When he was finally able to get up, I had his friends take him back to his room. They left and I was still a bit restless. I decided to go to the park for a bit. Walking around was a good way to break the routine I was falling into. It was near the far end of the park where someone called out to me. I looked around and saw it was a shady guy in a trench coat. I approached him slowly and asked what was up with him. "Kid. I'm a... merchant of sorts. I got some of that alien tech if you got the cash. It's low grade, but the benefits outweigh the bugs, trust me." he said. "I want to see it." I told him. A shop menu opened, and I could see everything he had as he opened the coat. There were some pills and gadgets on sale. The pills were buffs that could boost stats. There were downsides to each of them. There was a strength pill that could permanently increase your strength and endurance by 50% with each pill. The downside was heat-like symptoms. An omega who took them would have 50% more severe heats and it lasted 10.5 days instead of just 7. There was a similar pill that boosted your speed.
Yellow gadgets that allowed you to turn into animals and demi-humans were also available for purchase. A purple device could trigger a heat in omegas. A big white one could freeze somebody in time for a certain amount of time. That would be very interesting. I wanted to buy all those ones. He smiled and said "I hope you have the cash for this, kid." It was way too high. I could only have 2 things from the money I was getting as a front for Bruce's pimp business. I wanted the yellow demi-human gadget and the strength pills. There were 15 pills in the bottle. I forked over the cash and he handed me what I wanted. I thought that it would be better for me and the Freebirds if I tested this somewhere on someone else. If it caused some nasty side effect, it would be catastrophic for us. The merchant was pretty shady after all. It could be a bit more loopy than even he let on. Luckily, I was in the park at the moment. I walked around the space and read the instructions for the gadget, I needed to get the DNA of a creature. I could use the gadget to analyze for features and design transformations.
Zipping around looking for something to capture, I eventually saw a spider. I immediately crushed it to death and rubbed the prong on the dead body. There was a really nice ping sound that came from it. The screen of gadget told me there was new data on a specimen. It was a female black widow spider that I killed just then. Not a bad one to start with it. I could analyze the venom, exoskeleton, wall walking and the egg making. Those were going to be really good abilities to have. You could do pretty cool things with them. It would take quite some time to get them all synthesized. While I was waiting for that, I decided to go back to the dorms. Myles and Amias were talking in the omega lounge. It was full with omegas. Lots of them did not even have collars on. Linus was doing some homework next to them. I was going to go talk to them when I heard Abner call for me. He was with Hellen and his collar was on. I was not ready to deal with them. I pretended that I did not hear them and went to Myles and Amias. I invited all 3 of them to my room. They packed up and followed me up.
I watched as Abner and Hellen followed me as well when I got to the door I looked at them. "I went to the park and found something cool. Come in so I can show you." I said. They all got in the room, and I showed them the pill bottle. After telling them what they were supposed to do, they all seemed interested in it. I did not tell them what the side effects were, but I let them know there were some. I thought that they would help me find some way to try it out on someone, but that was not the case. They all wanted to try it for themselves. "Why should we let someone else get all strong?" Abner said. "We can take it! Even if it gives us some headaches or something." Myles added. As the others seemed to nod in agreement, I handed them each 1 pill. I watched as they swallowed them and that was done. They all looked at themselves as if something was supposed to be different. None of them in the room even asked about the side effects. I was not too sure if they were really ready for their own graduation at this point. I needed to tell them before they got hurt. Especially the omegas here.
