Lieutenant Jang hands me back my wallet and quickly orders his troops to get back in their vehicles. I look at the black leather wallet uncertainly.

  Where do I put this? I don’t exactly have pockets. Although…

  I focus on that detached part of self I pulled the wallet from. With a brief flash of will, the wallet glows blue and shrinks to a tiny dot before disappearing. Lieutenant Jang gives me an uncertain look, eyes roaming up and down my massive form.

  “Ah, Mr. Ryans. I am not sure you will fit in any of the trucks…”

  I give the armored SUVs a glance. I wouldn’t fit in even if they ripped out all the seats.

  “Yeah, I’ll follow behind on foot.”

  I can probably do that.

  He looks taken aback.

  “You can keep up with the vehicles? Once we get to the highway we’ll be going very fast.”

  I try to smile, again reminded that I don’t have a face. I instead resort to a friendly bob of my head.

  “Only one way to find out, yeah?”

  The convoy rumbles down the mountain side. I easily keep pace, long loping strides shaking the ground with every step. I crush rocks and gravel into powder with every stomp. To be so physically strong, so in tune with myself is intoxicating.

  Every step is calculated, every action planned ahead of time. I never waver from the perfect, planned route. Maximum distance with minimum effort. That patch of ground will collapse, step there instead. A quick side step has me missing that patch of ground in a single flowing motion.

  How did I know it was unstable?

  The information floods into my conscious mind. I quickly discover that I am likely the most advanced sensor fusion platform that currently exists. My unconscious mind combined visual, infrared, ultraviolet, subsonic, and ultrasonic sensor data into an ultra-high resolution 3D model of the ground around me.

  The model showed that while it looked like a solid gravel surface, it was actually a collection of compacted dirt and soil supported by roots. Underneath was a three foot deep hole. Had I stepped there, my two ton plus weight would have shattered the roots and I would have fallen in. My pathing algorithm—I have algorithms?— swiftly switched to a secondary path without missing a beat.

  All of this done unconsciously in nanoseconds.

  What the fuck am I?

  I can sprint down a mountain side at twenty miles an hour without getting tired. I collect sensor data across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and can even measure vibrations caused by my heavy footsteps. I can analyze and compile nearly twenty-four terabytes of data per second from a full 360 degree view around myself across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and more besides.

  I can do all of that completely unconsciously, and then have all of that dumped into my conscious mind, all at the same time! Questioning things as deeply as I am should have distracted me, but I still have yet to miss a step. The sensor fusion, terrain modeling, and pathing algorithms run like clock work, never deviating, stuttering, or slowing.

  What the fuck am I?

  I’m getting tired of that question. I think it’s the only thing I’m getting tired of. I’ve been loping down this mountain side for twenty minutes, following the armored vehicles. The rear vehicle’s gun is manned and the gunner, one Park Chang-ho, is looking at me with wide eyes. Fear, maybe? I can’t say I blame him.

  The world has ended, for lack of a better term. Not in the sense that everyone or mostly everyone is dead. Nor that the nuclear apocalypse long feared has finally bathed the world in atomic hellfire.

  Rather, the way the world ended is in the sense that the world is now fundamentally different. The old understanding of the world is truly dead and gone. Magic has come to Earth, leaving chaos in its wake.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The internet is a wildfire of confusion and fear, though I’m capable of filtering through the noise to pull out at least a few pieces of knowledge.

  One of the first effects of magic entering our world was the effects it had on people. It changed most people, just a little bit. People were a little more like how they wanted to be. Taller, shorter. Clean shaven or not. Maybe as little as a change in their eye color. Heterochromia has overnight become shockingly common. For a select few, the changes are more intense.

  Some people have become physically stronger, faster, and tougher. A vast majority of the Empowered, the term for those who have gained magical abilities, are merely the peak of what a human body could do. They might be able to cast a simple spell or two, or hit harder, but generally they’re close to human.

  From there, though, it only becomes more fantastical. Despite not being well understood at all, it’s clear that some people are simply stronger than others. A scant few are capable of feats relegated to superhero movies and comic books. Super speed, flight, immense strength, and telekinesis to name a few.

  And the top, the cream of the crop when it comes to both luck and magical power, is just two dozen people. Those who were infused with so much magical energy that many of them drastically physically changed. People call them the Ascended. And I may very well be one of them.

  Most people who Ascended fell unconscious for long periods of time. The longest time spent unconscious, not counting me, was a Brazilian woman, now calling herself Estrela. Star, in Portuguese. Fitting, considering that by all accounts she’s a living one now. She spent just a touch over twenty-five hours unconscious before literally igniting.

  She burnt down a good chunk of not just her apartment building, but the entire complex before she managed to control her flames.

  Thirty-two dead, and by accident. I wonder what I’ll do if I’m not careful.

  I disconnect from the telecom sat just before it passes over the horizon, and I don’t want to grab another, but a grim sense of curiosity forces my electronic hand. And so, I grab another in the constellation.

  This one will be available for thirty minutes, and just before I dive back into the digital realm, our convoy turns onto an asphalt road, heading west towards Seoul. As I step and twist to turn onto the street, the top layer of the asphalt gives way with a crack and I send a spray of it skittering across the other lane. A deep gouge is left behind.

  Whoops, glad no cars were there.

  Between my boots and immense weight, I have a ground pressure of nearly twice that of an Abrams main battle tank. I’m clearly as hard on roads as they are, if not more so.

  The convoy accelerates to sixty miles an hour, and I keep up easily. A brief moment of exhilaration runs though me. For a split second, I’m thirteen again and sprinting across an open field for the sheer joy it brings. The wind scours away at my faceplate and gets nothing for its trouble.

  I laugh as the convoy speeds along. It lasts for couple of seconds before I realize what the cost is. The road pays the price for my joy. Each step hammers a shallow boot print into the road and sends crushed asphalt behind me in a dark cloud.

  I’m tearing this road up just by running on it. Fuck. My hotel room is on the fourth floor!

  The joy drains out of me as fast as it came, and is instead replaced by fear. If I destroy roads, arguably the core of modern human civilization just by running on them, where does that leave me? I unsuccessfully ignore my discomfort and fear by diving into the internet. It’s hard to be distracted when you can focus on multiple different things at once.

  It doesn’t stop me from trying. Though, once I connect to another telecom satellite, my fear of myself is rapidly replaced with fear of what’s happening throughout the rest of the world.

  Magic didn’t stop with changing people, though that would have more enough to set the world on fire. No, now we have what people have taken to calling Fractures. Strange formations of light and mind bending warping have appeared all over the world. They’re concentrated mostly in capital cities of global superpowers, strangely.

  Some consider it an alien invasion from another dimension. Most don’t know what they are, considering they haven’t done anything since they first appeared. They’re all exactly the same size, though considering they look like a bunch of shattered mirrors hovering in the air, it’s hard to actually tell. On the bright side, they aren’t pouring out buckets of hard radiation or toxic gases.

  Well, at least those humanity is capable of detecting. Not many people are putting stock in the science of yester-week these days. Can’t say I blame them.

  I can hear Lieutenant Jang chattering away through his radio to his superiors back in Seoul. It’s… hard to make out at first. It’s all strangely garbled.

  Right, encryption.

  By comparing what the radio is transmitting to what Jang is saying, it doesn’t take long for me to crack it.

  Wait, should I have done that?

  I pause for a moment. I just broke military-grade encryption in less than a second. I didn’t even hesitate either, I just wanted to know what the other side was saying, and I just… did it. Before all of this, I felt bad being near someone on a phone call, and now I’m just casually breaking into encrypted military communications. Now that I’m thinking about it, I totally hacked into multiple telecom satellites. Fuck, I’m currently connected to one!

  I hurriedly drop the connection. I hope no one noticed it, and maybe no one did, considering the current state of the world. I wouldn’t bet on it.

  I do my best to ignore Lieutenant Jang’s radio call, now intelligible, and everything it stands for. I ask myself a question that scares me.

  What am I becoming?

  I think I’d like to go back to the tired question I was asking earlier.