SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything-Chapter 2: Awakening

Hide walked inside the Awakening station. The automatic doors slid open with a soft hiss.

The warmth of climate-controlled air replaced the grey chill outside, and for a moment Hide simply stood in the entrance, letting his eyes adjust. The interior was clean and luxurious — white floors, white walls adorned with futuristic lights that made it seem as if the walls were glowing.

A reception desk sat at the center staffed by a young woman in a fitted white suit who looked up the moment he stepped in.

Before he could say a word, a scanner mounted beside the entrance pulsed with a soft blue light. It swept over him from head to toe, beeped once, and a small ticket printed from the slot beneath it with a quiet mechanical whir.

APPOINTMENT CONFIRMED — HIDE VOLTER— FINAL ASSESSMENT — 18 AUGUST, 2381, 3:30

The woman was already rounding the counter with a professional smile, as if she did this a hundred times a day. She probably did.

She saw the ticket and bowed once, before showing way to Hide.

"Right this way, please."

She led him down a corridor, their footsteps muffled by the polished floor. They passed a row of numbered doors before she stopped at one near the end and held it open for him without a word.

Just besides the door frame there was a holographic picture that kept flashing with different information with pictures. The main title read - "Awakening Process - What to Expect."

The screen simply displayed all the information a person needed to know before going ahead with the awakening process. Hide gave it a quick glance and then walked inside the room.

He had seen that thing twice already and the awakening process was a common knowledge.

Inside was a room that, despite every piece of advanced equipment in it, felt spare. A bed at the center with a thin white padding, its surface covered in a single-use sanitary sheet.

Along the right wall, there was a bank of monitoring machines stood in a neat row. Above the bed, an articulated arm held a multi-angle scanning head that could track biometric data in real time.

A secondary display panel occupied the wall at the foot of the bed, currently showing only the room’s environmental readouts, like temperature, humidity, air composition and mana density.

"Please take off your shirt and lie down," the woman said. "The doctor will be with you shortly."

Hide set his bag on one of the three seats beside the bed and sat on its edge.

He looked at the machines, at the dormant screens and the sensor pads coiled neatly at the bedside. Something cold moved through his gut and his throat suddenly felt dry. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

This was it. The last time he would ever be in a room like this.

He removed his shirt and set it aside, then sat down with his hands on knees and stared at the floor.

’Mom... I am here once again. Its the third time.’

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

’Last time, they said. After today the government doesn’t have to give me another chance. That’s the law.’

His left hand moved without thinking to the left side of his abdomen. His fingers pressed on the thick, raised ridge of scar tissue. The one thing that had never changed since that day six years ago.

The surgeon had told him he was lucky. He always thought about, but he could not find the answer — lucky for what?

He pressed harder against the scar.

’You pushed me behind you. Do you remember? Of course you do right. I still remember that the beast came through the window and you pushed me behind you even though you weren’t Awakened either.’

His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening. The woman was accompanied by the doctor.

The doctor was a middle-aged man — greying at the temples, carrying a slim transparent tablet projecting a faint blue light upward onto his face as he reviewed it.

His white coat carried the AAA emblem. He looked at Hide with an even expression and gestured the woman to start the process.

Hide lay back silently on the bed. The woman moved around him, pressing sensor pads to his temples, chest, wrists and fingertips. Each one adhered with a faint adhesive hum and registered on the screens above with a soft chirp, the displays blinking to life one by one.

"Alright." the doctor pulled a stool to the bedside and sat. "Standard questions before we proceed." He glanced at the tablet. "This is your third and final assessment. You understand that?"

"Yes."

He made a note — a small gesture on the tablet’s surface that logged it automatically. "One last question. Take your time." He looked at Hide directly. "Why do you want to awaken? What is your motive?"

The room was very quiet.

Hide stared at the ceiling with narrowed eyes. His fingers found the scar one more time. His jaw tightened and he felt a burning sensation in his chest.

’They too everything from me...’

He turned his head and looked at the doctor.

"To exterminate every.... single one of the calamity beats." He said through gritted teeth.

The words turned out so cold and filled with bloodlust that the doctor’s stylus stopped moving mid-gesture. The man blinked and leaned back a fraction. His throat moved as he swallowed.

He held Hide’s gaze a moment longer, then looked away and cleared his throat.

"...Right." He stood and glanced at the woman near the door. "Bring the stone."

She nodded and stepped out.

The woman returned after a minute or maybe two. It was getting hard for Hide to keep track of time because of how anxious he was getting.

She returned carrying a small tray covered in matte white and sealed under a thin transparent cover that she removed with a twist of the latch. Resting at its center, was a stone the size of half a finger.

It caught the room’s lighting and threw it back several folds like a diamond. It was deep red and crystalline with veins of brighter scarlet running through.

Even in a world of holographic displays and bio-scanning equipment, there was something about a Life Stone that made everything else in the room feel beside the point.

The woman set the tray on the bedside and stepped back.

Hide reached out and picked it up. It was lighter than it looked. He turned it between his fingers, watching the light move through it.

’This is it, Mom.’

He swallowed hard, placed it in his mouth and bit down.

It shattered instantly, brittle as dried chalk and tasted like absolutely nothing.

He swallowed the life stone after crushing it thoroughly.

The machines held their quiet rhythm. The green line of his heartbeat moved across the monitor in its steady, indifferent arc. The scanning head above him adjusted its angle once, then went still.

One minute.

Hide stared at the ceiling and focused inward... reaching for the warmth and the shift behind the ribs that everyone said you simply knew.

But there was nothing different.

Maybe his body was just having a hard time absorbing the mana the life stone emitted.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

One of the monitors emitted a long, flat tone. The doctor silenced it from the bedside panel without a word.

Four minutes.

Hide’s jaw locked. His hands pressed flat against the bed until his knuckles went pale.

’Come on.’

’Come on.’

’COME ON.’

Hide’s eyes were wet now, but he held them back by biting down his lower lip. Even the lady looked at him with pity.

The doctor set his tablet down quietly.

"Hide." His voice was careful. "I’m going to need you to—"

"I know." Hide’s voice was very flat and emotionless.

"I FUCKING KNOW!"

He closed his eyes and covered his face with both his hands. ’I... I am sorry! I am sorry Mom!’

He had told himself every morning for two years to be prepared.

But in the end, he hadn’t been prepared at all.

’I couldn’t do it, those monsters are still out there... and I couldn’t even awaken.’

His teeth found each other grounding with audible sound. His breathing went hard and shallow. He swore it over his mother’s grave that he is going to kill them, he is going to kill each one of those bastards.

’I am not done. I refuse to be done. I don’t care what these machines say. I don’t care about the law or the three chances or any of it.’

’I am going to kill them, Mom.’

’Just look at me, I will kill every last one.’

"Doctor."

The woman’s voice cut through his thoughts.

"The readings—"

The steady indifferent rhythm was gone. In its place there was a rapid climbing series of tones, each monitor spiking in sequence and different screens flooding with data.

The scanning head above Hide’s bed had begun rotating continuously. The doctor was on his feet, tablet in both hands, his face lit by numbers scrolling faster than normal readouts.

"Its working" he breathed. "The mana is moving."

Hide didn’t hear any of that, for he was feeling as if something was moving inside his body, inside his every cell.

"Congratulations, Mr. Hide Volter" The doctor said with a smile, as he extended a tablet towards him. "You have Awakened."

Hide was still in shock when he took the tablet and read it.

Name - Hide Volter

Age - 18

Class - ∞

Class Potential - S

Talent - None

Talent Potential - None

’Infinity sign?’ the tablet only added to his confusion. He had never heard of such a class and it even had an S rank Potential. But why didn’t he have a talent?

And furthermore. What was the weird blue screen floating in front of his eyes.

[ Synchronizing System Stats... ]

[ Congratulations — Universal Adaptation System is now live. ]