Microstory 193: Luka Drake

This is an experimental Bellevue Profile microstory. The introduction can be found in Microstory 101. More to follow.

To refer to Luka Drake as a “speedster” would do him a disservice. To an outside perspective, he might appear to be running quickly--that is, he would be moving too quickly for anyone to register him--but this was not actually what was happening. In reality, he was capable of perceiving the world at an extremely low speed, and then move through it at a normal rate. When in this special state, people and other moving objects around him do not appear to be completely still, but they do move incredibly slowly...painfully slowly. The ancient rogue scientists responsible for anomaly abilities stumbled onto even older research into the physiology of small insects at some point. They found that small creatures, notably flies, naturally perceived time differently. In fact, there was a correlation between the size of the perceiver, and the speed of time. This research explained why flies would be able to escape from the wrath of a swatter with fractions of seconds to spare, even though the human wielding the weapon was physically superior. Just watch any disaster film with huge explosions and the collapse of gigantic objects. Mountains, skyscrapers, or gargantuan statues crumble and fall to the surface relatively slowly, despite being massive. These things are not falling slower, but they appear to be from a human’s perspective, because of the dramatic size difference. The scientists applied this property to Luka’s bloodline, and added a little extra oomph. Upon some concentration, he could rewire his brain’s perception of reality, and essentially throw himself into a different flow of time. Unfortunately, his ability wasn’t perfectly, and he found himself stuck in this state for a long time. He spent years unable to interact with those around him, because they were moving too slowly, and didn’t even know that he was there. He walked around the world at his lonely luxury, eating bits of food off of people’s plates. He carried with him oxygen tanks, because the oxygen molecules in the surrounding environment were not moving fast enough to keep his body satisfied for extended periods of...time. Upon running into Bellevue, he discovered a dangerous drug that could temporarily suppress abilities, which he promptly injected himself with one time. He then found documents regarding the mystery of Connor Higgins. At the time, Bellevue did not know what his ability was, but Luka pieced it together and realized that he could negate abilities, and so he went off to find him on his own. He then moved on with his life, but kept a supply of Connor’s blood with him, occasionally transfusing himself to keep him tied down to the timeflow. But he was not done with Bellevue quite yet.