Kael
Six hundred points looked worse when they were mine.
I sat at my desk on the twenty-second morning and opened the same offer I had read the night before.
NEMESIS SENSE
COST: 600 VP
REQUIRED NDI: 34.0%
EFFECT: DETECTS PROTAGONISTS WITHIN 500 METERS AND THEIR CURRENT POWER
The expanded terms did not promise a thought, a motive or an explanation.
I had read them often enough to know that.
I still caught myself searching for more.
The word current kept drawing my eye. It offered no account of what someone might become tomorrow, or what they had been before an injury. A useful difference, provided I remembered it when a number appeared beside a familiar name.
I copied the effect into my notebook without shortening it. Then I looked at the six hundred points again.
The purchase would not make my right arm steadier. It would not give me another practice hour. I would still need to ask people what they wanted, and then decide whether I believed the answer.
