0.01%

Written by OmniScribbler :: [Saturday, 13 April 2019 09:38] Last updated by :: [Saturday, 13 April 2019 11:43]

“And you are sure this is safe?” Paige glanced up nervously at the lab tech who was helping her get ready.

“Absolutely,” he replied. “We have had four unresponsive subjects and two very responsive subjects. In all cases, everyone came out of the chamber perfectly healthy. We would never test on human subjects if we weren’t sure of 99.99% possible outcomes.”

“Ninety-Nine. Point. Nine. Nine. Why not 100%?” It was clear that despite his best efforts to console her, Paige was still clearly very concerned. “What exactly is that 0.01%? What would happen?”

The lab tech paused. He wasn’t exactly sure of the answer. The lead on the project had always said 99.99% and everyone around her just went along with it. In fact, she had been the first test subject during the human trial and had been one of the two successful enhancements. Most if not all of her physical and mental abilities had doubled. Her endurace, stamina, strength, and speed all rose to inhuman levels. That first success is what had convinced the project managers, some congressman or something, to continue funding the little project. However, their second success had been even more to behold.

The military had gone through many psychological tests to find people who had the correct aptitude to undergo such a procedure. A few military personnel had been tried but they had failed to glean more that a slight increase in strength or dexterity. Then, a cop, Jessica, had been shown through. She was very excited about the whole prospect and practically bounced into the chamber. When she emerged, she had been transformed into a completely new being. She could effortlessly lift metric tons over her head and run faster that the speed of sound. She was completely impervious to bullets, knives, or even fire.

Most impressive of all was her body. Before, she had been quite pretty, in a girl next door kind of way. With the right makeup she could probably place at a beauty pageant. What stepped out of that chamber was a supermodel’s worst nightmare. She was perfect. Her body had made dozens of tiny changes; perkier breasts, slightly taller, tighter posterior, silkier hair, and so on. She had become the hottest possible version of herself and it was so far beyond anything anyone else in that room had ever seen that several of the lab techs had fainted at the sight of her. The lab tech helping Paige still remembered how he would almost every evening go home and

“Excuse me!”

The lab tech immediately snapped back to the present.

“Yes? Sorry, what is it?”

Annoyed, Paige repeated her question, “What’s this about a 0.01% that you guys don’t know could happen? Do you have any guess or anything? Could I die? Could I be sent into a vegetative state?”

The lab tech slowly shook his head.

“Sorry, it’s not that we haven’t tried to figure it out, we just physically can’t figure it out. However, it isn’t actually possible for you to come to harm in there. You see” He went on to use a bunch of tech and science jargon and reassured her that nothing would go wrong. Reluctantly, Paige finished settling into the chamber.

“It might help if you close your eyes, it will all be over soon. Who knows, you might become super!”

Paige gave him a weak little smile and closed her eyes.

The lab tech turned and gave a thumbs up to the control table and hurried off to join them. The control table started to prepare the procedure on their end; setting up the gas emitter, readying the injection arms, starting up the gyroscopic balancing rods, you know, the usual stuff.

As the lab tech went to join his colleagues, the ground started shaking a bit. Worried, he sped up his pace and was at the consoles moments later. His eyes went wide. If what he was seeing was true then the results of this experiment were staggering. The readouts on his monitor told him that the being in that chamber was capable of lifting mountains, moving at Mach 10 and could survive a small nuclear blast. He turned with delight to the others and began excitedly talking about the results when he was cut off.

“Those aren’t the results,” one of the other lab techs told him with a slight look of horror and disbelief on her face, “We aren’t even 5% through the procedure.”

They all turned to look at what would undoubtedly be the most powerful woman ever to exist came into being.

-----

Paige had been keeping her eyes squeezed shut for what felt like forever. The air at one point had gotten heavy and she had felt some automated injections. Then there was a humming noise and this weird tingling feeling and then nothing. She guessed it must have been at least 5 minutes by now and chose to open her eyes. The interior of the small pod was still the same dull gray as before. She turned to look behind her and was startled to see that all the needle points behind her were bent at strange angles. Looking up she found what she guessed had been the source of the thicker air as a vent was still pumping out whiffs of vapor. She looked down and saw what looked like a bunch of fluorescent light bulb tubes, but were only faintly lit. They were vibrating slightly so she guess that had been the source of the vibrating earlier.

“Hello? Is anyone out there? Is the procedure over now?” Paige asked no seemingly no reply.

Well, I heard I’m supposed to be stronger, she thought, giving the door in front of her a push.

Her hand went through the door and out the other side. Paige just stared at her wrist for a moment. What the fuck. She pulled her hand back and looked at where she expected to see cuts from the jagged pieces of metal in the door, but there was nothing. No blood, no scratch, not even a blemish.

Paige looked at the hole in the door and noticed that is was glowing red hot. Why would that have happened. How could I have done that! Unless… A sudden idea hit her. It should be impossible but so was everything else that had happened so far. Paige took the flat of her hand and rubbed the door vigorously for a few seconds then waited.

Moments later the area she had rubbed began to glow brighter and brighter. She could feel the waves of heat radiating off the door but it did not feel too hot for her, like a warm breeze. The glow spread out and soon the whole door melted off.

How fast am i moving right now?! The freaking friction from my hand melted like three inch thick steel.

She exited the chamber and looked around. The people in the observation deck looked like they were frozen in shock. Actually they just looked frozen. They weren’t moving at all. Paige’s heartbeat quicken as she began to panic. Something had obviously gone horribly wrong. As she stepped out into the room, a thought dawned on her. Paige had signed up for an experimental enhancement program. Being of a more diminutive stature, she figured that if there was a chance she could get a bit faster or a bit stronger it would make her police work that much easier.

This was beyond anything she had expected. This was beyond imagination. She was moving faster than should be humanly possible. At the speeds she was moving, she should have died from the extreme G-force exerted on her body. At that speed, she should have been igniting the air around her from the massive amounts of kinetic energy she was giving off from the friction in the air colliding with her.

But it just… wasn’t. The best Paige could tell, everything was normal. Moving about a thousand times slower than normal, but normal nonetheless.

Okay… think, Paige. You are clearly moving way faster than anything else at the moment.

Looking around another thought crossed her mind.

And thinking faster, too.

While the world looked like it was in slow-mo, she moved at what felt like a normal pace to her, relative to her senses.

My reflexes and thinking speed must have accelerated with my body. I need to slow down.

Paige closed her eyes and tried to calm her pounding heart. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to fight the rising panic. Suddenly she felt something hit her face. Opening her eyes she saw the entire wall in torment. Some bits were coming towards her like those that had already impacted on her face. However the vast majority of the walls and ceiling in front of her were flying off into the distance.

She gasped and brought an arm up to cover her mouth.

She didn’t account for how fast she was now.

She didn’t account for how strong she was now.

The simple act of raising her hand sent air particles flying so violently outwards that they sliced through the concrete hundreds of feet deep as well as tearing a large chunk through what little of the room was left.

I have to leave. Paige thought to herself. I’m too damn strong.

She moved as slowly as possible merely sending gale force winds careening around the room, but nothing too destructive. She crouched and jumped.

It was a light jump all things considered.

She still broke the sound barrier and made a ten foot wide crater. What little remained of the ceiling was sent exploding outwards from the sonic boom. Paige herself was sent flying thousands of miles away from the base.

-----

Alarms blaring. Frantic scientists yelling out readings from their monitoring equipment. A flash of brilliant light filled the chamber followed closely by an enormous boom and a cloud of dust and falling debris. When the dust cleared the scientists stood gaping at the massive amounts of debris that the testing area had become. Fortunately, the observation deck had been mostly unharmed but the room falling apart and the machinery was beginning to cease functioning

“Everyone I think it is time to leave this place and head to our backup location. Get to the elevator now.” The lead scientists voice managed to reach ever person’s ears above the crescendo of sound even though is sounded no louder than a normal speaking voice.

Everyone got up and filed over to the back of the room by the elevator. They descended to the sub level and began turning on monitoring equipment. A throng of voices were sent flying around the room.

“Signals from the nanites are strong”

“Global news feeds established”

“Vitals are online.”

“Procedure status online. Currently just under 40% and proceeding at a steady rate.”

The head scientist took all this information calmly. She had expected this test to be extraordinary but this was beyond her wildest expectations. She knew that one day she would find the one person who would react this way to the procedure, but she had not expected to find that particular individual so soon.

“Ma’am! I’m getting reports of seismic activity along the East coast from Providence to Philadelphia.”

“Oh my god a massive tsunami just crashed into the North western side of Africa. Morocco, Mauritania, and a good bit of Algeria are heavily flooded.”

The three techs manning the new stations kept shouting out new information the second it was reported.

“Madagascar is… half of Madagascar is…”

“Massive fires breaking out over Greece and Italy.”

“Ma’am half of madagascar is gone. Just. Gone…”

A moment of silence crept over the room.

“More seismic activity from the Himalaya mountains. Landslides and avalanches. Here let me throw up the satellite footage.”

The main screen switched from a stream of data about Paige’s current physical status to an video feed of the largest mountain range in the world turned into the world’s largest pile of rubble.

“Massive damage across Fukuoka and Matsuyama Japan.”

“Ma’am! The congressman is trying to contact you.”

The head scientist ignored him. “Where is she now!”

“We’ve lost biometrics!” One of the lab techs yelled out.

“That’s impossible!” The head scientist said. “Unless…” She whipped around to the group monitoring the news reports. They had all gone surprisingly quiet.

“Someone tell me we are monitoring atmospheric or extra-atmospheric disturbances.”

“There were massive barometric changes over the Pacific but I didn’t that wa

“Get satellite tracking and point those things out into space we need to find her!”

“Madison.”

Everyone froze.

Paige was standing at the back of the room, arms folded and resting on her midriff. She was wearing a different set of clothes. Outwardly she looked the same as before the procedure, a 5’5” blonde with an athletic build. However everyone knew that on the inside was a monster. A being with more power than a neutron star. No one breathed. They all waited to see what she would do.

“We need to talk.” Paige said in a soft voice.

The head scientist, Madison, blinked a few times and said, “Ye-Yeah of course. I can’t imagine what must be going through your head.”

A chime echoed through the room making everyone save for Paige and Madison nearly jump out of their skin. A robotic voice toned, “Procedure at 100%.”