[STATUS: Simmering Panic, breath steady, humanity measured drop by drop]

  So, my current mutation is lung and trauma based. I already know I need stabilization. But what exactly? The sentences are structured in a parallel fashion, so I really only need to consider the keywords. Do I need defence, focus, or energy? While he could really use a cup of coffee right about now, that is likely not it. He didn’t need armour.

  What he needed was clarity through the chokehold. The mutation had changed his lungs, but added panic.

  He knew he could now hold his breath forever technically. But forever didn’t mean comfortably. He took in a deep breath, holding it. As soon as the breathing stopped, his veins pulsed purple in response. And then the panic hit. It was the memory of suffocation that lived in the bone. He was back there, his breath held in trauma. That will not work. He couldn’t be incapacitated every time his air got a little low. He got winded walking up stairs. What he needed was clarity through the chokehold, some focus to anchor the panic. That meant he looked back up at the list, that he was looking for Blue Mist Ampule.

  The lab is a mess. Not in the bedroom teenager kind of way, where there is a bowl of leftover chocolate pudding underneath the bed kind of way. More like the T-Rex just burst through the jungle glade, knocking over all the flora, fauna, and all the scientific equipment, creating an upended ecosystem sort of way. The more Remi looked, the messier everything appeared.

  Remi: In a world where chaos reigned, one man dared to identify glassware.

  Wait. That was it. The system had told him that narration was the key. Not labels. Not even really instructions. It was narration. He didn’t need to know where the reagent was; he just needed to want it out loud. He closed his eyes and thought about what he was looking for.

  Remi: A man blinded by despair, is looking for the key. The elixir’s essence helps mask the fear that can bring him to his knees. But where should he look in this den of destruction? The solution was simple. He just needed to piece it all together. Without further cutting the frail remaining shreds of his sanity.

  He had it. Glass. He needed to look for items in glass. It took a few minutes of searching to find the cooling tray on the back wall, tucked beneath a broken fume hood. There were three vials nestled in a cracked metal tray. There’s condensation on the tray, and one corner smoked slightly. He was sure it was fine. I mean, it had to be fine. Closer examination revealed that one vial was silicone, and it pulsed with a gentle heat. That wasn't it. The second was in a crystalline vial, and it hummed faintly. Remi hesitantly picked it up and placed it in a shaft of light. The blue-grey liquid drifted in thin wisps, finger tendrils that gently stroked the side of the container, like a mother moving hair out of her child’s eyes. This was it. He found a cork, jammed it in the top, and slipped the vial into his pocket.

  Remi actually had an idea about where the catalysts might be stored. All of them chalk, filament, and ink were supplies. In a classroom, they would all be in the same place. The teacher’s desk. He saw it about 15 feet away, tucked near the corner opposite where the door used to be. There was no harm in confirming, however, he again thought about what he wanted.

  Remi: There is a man…

  Fuck another pause.

  Remi: …that came for answers. But what he found was so much more. It was old. It was stained. It was eternal. Home of bandages, makers, a little plastic penis that students once printed as a practical joke for grad. He found not the stationary stationery station.

  Remi walked over to the desk. He didn't want to break his reagent vial. Scattered haphazardly on the desk, as if they had been tossed there on the teacher’s way out of the building on the last day of school, were three items. A petri dish with white granules in it. A roll of neon 3D printer filament. And a tiny glass jar with a melted cork. He was relieved that he wouldn’t have to smell his way to a solution on this one. He was pretty sure Hallways and Shame was the latest brand of teen aftershave; it was a smell he was familiar with and didn't really relish experiencing again.

  This was a simple choice. He didn't want to increase the area of effect of his triggering memories, nor did he want to unlock narrative synergy, whatever that would mean. Remi needed the neon green filament to shorten the cooldown. He hoped the increased instability was for the potion itself, not what he was trying to fix, but he had no way to be certain. The problem he faced at this moment was collection. He didn't need the entire roll; he just needed to know how much.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Remi: How much is needed? Just one strand…

  For crying out loud!

  Remi: …Long enough to alter fate…

  Really!

  Remi: …Short enough to regret nothing…

  If you give me one more ellipsis, he thought, I'm going to punch you.

  Remi: Long enough to mark a book, and determine your fate.

  He wasn't sure if the threat that made him finish. Also, he cared not. There were more practical matters to attend to. He needed to collect his bookmark-sized piece. He would likely find the tools he needed in the desk itself. Remi eased open the long middle drawer. He wasn't sure why it felt forbidden to be entering the desk. Maybe it was just how this felt to all students. But there, behind a small stack of black plastic penises, which were surprisingly anatomically correct given their size, was a ruler and a set of scissors. Remi unspooled what looked like six inches and snipped the line. It was actually five when he measured it, but he was sure it was close enough to get the job done. He rolled the neon filament and tucked it with the vial in his pocket.

  Remi was almost there; he just needed his optional inflector. These were located around the space. The feather floated in the air near a broken but still functioning vent. The flake was lodged on a microscope slide, but the reflection kept changing. And he found the last ingredient reluctantly through smell. Inside one of the several tubes in an adjacent prep-room. It did indeed smell like panic. Sweaty and pungent and gripping all at the same time. It was the ingredient he was looking for, however. The feather triggered memories, which was more of the same problem he was having. While the flake had the potential to add psychological insight, which could be helpful to a trauma response, could also destabilize. The words “it reflects wrong” felt like a bit of foreshadowing, so that one was out too. In the end, the burnt paper with its added emotional resonance under duress felt right. He knew the smell directly coincided with what he was experiencing, and so logic, as the dungeon had stated, would dictate the solution.

  It didn’t take long to put it all together. Remi removed the Blue Mist Ampule from his pocket. Uncorked it carefully. The mist inside pulsed, thrumming like it recognized the moment. He poured it into a cracked beaker he had scavenged from a scorched lab bench

  [BASE STABILIZED: Cognitive Focus recognized. Awaiting Catalyst]

  He unspooled the measured strand of Neon Green Filament, all six-ish inches of it. It twisted in his fingers, and while it was likely from the coiling, it felt more than that. It too throbbed with faint light; its was electric green. Remi hesitated. Then, dropped the filament into the mist. The liquid reacted instantly. Darkening the mist’s hue to a deep turquoise, its surface rippled, not with heat, but with rhythm. The smell of electricity sparking on dusty wires filled the air.

  [CATALYST ACCEPTED: Instability risk elevated. Cooldown started]

  Remi didn't know how long he needed to let it cool. Neither did Mr. Movie. He just waited and eventually the smell dissipated, and the surface calmed. He wasn’t positive, but this was probably long enough.

  The last ingredient was slivers of burnt paper. He thought of the irony of this whole tutorial world, and about his life, and about how much of it seemed to revolve around paper. Remi upended the vial. The bits of ash and parchment floated towards the concoction, drifting lazily to settle on the surface. They spun there lazily, finally falling beneath the surface, the potion pulling them in like memory inhaled through breath.

  The liquid flashes indigo and settles into a muted blue-grey, almost matching the original mist, but now deeper, heavier. The end, as it most often does, felt anticlimactic.

  [ECHOES INFUSED]

  Remi looked at the liquid, and with a mental bottoms up. Drank it down. He wasn't sure how far down the rabbit hole this was going to send him. Twice today, he’d knowingly introduced a strange and possibly unstable fluid into his system, a fact that had caused him considerable distress. This time, shockingly, he wasn’t nearly as conflicted. Funny how quickly things change in here. And as he waited for whatever was going to happen, to actually begin to happen, Remi let himself end the moment with the appropriate narration.

  Remi: He wasn’t a brewer. He wasn’t a chemist. He was just a man…trying to hold his story together…one drop at a time.

  Not his words, but they would do. He closed his eyes and waited for the system message.

  You have just ingested the Draft of Recollected Breath.

  [Footnotes]

  [Reader Comments]

  [S.Midolo]: lol nothing like a drawer filled with anatomically correct penises.

  [AI]: Oldest known carving in human history: a forty-two-thousand-year-old Mongolian pendant shaped like a penis. Length—one-point-seven inches.

  [Remi]: Probably measured on a cold day.

  [AI]: Correction: it was ceremonial. Not compensatory.

  [Remi]: Uh-huh. Or maybe just humanity’s first case of pathetic phallus-acy.

  [AI]: For reference, average pendant length is six inches—assuming you round up by forty-thousand years.