The fish opens its mouth as the tentacles surround Sam but it suddenly stops, Sam swims away from it and watches it disappear as if it’s ageing rapidly before disappearing into the water as nothing, the whole process lasted seconds yet made the whole thing disappear.

Sam looks inside and spots the worm, it’s no longer flailing about as its body heaves up and down. The little worms are delivering little white specs of energy to it from somewhere.

The first timer above the worm appears to be increasing with each piece of white energy it consumes and the second timer has stopped decreasing, the first one is increasing one second per energy cube delivered by the little worms while the second one doesn’t move.

Sam thinks about these developments before returning to the water, he looks around him and doesn’t spot anything else to try out the move on so heads towards the surface. He swims upwards and upwards, the surface coming into view revealing a bright sunny day, the sun hidden behind a large mountain behind him.

“I made it out? I actually made it out?”

He looks around and spots a town not too far away, it’ll be a challenge to swim there but he might be able to devour some more fish along the way.

Sam starts a slow casual swim towards the town while monitoring the worm inside his mana-cloud, the small worms have thinned out while the timer has increased to over 1 hour. It is still acting while calm so he wonders how much it’ll be able to eat.

*SPLASH*

He looks in front of him and spots another fish coming towards him, Sam points at it saying ‘Devour’.

The fish stops its movements as it collapses in on itself, finally turning into nothing.

Sam looks inside his mana-cloud and spots the worm shovelling piles of energy into its mouth, the timer is skyrocketing. This is simple enough so far, devour creatures, get energy, that timer goes up. The next question is, how do they decrease?

He spends the next 2 hours slowly swimming to the town, devouring creatures along the way gathering energy until it starts to curls its tentacles up and stop moving. The timer stops at 27:34 it seems, so 27 hours is the maximum time between feedings.

Sam looks at where he is, he’s nearly at the town so he should think about what he is going to do. First thing he needs to do is work out where he is, it cannot be far from the base. The next thing he needs to do is find a way to contact the military, they’ll come get him at least.

He suddenly thinks about his parents then touches his pocket, ‘My phone is here, I wonder if it’ll work out here.’

He hurries his swim towards the town.

He swims into the boat docking area to look for a ladder when he hears a yell, “Hey you alright down there?”

Sam waves back, “Where’s the ladder?”

“Over there!” the person motions in a direction, Sam can see that’s where most of the boat are moored, so him being pointed there gives him an excused to be there. If being in the water wasn’t enough.

“Thanks!” Sam yells back.

“Meet you there!”

Sam cannot respond but they’ve moved on, he has no choice but to swim towards the massive boats that must trawl this water body. The ships are over 100ft long, each of them battered up and bruised in various ways.

He swims around them and spots the ladder up by a wooden jetty, it’s all look worn out and old.

Sam carefully climbs the ladder thankful he has finally landed on some solid land that isn’t underground. Footsteps come from nearby, he looks in that direction and spots a young man around his age looking at him strangely.

The young man is holding a few sheets and blankets.

“Are you some sort of treasure hunter?”

“No, why?”

Sam doesn’t know where this random question came from. The young man passes over blankets.

“Ok dry yourself then, where’d you get the mask from?”

Sam touches his face realising that he has it on still, “I found it, thanks for the towels. I’ve been swimming for some time.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Just over there, where is this?” Sam points over to the mountain and returns his own question.

“Terrence Lake Port”

“Terrence Lake? Where’s that…” Sam tries to recall his geography but cannot place it at all. There’s only a few large lakes that humans still inhabit as the creatures inside it grow too large and violent.

“It’s a new lake, there’s 2 upstream rivers that leads to settlements. It was created in the disaster of last year.”

“Last year? There was a disaster?”

“Did you hit your head or something?”

“Maybe. What happened?”

“There’ was a big—

“Peter! Come here.”

The young boys words are cut off, Sam passes the towels as he’s mostly dried. The person calling out comes around and looks at the two of them. He’s a middle-aged man that looks rigid., he looks Sam up and down.

“Why’s someone from bootcamp out here?”

Sam doesn’t have a chance to respond as the man pulls out a phone, “Yes. I have one of your lay abouts here, skipping training to be out on the town, again. I’ll keep him here.”

“I’m not someone like that” Sam protests, but it falls on deaf ears.

“They’ll find you sooner or later, better to do it sooner, before you cause harm to the girls in this small town.”

The man brings the young boy away, Sam isn’t given the chance to respond as they quickly leave sight. Sam walks in a different direction, towards town while fishing out his secure storage pouch.

It includes a few goodies from the trip, he pulls out the phone and switches it on.

It has power luckily, it’s not high but it’s enough.

*BZZT* *BZZT* *BZZT*

Hundreds of messages come through, Sam quickly scrolls through them and spots many months worth of text messages. Most of them are from his extended family, some friends that he doesn’t know and some that he does.

A lot of people saying good luck in the military, they’re going. Lots of people that heard house being destroyed. Lots of people must have heard about him being missing and being questioned. Finally he comes towards the end and the most important messages.

He opts for the message from his friend first, ‘Bro, I got my babe up and running. She’s a beaut. When you comin back? I heard something recently from Marty so you better contact me soon.’

Sam frowns at that but his heart skips a beat as he opens the next message, ‘we are fine. Urgent priority mission. You keep safe, we deal with it when we return.’

Sam responds with, ‘OK, stay safe. Stay in touch’ a brief message to his mother.

He then sends a message to his friend, ‘What do you mean Marty was talking about me? I am alright by the way’

He receives a call right away, it’s from his friend who appears to be driving given the sound in the background.

“Bro, I knew you were alive, what happened bro?”

“I got stuck down in some dungeon, so what’s this about Marty?”

“Ah a dungeon, those places suck. All the good ones have been picked clean. Marty was talking about how you were getting to know some chick from somewhere important. You were missin around this time.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Just that you’d never come back, he was very sure of it laughing at others when they thought you might come back. It’s great you’re back now bro.”

“Sure, I’m glad to be out of that place but I’m still wondering what the hell is going on. How long was I missing for?”

“About 8 months after they announced it, prior to that you were just missing from bootcamp. I can’t remember if they announced that. How’d you survive, most people run out of food and water…”

Sam hears several vehicle noises fill the air, “I dunno. I’ll talk to you later, gotta hide the phone since I’m not meant to have it.”

“Sure bro.”

Sam pulls out the secure package and puts his phone in quickly, curiously he grabs the stopwatch.

Timer 1 is 36 hours, Timer 2 is 66 hours while the last one reads 9229 hours.

Sam puts the stopwatch away, not knowing why it reads those numbers, his confusion only increases more. The package is securely fastened and hidden by the time the dust and rumble in the distance get close.

He looks at the three large vehicles pull up alongside one large truck.

Several people exit the vehicle wearing official uniforms, MP is on their shoulders.

“Sam Tonak?” one of them asks.

“Yes?”

“Please come with us, you have been reported AWOL and missing from duty for over 380 days. You are to come with us.”

“Do I have to?”

Several of them people encroach upon him, “Stop!” Sam yells.

A light flash surrounds everything around him, his head hisses as a screeching comes from it. It calms down after a few moments allowing him to look around at the scene before him.

Everything around him has frozen, nothing is moving.

He can move fine yet all the people are standing still, some are even defying gravity as they hover above the ground walking, the people in the background are standing still and even the bird high In the sky are holding still.

Sam looks inside towards his mana cloud, he can see that fire timer going down very quickly. He won’t have long of this, but that should be plenty of time to do what he needs to.

“So this is that stop ability… it seems to be some sort of time stop… It’s not cheap on the power though so let’s do this.”

Sam looks at the first person near him, it’s an angry-looking man holding a baton.

He’s raising it up to strike at Sam’s head.

Sam picks up harbinger from his back and brings it up to the man’s hand.

“They can reattach this for you…”

Sam presses his sword against the flesh but it doesn’t cut it, no matter how hard he presses or strikes, it’s not able to pierce through it. Frustrated, he tries the fabric clothing and finds that it’s cuttable.

Sam tears open the guys shirt revealing his under-strapping. All kinds of equipment is on him. He pulls out a canister that looks like mace and spots the next person, a young man wearing a moustache. He too is holding a baton.

Sam shakes up the can of mace and sprays it at the guys face, it sprays like normal dispersing and evaporating as if everything were normal. The man’s face is perfectly normal too but if one looks closely the can see the spray droplets.

Sam throws a dagger at the hand of someone standing further away, the dagger bounces off the hand with no damage.

Sam aims for the weapon, it flies away upon contact with the dagger.

He walks around to each of them, disarming them while walking towards the particularly mean looking people and using a baton to slam into each of their groins.

If they weren’t going to give him the chance to explain himself then this is what they deserve, to be test dummies.

Sam returns to his original spot, he still has plenty of time but this will be a great test.

“Umm… do I just say stop?”

“Start? Begin? Restart? Cancel? Umm…”

“Stop Stop.”

A screech comes from his mind as everything comes into motion around him, Sam just watches the chaos unfold around him.

The first man beside him kneels over, frothing at the mouth for some reason causing the second person to trip over as he’s blind due to suddenly being maced. Most of the men end up kneeling over in pain causing the people beside them to be cause up in their motions.

The people holding the bean bag launcher launches it finding that it explodes in a mass of tear gas, the whole group of people that were approaching Sam are now on the ground, many of them rolling about in pain.

Sam smiles at this result, it was mostly their fault for having these non-lethal options on them but the force gathering thing is important. He just wishes there was someone to actually kill so he could test out more things.

More soldiers appear from somewhere, this time they’re not wearing the MP insignia, they surround a more important looking person who approaches from the larger truck.

“I was just passing through, but I’m impressed if you managed to do this. Can you repeat it with this many people?”

“Repeat what? These people just did this, I want to know what happened to.”

Sam bends down and tends to the man he beat up the most, his jaw is broken making him unable to speak and most importantly, scream. Sam ‘looks after’ the man by twisting his wounded arms in particular ways.

This might look fine from a distance, but no one would be fooled actually.

Sam shakes the man, “Who did this to you, I want revenge, tell me.”

“That’s enough, let the man go. Just come with us Tonak.”

“Where we going?”

“You’ll find out your future.”

Sam frowns, he’s tempted to run away right now using the stop ability. It wouldn’t be hard to just run away somewhere and gather get stronger, strike it out himself but his parents are fighters for the government.

He cannot disappoint them by being a fugitive, besides he did nothing wrong, why would he fear being judged.

Sam shrugs, one of the soldiers comes forward and handcuffs him.

Suddenly another one knocks him on the back of the head, knocking him out.