Three days after leaving Eddie's apartment Aditya sat at his desk in the early morning and looked at the NZT pouch for a long moment.
He had been conservative with it. Deliberately, carefully conservative — taking it only when absolutely necessary, never recreationally, never out of impatience. He had watched what happened to people who treated it like a shortcut rather than a tool.
But the next phase required more than his natural intelligence could efficiently handle alone. Not because he wasn't capable — his baseline of 14 was well above average and had gotten him further than most people would manage in twice the time. But what he needed to do in the next few weeks required operating at a level that his natural brain simply couldn't sustain across multiple disciplines simultaneously.
Martial arts. Hacking. Advanced coding. Languages. All of it while managing the Eiben acquisition, Eddie's controlled access and the trading that was funding everything.
He needed to be strategic about it.
He opened his notebook and wrote out a schedule — which skills on which days, which NZT tablets to use for which purpose, how to maximise retention while minimising consumption.
Seven tablets total for the learning phase. One per discipline with careful overlap planning.
He looked at the schedule for a moment.
'Right', he thought. 'Let's go.'
He took the first tablet.
Day one was coding and hacking.
The electric clarity hit within sixty seconds — the familiar expansion, the world sharpening at every edge, thoughts connecting at speeds his normal brain could only approximate.
He opened his laptop.
He had already laid the groundwork weeks ago — the library books, the basic coding he had built the app with. But basic was not what he needed now. He needed expert level. The kind of understanding that took most people years of professional experience to accumulate.
He started with advanced programming architecture — the deep structural logic that separated competent developers from genuinely exceptional ones. On NZT it unfolded like a map he had always known but never been able to read clearly. Every concept connected to every other concept. Every system revealed its own logic immediately.
He moved through it without stopping.
By midday he had covered the equivalent of two years of advanced computer science study. Not surface level — deep, structural, the kind of understanding that would hold up under any practical pressure.
In the afternoon he shifted to cybersecurity and ethical hacking.
Network architecture. Vulnerability identification. Penetration testing methodologies. Encryption and decryption. Social engineering principles. He absorbed it all with the same clean efficiency — not memorising but genuinely understanding, which was an entirely different thing.
By the time the tablet wore off that evening he set the laptop down and sat back.
He could feel the knowledge sitting differently in his mind from ordinary learning — more solid, more accessible, filed in a way that would hold. NZT didn't just accelerate learning. It changed the quality of it.
He noted it in his notebook.
Coding — expert level foundation. Cybersecurity — functional to advanced. One tablet used. Six remaining in learning schedule.
Day two was martial arts.
He had booked a private session with a Krav Maga instructor — a compact Israeli man named Oren who ran a small studio three blocks from the gym and had a reputation for teaching people who needed practical skills rather than sport competition.
He took the tablet thirty minutes before the session.
By the time he walked into the studio his spatial awareness was operating at a level that felt almost unfair. He could see the geometry of movement before it happened — the angles, the weight transfers, the mechanical logic of how bodies moved and where they were vulnerable.
Oren looked at him when he walked in.
"First time?", he asked.
"First time with you", Aditya said.
Oren nodded and started with the basics — stance, footwork, the fundamental principles of Krav Maga's no-nonsense approach to real world threat response.
Aditya absorbed everything in real time. Not just intellectually — physically. His body followed the instructions with a precision that surprised even him. The NZT wasn't making him physically stronger or faster — his stats were what they were. But it was allowing him to understand and implement correct technique at a speed that should have been impossible for a first session.
By the end of two hours Oren was looking at him differently.
"You've trained before", he said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Not in this", Aditya said honestly.
Oren looked at him for a moment then nodded slowly.
"Same time Thursday", he said.
Aditya booked four more sessions that week.
Krav Maga — foundations established. Movement patterns retained. Body needs repetition to consolidate. One tablet used. Five remaining.
Day four was languages.
He had thought carefully about which ones.
Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam first — practical and immediate. He already knew Kannada and Hindi from growing up. But the South Indian film industries were vast and full of worlds worth visiting. If he was going to travel through those stories he needed to move through them like someone who belonged there. Not a tourist. Not someone reading subtitles in his own head.
Mandarin next. Not for this world — he was leaving soon enough. But he had already been thinking about what came after Limitless. The worlds he wanted to visit next. Some of them would need Mandarin.
Future preparation. Nothing more.
Five languages in one day was ambitious even on NZT.
He took the tablet and opened the first book.
He spent the day at the library — the same quiet corner he had used before, same calm surroundings. But this time the table was covered in language textbooks, grammar guides, character recognition materials for Mandarin and audio resources for the South Indian languages.
The tablet turned what should have been years of painful study into a single extraordinary day.
Tamil first — the grammar logic, the script, the phonetics. Then Telugu, which shared enough structural DNA with Kannada that it came faster than expected. Malayalam was the most complex of the three — its script dense and curving, its grammar uniquely its own — but even that yielded to the NZT enhanced focus by mid afternoon.
Mandarin came last. Tones, characters, grammar structure, vocabulary — all of it assembled in his mind with the same clean logic. By evening he was constructing basic sentences with grammatical accuracy that most beginners took a year to reach.
He walked out of the library as it closed and said a sentence in each language quietly to himself on the pavement.
All five came out correctly.
He smiled at that — properly, the way he hadn't smiled in a while.
Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam — foundational. Kannada and Hindi already known — these now consolidated and deepened. Mandarin — foundational to intermediate. All five sitting solid. One tablet used. Three remaining in learning schedule.
Meanwhile the trading had not stopped for a single day.
Daniel had restructured the approach slightly at Aditya's direction — heavier positions on the stocks he knew with absolute certainty were undervalued in 2011. Apple was trading at prices that from Aditya's perspective were almost comically low. Netflix was still finding its footing but the trajectory was unmistakable to anyone who knew where it was going. Amazon was being underestimated by the entire market.
He wasn't reckless. He was still careful, still spread across multiple platforms, still keeping individual positions below the threshold that would attract regulatory attention.
But he was pushing harder than before.
The bank balance reflected it.
He checked it on Thursday morning.
$2,847,920.
He looked at the number for a long moment.
Almost three million dollars. In roughly ten weeks of story time, operating mostly on his natural intelligence with NZT used sparingly and strategically.
He noted it in his notebook without celebration and moved on.
The Eiben share buying had begun quietly the previous week.
Daniel had set it up through three separate brokerage accounts across different platforms — small purchases, irregular timing, nothing that formed an obvious pattern. Eiben Chemcorp was obscure enough that nobody was watching its share movements closely. The current owners were largely passive investors with no particular attachment to the company beyond its financial performance, which had been unremarkable.
Patricia had confirmed the ownership structure — a small board, majority shares held by two principal owners, the rest distributed among minor institutional investors. Carl Van Loon held a small stake through one of his subsidiary funds — purely financial, clearly not a priority for him given the much larger merger he was focused on.
"He'll sell if the price is right and the offer is clean", Patricia had said at their Friday meeting. "He doesn't care about Eiben. It's a rounding error in his portfolio."
"Good", Aditya had said. "Make sure the offer will be clean when the time comes."
The share buying continued. Slow, quiet, invisible.
'Building toward the threshold', he thought. 'Patience.'
Eddie had checked in on day three as agreed.
The difference was visible immediately.
He answered the door in clean clothes, hair washed, the apartment behind him showing the early signs of someone who had started caring again. Not transformed — two tablets wasn't enough for transformation. But present. Functional. The hollowed out look replaced by something that at least resembled the person from the gathering.
"It worked", Eddie said. Not triumphantly. Just as a statement of fact.
"I know", Aditya said.
They talked for thirty minutes. Aditya explained the project in broad terms — pharmaceutical research, a specific compound, a researcher named Preet who Eddie would be working with. He didn't mention Eiben yet. Didn't mention the acquisition. Just the work.
Eddie listened carefully.
"What's the compound?", he asked.
Aditya looked at him steadily.
"The same one you took", he said.
A long silence.
Eddie processed that.
"You want me to help improve it", he said slowly.
"I want you to help perfect it", Aditya said. "With proper research support."
Eddie was quiet for a moment.
"Why me?", he asked.
"Because you've taken it", Aditya said. "You know what it does from the inside. That's information a lab can't generate."
Eddie looked at him for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
"Okay", he said. "When do I meet this researcher?"
"Next week", Aditya said. He placed three more tablets on the table. "Controlled. One every two days. We'll review at the end of the week."
Eddie looked at the tablets.
Then at Aditya.
He didn't ask who he was again. He had accepted that the answer wasn't coming yet.
That evening Aditya sat at his desk and checked his stats.
"Khushi."
"Yes, host."
"Show me my current stats."
[Host : Aditya]
[Species : Human]
[Gender : Male]
[Age : 22]
[Stats]
[Health : 9] (Normal person : 10)
[Energy : 0]
[Strength : 10] (Normal person : 10)
[Speed : 9] (Normal person : 10)
[Endurance : 10] (Normal person : 10)
[Intelligence : 14] (Normal person : 10)
[Attributes : 0]
[Skills : Driving (level 2), Swimming (level 1), Coding (level 3), Hacking (level 2), Krav Maga (level 1), Tamil (level 1), Telugu (level 1), Malayalam (level 1), Mandarin (level 1)]
[Equipment : Nil]
[Points : 2140]
He looked at the skills section for a long moment.
Coding had jumped to level three. Hacking at level two. Krav Maga appearing for the first time. Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Mandarin all new additions.
Strength had reached normal level. Speed still needed work.
Points climbing steadily — the story changes, Eddie's arc, the Eiben groundwork all generating passive accumulation.
He wrote his end of day notes.
Bank — $2,847,920.
Skills — coding, hacking, Krav Maga, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Mandarin. All foundations established.
Eiben — share buying begun. Quiet. Steady.
Eddie — stabilising. Meeting Preet next week. Three tablets given.
Trading — pushing harder. Apple, Netflix, Amazon positions increased carefully.
NZT used this phase — three tablets. Four remaining in learning schedule.
He paused and looked at the bank balance figure one more time.
Almost three million.
'Not bad', he thought. 'Not bad at all.'
He added one final line.
Phase two is moving. Don't slow down now.
He closed the notebook and turned off the light.
Outside the city hummed on as it always did.
But inside this small apartment something was shifting — quietly, deliberately, irreversibly.
The pieces were all in motion now