The rest of my testing went quite well, even if at the end, Technica made me promise not to sell my tech in bulk. It was an easy promise to make, money was not much of a motivation, not with Galatea who was excellent at financial analysis and data-acquisition, allowing her to work the stock-markets in a highly-efficient fashion, forcing her to tone it down and sometimes not make money or people would get suspicious. But judging how a stock would react if you had insider-information was easy enough for humans, let alone an AI but she did it slightly different. She used insider information from one source to predict what would happen in a different industry, hiding the fact that she was, in fact, breaking all kinds of rules. It made a pretty penny, though.

However, I was careful not to promise not to trade my tech, even in bulk, so I could get some defenses against magical and psychic attacks.

Anyway, after the testing, I went home, knowing that the capsule would be ready the day after. There were simply too many parts that had to be moved inside through microscopic openings, that even the nanites could only pass one after the other, reducing their ability to link up and speed things up. But, I had made the capsule as tight as I could, without sealing it completely. If the nanites inside, which made up most of the circuits for the emergency-processors, were destroyed, I would have been cooked long before.

When I got back to the dorm, it was a bit earlier than the day before and Tanisha was working again. As I entered the room, she looked up with pleading eyes.

“You offered to help me, right?” she asked, her voice pitiful.

“Yes, I did. What do you need help with?”

“One of those stupid general education classes. Why do I have to take a math-class? I’m studying to pre-law, why do I need calculus?!” she moaned and I had to suppress a giggle.

“You said you wanted to go into politics, right?” I asked, thinking about possible uses for higher math for her.

“Yes, why?”

“Well, calculus can help to understand statistics and trends. That is important and you do not just want to parrot what others tell you, right?” her glare was telling me that, at that moment, she would be quite happy to just parrot for others. The added groan was her admitting defeat, so I was nice and pulled up my own chair to start. There was just one more thing I wanted.

“I will help you, but I would ask for something in return. Please, do not drink as much as you did and do not party as much. That is just not healthy and I kind of like you as a roommate.” I admitted. We had had a bit of a rocky start, but by now, it worked quite well. Sure, there were people with whom I got along better, but there were also those with whom I got along worse. Not to mention, if I got some sort of Powered fangirl, I might have to start sleeping in my workshop. It was not the first time that I cursed the standard-dorm policy that people could not choose their roommates.

“But... “ she stopped herself, before nodding, “Maybe you are right. Thank you.” she added, understanding that I did not ask for myself, but for her sake. “Will you do the same? I noticed that you sleep not enough, you know? That is not healthy either.” she challenged with a grin.

“Ah, but I do have one decided advantage. My lowered sleep-requirement is part of my power. Unless you have super-partygirl-powers, it is not the same.” I answered with a wink.

After that, we focused on math for an hour and a half, before we went showering one after the other. Galatea still let the nanites do their cleaning routine, but I wanted the shower.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

In the middle of the night, even before I normally woke, I was awakened by something strange. It was as if a bell or maybe an alarm was going off in my mind, or rather, it went off in Galatea’s mind and I was the one experiencing the bleed-through for once. As I shook my mind away and tried to grasp what the sensation meant Galatea informed me. And what I learned drove even the most remote thought about sleep from my mind.

It had been an alarm-script she had written some time ago, a script that kept an eye on Sophia, making sure that if anything happened to her, Galatea would know. And the script had just gone off.

I felt the world around me slow down, as my mind fired on all cylinders trying to grasp the flurry of information the script linked to within Galatea’s mind. Part of me wondered if I was invading Galatea’s privacy, but that part was quickly washed away by my need to understand what was going on.

The information went almost a year back, right to the moment I had asked Galatea to ‘cut the connection’ with Sophia. Only that Galatea had, apparently deliberately, misinterpreted my order and just cut the connection between Sophia and me, while she herself had kept the connection open and listened on them. And later, she had continued to keep an eye on Sophia, making sure that she was recovering.

Part of me wanted to be angry, but as I scanned the files Galatea had, I was just glad. Galatea had watched as Sophia had been taken in, not by her big brother, but by the parents of Isleen, who apparently really was called Kaley and Isleen was just her nom de guerre. However, as she had told us, her father was the leader of the local Powered Association, while his wife was mainly a clinical psychiatrist. Galatea had gained access to quite a few cameras in their neighbourhood, circumventing the directive against trying to find out the real identity of other Powered by taking my old order, given long, long ago, to keep an eye on Sophia, in case she betrayed us, and running with it.

Due to that, I knew that Sophia had soon started going to school again and, according to notes that Galatea had acquired from Glenna, Isleen’s mother, or rather, Kaley’s mother, as they both used the nom de guerre Isleen, Sophia had started therapy, not just because of my sudden exit but mainly because of her struggles with depression. Before I could learn more from those notes, I forced my mind away, it was bad enough that I was invading Sophia’s privacy as I did, no need to make it worse by spying on her therapist's notes on her.

Galatea’s summary continued, Sophia graduated from school and, after summer, she entered the local college. During all that time, she never appeared as a Powered in any way, apparently she had hung up her sword and mask, but there were notes that she was considered an associate of the Powered Association.

And that was where the alarm came from, they kept a monitoring system in place to keep track of every single one of their members and associates, including Sophia. So, when there was something strange going on in the dorm she lived in, the alarm went off.

Sadly, the monitoring system of the league as rather primitive, it linked with local alarms, without their own, active sensors. In this case, it resulted in a delay between the time, whenever it had happened, someone had used a potent knock-out gas to flood the building and the report of it happening. The alarm had only gone off once the gassing had been reported and in the middle of the night, that might have been quite the time-difference. Now, the local Powered were looking through the dorm, getting everyone to the hospital but a feeling in my gut told me that Sophia would not be found. Drugs were her biggest weakness, some Powered with the Atlas-powerset were immune, others, like her, were susceptible. She would recover faster than normal, thanks to her healing factor, but for some time, she was vulnerable.

Linking together all nanites I had, every shred of processing power I could get, I looked for surveillance cameras in the area that stored video, breaking every firewall that tried to stand in my way, indifferent to the laws I was breaking, only motivated by a single thought.

"Find the one who did this. Find Sophia, if she was taken!” That single line was running through my head as I looked at footage and after an eternity that lasted about a minute, I found what I was looking for. A nondescript SUV, driving up, three masked figures getting out, one staying in the car. One of the masked figures climbing up the outside-wall onto the roof. From the build, it very well could have been Battlemaster but there was no uniform to confirm my suspicion.

Moments later, a rope was thrown down from the roof and two gas-cylinders were bound to the rope and dragged up. Minutes later, the form was back down, with the gas-cylinders and the rope. By the way the figures handled the gas-cylinders, they might be empty now. Afterwards, all three pulled on gas-masks and entered the building, staying inside for maybe five minutes, before leaving with the bound form of Sophia, slung over one of their shoulders.

A check on the timestamp of the video told me that two hours had passed, since they had taken her.

Now, I had places to be!