Barry held his breath. His enhanced mind calculated escape routes. The lab had no windows. One door. No alternate exits. If someone came in, he was trapped.
The door handle rattled. Someone testing it. Finding it locked.
Then the footsteps moved on. Continued down the hallway. Faded into silence.
Barry exhaled slowly, forcing his heart rate down. That was too close. He'd been in the lab for twelve minutes. He needed to finish and get out.
He stood up and took another sweep of the lab with his flashlight, making sure he hadn't missed anything critical. Spotted a filing cabinet in the corner. Pulled it open carefully.
Physical notebooks. Research journals. DeVoe's handwritten notes going back years.
Barry photographed page after page, working as fast as he dared. The handwriting was terrible but readable. Equations. Diagrams. Thought experiments about neural enhancement and consciousness expansion.
One passage caught Barry's eye:
"The primary challenge remains neural degradation. Extended stimulation causes cellular damage to cortical tissue. Subjects experience headaches, nausea, and cognitive impairment 24-48 hours post-session.
Current hypothesis: electromagnetic fields are too broadly targeted. Need more precise neural pathway stimulation to avoid collateral damage.
Possible solution: nano-scale targeting using magnetic nanoparticles as neural pathway markers?"
Barry photographed that page three times from different angles to make sure it was perfectly legible. This was the critical weakness.
The reason DeVoe's Thinking Cap eventually destroyed his body in the original timeline. Too much broad-spectrum stimulation. Not enough precision.
Barry's enhanced mind was already working on solutions.
Targeted neural stimulation using adaptive frequency modulation. Feedback loops monitoring neural health in real-time. Safety cutoffs that would prevent damage before it occurred.
He could build something better. Something that wouldn't destroy the user.
But he needed more information first. Needed to understand the fundamental principles thoroughly before attempting his own design.
Barry finished photographing the notebooks and carefully closed the filing cabinet exactly as he'd found it.
Swept the lab one final time with his flashlight, making sure everything was in its original position. No evidence that anyone had been here.
He checked his watch. 7:19 PM. Nineteen minutes total time in the lab. Four minutes longer than planned but acceptable.
Barry moved to the door and listened carefully. Silence in the hallway. He unlocked the door from the inside and eased it open slowly, checking both directions.
Clear.
He slipped out and relocked the door behind him. Wiped the door handle with his sleeve to remove any potential fingerprints. Then he walked quickly back to the stairwell, maintaining his casual student persona.
Up the stairs. Out the east entrance. Across campus through the drizzle.
Barry reached his car at 7:26 PM and got inside, locking the doors immediately. His hands were shaking slightly. Adrenaline crash.
The infiltration had worked perfectly but the near-miss with those footsteps had rattled him more than he wanted to admit.
He sat in the driver's seat for five minutes, just breathing. Processing. Calming down.
Then he started the car and drove home, obeying every traffic law meticulously. No reason to get pulled over tonight with stolen research photos in his camera.
When he reached his apartment, Barry went straight to his laptop and began the transfer process. Connected the camera via cable, not wireless. Copied all 673 photos to an encrypted drive. Then he copied them again to two more backup drives.
Triple redundancy. If one drive failed, he still had the others.
Barry opened the photos and started reviewing them systematically. His enhanced mind absorbed every detail. Every equation.
Every diagram. Every note.
DeVoe's research was brilliant but flawed. The theoretical foundation was sound. The experimental approach was methodical. But the execution had critical weaknesses that would lead to the neural degradation issues Barry had read about in the notes.
The problem was that DeVoe didn't fully understand the neuroplasticity implications of electromagnetic stimulation. He was treating the brain like a static computer that could be overclocked. But the brain was adaptive.
Dynamic.
It responded to stimulation by changing its own structure.
Repeated use of DeVoe's Thinking Cap would cause the brain to become dependent on external stimulation. Neural pathways would deteriorate without it. Like a muscle that atrophied because an exoskeleton did all the work.
That's why DeVoe eventually became wheelchair-bound in the original timeline. His body degraded because his supercharged brain couldn't maintain normal autonomic functions anymore.
Barry needed a different approach.
Something that enhanced neural function without creating dependency. Something that worked with the brain's natural plasticity instead of against it.
He opened a new document on his laptop and started writing.
Read more on Patreon marvelstark (up to chapter 28)