Infamous: Resurgence
Chapter 1
A/N: Playing through Infamous 2 gave me a real desire to write another Infamous fanfiction, and the challenge of explaining a Conduit existing after the canon ending was a welcome one. Hope you all enjoy, and if you read please leave a review.
Disclaimer: I do not own Infamous or it's characters. I do own all original characters.
Excerpted from the First Sons text Ray Field Power Research, First Edition
The power of a Conduit is most often stimulated by exposure to Ray Field radiation, although there are cases of Conduits developing their powers naturally over time. The coding for the Conduit gene, as it is colloquially known, is embedded in nearly every human. However, only subjects with a dominant trait have the potential to become Conduits, and therefore are the only ones affected by Ray Field exposure. Should an individual possess a dominant Conduit trait, the potential abilities that the individual could gain from exposure are pre-determined based on many factors. Until the subject's abilites are stimulated, there is no sure way of knowing what combination of powers they might possess. Other mammals that share a similarity to human genetic makeup, like rats, can also be born with a dominant Conduit gene, although in these cases a subject's powers are considerably weaker and exposing them can cause the brain of the subject to overload and shut down permanently.
"God damn it," the man mumbled. Twenty years after the quarantine that he heard people tell stories about and he was still digging through dumpsters. This time, it wasn't for food, though.
"God damn it!" The man was shouting now, and he banged one of his fists against the top of the metal dumpster. The echo of the contact was loud inside the container, but the man didn't notice. "I know I left them here." John Porter pulled his head out of the dumpster and slumped against it's side. He wiped his hands on the ratty sweatshirt he had on and cursed again, before standing and hurrying through the crowded streets of downtown Empire City. John had a feeling he knew who had taken his Rayacite collection, and he wasn't happy. John knew better than anyone how valuable that stuff was, even more so to him at the current time. Until John had the fragments he had found back, however, he wasn't going to get very far.
John pushed open the rusted doors to a burned-out carcass of a city bus, dragged and shoved into one of the many alleys of the Historic District. A swath of heads appeared over the seats, each one ditry and bedraggled. The number of homeless people skyrocketed after the quarantine twenty years ago, and has only increased. There was one specific homeless person John was looking for at this time, though.
"Frank, wake up," John said loudly. The man in front of him didn't stir, still sleeping soundly on the bench.
"Frank, you rat bastard, wake up!" John kicked the bench and Frank bolted up, stammering and scrambling out of confusion. Once the shock wore off, which only took a few seconds, Frank realized who was shouting at him.
"John, my friend. What can I do for you?"
"You can give me my rocks back." Frank chuckled slightly, but John's face remained adamant.
"What're you talking about? What rocks?" John frowned, furrowed his eyebrows, and clenched his fists. The others on the bus were staring now, no longer content in whatever they were doing before the tall man came in.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Frankie boy. Now are you going to give me them back or are we going to have a problem?"
"I still don't know what you're talking about, John." Frank's face remained solid, but his eyes revealed the lie. John smiled slightly for a moment, then struck out at Frank. Frank grunted as he was flung to the side, remaining still for a moment and then pushing himself back up.
"So what are you going to say now?" Frank rubbed his face and sighed.
"Follow me."
"I hope you're proud of yourself." Frank pointed to the bruise that was quickly forming under his eye.
"That's why we don't steal from people, Frankie." John smirked as he reached out and plucked the Rayacite fragments from the locker that Frank had stashed them in. "Pleasure doing business with you."
"Asshole," Frank spat as they left in different directions. John pushed the Rayacite into his pockets and headed for home. Home was an abandoned laboratory on the other side of the district that, best that John could tell, used to be occupied by a group called the First Sons. John had stumbled upon the building while scavenging one day and decided to claim it as his own. The place was secure, available, and had plenty of reading material. John pushed open the heavy door and allowed it to swing shut behind him, then turned each of the many switches that lined the walls and powered on the building. Row after row of fluoresent lights came alive, revealing the massive machines that spired toward the ceiling. John pulled the Rayacite from his pockets, then added them to his existing collection, which he gathered and carried with him. The living area that John had established in the upper area gave way to an expansive workshop, with rows of smaller machines lining the spaces between the three larger ones. The largest of those three was the one that kept John enthralled the most. He found plenty of research regarding it, found the paper that designated it the 'Ray Field Exposure Chamber', and even found what it does and how it's the key to everything the First Sons had worked for.
The only thing John needed to find was how to operate the damn thing. John had already tested himself and found he was positive for the Conduit gene, and the instructions printed on the operation panel were clear enough, but every time John tried to activate it, it would just spark and die. Today, John had an idea, though. He had found a port on the side of the machine that he had glanced over before, and managed to piece together an idea from some of the older research documents. From what John could tell, the exposure chamber worked by either pulling existing Ray Field energy from a storage device or by draining neuroelectric energy and converting it. Some of these documents also pointed at Rayacite being a form of Ray Field storage, so in theory placing the Rayacite into the device would activate it. And since John had the gene, the exposure to Ray Field energy would activate his potential as a Conduit. All that remained was to load up the machine, strap himself in, and pray to God that it didn't kill him. Or do something even worse.