone’s way. That trick would not work anymore. And if a jealous group of coworkers started filing complaints against me, headquarters would simply transfer me from accounting to an assault unit just to get me out of their hair. The conclusion was simple: I needed a place where my physical presence would not raise eyebrows and my skills would make me indispensable.

"I think you’d fit right in wearing a sharp black suit, a shoulder holster, and an earpiece," Maggie said with a faint smile. "You asked for my opinion. I say go with the FBA."

"They might not even let me in." I tempered her enthusiasm. "I have zero background in investigative work."

"So what? They have academy courses. The other departments train people from scratch, too."

"Having some basic experience would at least give me an edge over career officers." I exhaled. "And the nature of my ability is still an open question. I seriously doubt hyperfocus translates directly into deductive skills."

"Then let’s test it right now!" Maggie narrowed her eyes, thinking through the possibilities. "I’ve got an idea! You saw me come back to the apartment last night with a heavy black bag, right?"

"Yes." I instantly pulled the image from my visual memory. "Around nine."

"But you don’t know what was inside?"

"No."

"Then use your resources. Figure out what I bought."

The test was simple in form but precise in what it was meant to measure. I minimized the browser, opened a blank Notepad file, and placed my fingers on the keys.

[Special command: Use deductive analysis algorithms to determine the contents of the bag. Display the reasoning process and final result on the screen.]

I barely had time to register the numbers on the digital clock in the corner of the monitor. My perception instantly collapsed into a narrow, icy point where nothing remained except the glowing rectangle and the rhythmic hum of my own thoughts. My fingers became a frantic blur across the keys.

Exactly two minutes later, I was yanked back into reality. My head throbbed slightly, but Maggie was already holding out an ice pack. I took it gratefully from her hands.

"Holy crap..." Maggie breathed, eyeing my hands warily. "You were typing faster than a heavy machine gun fires."

The keyboard had clearly taken some damage from the abuse, but the result mattered more. The screen was filled with more than five thousand words of text. A dry, mathematical analysis: timestamps, walking-distance radii for nearby stores calculated from her average walking speed, a probability matrix of potential purchases based on an analysis of her spending over the past month, facial microexpressions, and indirect indicators.

"You bought hair dye. Platinum blonde." I read the final conclusion aloud from the bottom line. "Reason: You wanted to change how old you look because it bothers you that Stephanie and the people around you see you as a teenager."

"That..." Maggie was speechless for a moment and even choked on her breath. "That’s incredible. I haven’t told anyone about this! Not a single person!"

"Subtle nonverbal cues." I skimmed the chain of logical deductions, conclusions that would have taken me hours to reach in my normal state. "You spent too long looking at a glossy magazine in the kitchen, then shifted your attention to hair care."

"You have to attach this to your application!" she exclaimed. "After a report like that, the bureau will be fighting to get you."

"We’ll need to run another series of tests to rule out a fluke, but..." I nodded slightly. "The foundation looks viable."

My conversation with Maggie had given me plenty to think about and saved me a great deal of time.

Now I just needed a couple more independent assessments. I would contact Danny and Megan today. Their perspectives on life would help me build the final decision matrix as well. When it comes to a decision like this, there is no such thing as too much information.