Thursday. Twenty-seven days since the Omnitrix. Silas had two things to do before the week was out: test positions 9 and 10. After Livewire, he wasn't going back into the field with untested forms sitting on the dial.
He also needed to confirm the early reversion mechanic properly. He'd done it once under pressure. He needed to do it deliberately so it was a tool, not a lucky accident.
Freight yard. 6 AM. He stood in the center and rotated the dial to position nine. The silhouette was fluid, its edges indistinct in the faceplate rendering. Not as solid as Brawler or Prism. It looked like something that could be different things.
'Liquid-looking. That's all I know. No assumptions. Just go in.'
He pressed the dial.
The form that arrived was made of living metal.
Not liquid exactly. More like metal that remembered how to be liquid, that had the option of fluidity without defaulting to it. The body was roughly humanoid, silver-black, with a surface that shifted and rippled when he moved, catching the morning light in patterns that weren't quite reflections. Two arms, standard configuration, but the hands could be reshaped. He felt that immediately, the same way he'd felt the crystal reshaping in Prism, but more radical, more complete.
'I can become other things. Not just reshape the hands. The whole form can reconfigure.'
He tested it. Extended the right arm into a wide shield, retracted. Extended the left hand into a tapered point, retracted. The material responded instantly.
He pressed his palm against the loading bay wall. The surface of his hand flowed into every gap in the concrete, adhering. He pulled. The concrete cracked before the form's grip released.
'Adhesion. And what does it do against impact?'
He picked up a length of scrap metal and hit himself in the forearm with it. The metal sank slightly into the surface on contact, absorbed, and came back out. Not damaged. Not even marked.
'It absorbs and returns force. Doesn't take the hit the way Brawler does. Brawler takes it and stands there. This form takes the hit and makes it not a hit.'
Eight minutes testing. When the timer pulsed its warning he reverted deliberately, checked the dial. Green, active, ready. Confirmed the early reversion mechanic a second time. He sat on the freight yard concrete with his notebook.
He wrote at the top of the page: TECH PARASITE.
Because that was what it was. Not just a material that absorbed. a material that interfaced. He'd felt it when he pressed his palm against the wall, a faint signal, the wall's structural data arriving as sensation. This form read things.
He wrote the profile. Then: *Electrical resistance: unknown but the absorption mechanism suggests it might not conduct the same way organic forms do. Test against a controlled charge before the next Livewire encounter.*
....
Position ten needed water. He took the bus to the harbor on Saturday. a free afternoon, his mother on a day shift. and found the maintenance pier at the south end that had been closed for repair work for three months. Nobody there.
He pressed the dial.
The form hit the water before the transformation fully settled, the body's instinct pulling him off the pier edge with a force that surprised him, the way every form had surprised him in its first second. The instinct arrived before the consciousness caught up.
Underwater was different. Completely different. The form was built for it the way Jetray was built for air. The hydrodynamics instinctive, the water something to move through rather than resist. The jaws were a full predator's mouth at the front of a deep-sea body built low and fast, with fins where arms would have been. The jaws were the primary tool. Everything else was the delivery system.
'Predator. Pure predator. Everything about this form exists to catch something.'
He spent thirteen minutes in the water. Not testing. Exploring, the way he'd explored Jetray on the first flight. The form knew the harbor in a way his eyes never had. Depth, current, temperature differentials, the location of every large object on the harbor floor, mapped instantly through a sensory system that was nothing like sight and everything like certainty.
He surfaced before the timer warning. Reverted on the pier, checked the dial. green. and sat with his feet over the water and his notebook open.
He wrote: RIPJAWS.
Because that was what it felt like from the inside. The jaws were the whole point. Everything else served them.
He wrote the profile. Then: *Not useful on land. In water: exceptional. The harbor, the bay, or any large body of water becomes a completely different operational environment with this form available.*
'Ten named forms. All ten tested. Over half documented. That's almost all the starting roster.'
He sat with that for a moment. Then he closed the notebook, stood up, and took the bus home.
....
Friday night. Twenty-nine days since the Omnitrix. Silas was running a patrol along the Byrne Street route in Brawler when the situation found him.
Not a handoff. Something larger. An Intergang convoy. four vehicles, the heaviest security configuration he'd seen from them yet, moving north on Hob's Street with the specific coordination of people who had new instructions about how visible they were allowed to be. Which was not at all.
'Four vehicles. They've consolidated. Instead of multiple smaller runs they're doing one larger one with more protection. Harder to hit, harder to stop.'
He followed from the rooftops. Not engaging. The convoy was too large and too well-coordinated for a solo intercept, especially after Livewire. Whoever was in those vehicles knew something had been hitting their routes.
The convoy turned east onto Shuster Avenue.
Brawler tracked it from rooftop to rooftop. The lead vehicle was running interference, sweeping the street ahead. Professional. Too professional for standard logistics.
'Someone upgraded their security. These aren't the same crew from the loading bay.'
The convoy was two blocks from a residential district when the lead vehicle spotted the police checkpoint set up for an unrelated traffic stop. The convoy slowed. Communicated internally. Began a reroute.
That was when the blue and red appeared in the sky to the north.
Superman came in low over the Hob's Street corridor, reconnaissance pace, the kind of flight pattern that said he was looking at something rather than responding to an emergency. He passed over the convoy. Slowed. Circled once.
'He's seen the convoy. He knows what Intergang vehicles look like. He's making a decision.'
Superman descended to street level.
He landed on Shuster Avenue directly in front of the lead vehicle, and the convoy stopped. Just stopped. Four vehicles, however many people inside them, all of it halting because Superman was standing in the road and the calculus of that situation had exactly one outcome.
Brawler watched from the rooftop.
Four minutes. The vehicles were searched with the cooperation of their occupants, who had decided that non-cooperation with Superman on a public street was not viable.
MCPD arrived at minute two. The crates documented at minute three. Occupants in custody at minute four.
Clean. Complete. Four minutes and done.
'He handled a four-vehicle Intergang convoy in the same time it took me to handle five people in an alley. Without a fight.'
Superman spoke briefly with the MCPD officer in charge. Then looked up.
He looked directly at the rooftop where Brawler was standing.
....
Brawler did not move.
Superman rose from the street to rooftop level in a single unhurried motion and came to a stop approximately fifteen meters away, hovering at the edge. He looked at Brawler with the specific quality of attention you gave something you were genuinely trying to understand. Not threatening. Not suspicious. Assessing.
Silas did not speak. His heart was doing something complicated that he was going to have to think about later.
Superman looked at the four arms. At the Omnitrix on the left side of Brawler's chest, the device in its correct position on this form, hourglass glowing green. At the costume visible at the collar and wrists, where the form's bulk didn't fully cover it.
'He's reading me. He's doing in ten seconds what Batman would take ten pages of file notes to do.'
Superman's expression did something small and specific. The thing before a smile. Recognition of something he'd been wondering about.
"Shift," Superman said.
Not a question. A confirmation.
Brawler said nothing. Superman held eye contact for three more seconds. Then he looked at the MCPD operation below, the vehicles, the crates, the operatives in custody, and back at Brawler.
"Good work on the Southside routes," Superman said.
He turned and flew north, and was gone in seconds.
Brawler stood on the rooftop alone.
'He knew. He knew it was me. He knew about the Southside operations. He said good work.'
'Superman said good work.'
The Omnitrix pulsed four slow beats.
'Yeah. I know. Don't make it weird.'
....
11:22 PM. Window. Suit off. He sat at his desk and looked at his hands for a moment before opening the notebook.
He wrote the patrol. The convoy, the reroute, Superman's arrival, four minutes, MCPD custody. Then: *Superman said my name. He said good work. He knows about the Southside operations which means he's been tracking them.*
He paused. Wrote: *He looked at the Omnitrix. I don't know what he saw when he looked at it. If anyone on this planet can get something useful from looking at it, it's him.*
He sat back. Twenty-nine days. Ten named forms. Early reversion mechanic confirmed. Tech Parasite and Ripjaws in the roster. Livewire encountered and survived. Batman has probably heard about Shift by now. And now this.
'Thirty seconds. No conversation. Two sentences and he left. That was it.'
'It was enough.'
He wrote at the bottom of the page in the small letters:
'Superman knows I exist. He said good work. Don't overthink it. Just keep doing the work.'
He closed the notebook. Turned off the lamp. Twenty-nine days.
He lay in the dark and thought about how thirty seconds could weigh exactly this much.