Following Emmett’s confrontation with Lock and subsequent recovery, he’d moved into another apartment in the Woods—just two buildings down from his old one. His new roommates were nice enough. Jensen was a digital art major, and Michela was a bio major. They’d even helped him with a few boxes and asked questions about his radio locator project.
Emmett explained how the tabletop version worked, and neglected to mention that he used to have a full-sized version on the roof of his old apartment. Venture had transported it to the lab the same night as the fight with Lock.
Classes and relocating helped keep Emmett’s mind off of what happened, but he couldn’t help but glance at his old building. Contractors were rebuilding it, walling off the hole in the side of his old room. Every day for the rest of the semester, Emmett walked past the wreckage of his old place. By the last week of classes, they finished putting up new siding, and the building looked as good as new.
Like nothing had ever happened there.
The last week of classes rolled around, and Emmett turned in his final assignments and gave his final presentation for the radio locator project. Then he started moving his stuff out. He could’ve waited another week while the rest of classes finished at Belport University, but Emmett didn’t want to stick around. There was nothing left for him there.
Besides, he already had a new place lined up.
~
After the patrol, Emmett followed McGuire back to his apartment on the edge of South Side.
It was in an older part of the city, all brick fronts and faded signs. The apartment was one of several on the block, each sitting on the second or third floor. The first floor of each building was a storefront—everything from a pizza shop, to a boutique, bookstore, flower shop, and corner grocery store.
It was a prime location, both in regards to the surrounding stores, and for the two masks. The numerous alleys and fire escapes provided numerous ways to sneak in and out of the block.
McGuire’s apartment occupied the third floor above an electronics repair shop, Circuit Surgeons. The neon side on the front crackled with age.
The duo skulked down to the street, following the back alleys behind the shops until they got to the fire escape of Circuit Surgeons. Then they climbed up to McGuire’s apartment and ducked inside the window.
McGuire flipped on the nearby standing light, illuminating the living room. Even though Emmett had been living there for the past week, the place still caught him off guard.
He wasn’t sure what a tech super’s place was supposed to look like, but McGuire’s place wasn’t it.
The apartment hadn’t been updated in decades. The original hardwood was covered with flowery area rugs. Homemade blankets covered the sofa and chairs. Knick knacks covered the shelves. The only parts that hinted that tech supers lived there were the drawers of spare parts and a handful of projects that were allowed to sit out in the living room. The main project being a master universal remote keyed to appliances in the kitchen—it currently sat on the coffee table in several pieces.
Even though McGuire’s mom was a gadgeteer like him, she apparently had a thing for not letting the shop below creep up into her apartment.
Both Emmett and McGuire pulled off parts of their disguises and hid them in the storage trunk by the window through which they entered. Compared to the apartment, McGuire looked normal. His face was freckled and his red hair was buzzed short. He was almost two years Emmett’s junior, having graduated high school the year before last.
The only other thing was how scrawny McGuire was underneath his vest and coat. He’d clearly reinforced the coat with additional padding on top of his shock-absorbing airbag contraption.
Oh, and that McGuire’s real name was Maximillian. At least, that was what his mother always called him. To Emmett and everyone else, he went by Max.
“Hey,” Max said, conspiratorially. “We should start watching Full Throttle Heart: GT.”
“Man, I don’t know…”
“Or Full Throttle Heart: UT?”
Emmett chuckled and held up his hands in defense. “It’s not that. I just need to get some sleep before work tomorrow. Maybe we can squeeze an episode in during lunch?”
The disappointment faded quickly from Max’s face. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Mom said something about starting at eight tomorrow.”
Both supers let out a collective groan.
Max waved and walked off to his room. “Catch you tomorrow, roomie.”
Emmett chuckled again and went into the spare room across the hall. He shuffled past boxes that he hadn’t unpacked yet and climbed into bed. He would get around it, of course; he just had other things to do, like work and patrol.
And, if Emmett was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure how long he’d be staying here. Both Max and his mom made it sound like Emmett could stay as long as he wanted, but Emmett wasn’t sure if they were just being polite.
There was also a part of him that wanted to go back to the lab. It had been a sweet setup, both with the Gray Room and the incredible amount of technology at his disposal. He also missed Clara. Even if they still saw each other more often than not, it just wasn’t the same. Hell, he even missed Dr. Venture, albeit in a slightly different way.
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It was weird to think that Full Throttle Heart could be a metaphor for his feelings, but it worked. As much as Emmett enjoyed Max’s company and his jokes, it was similar to how he felt about Full Throttle Heart: Grand Touring and Unlimited Torque—they were good shows, but they just couldn’t beat the original.
~
The next day, Emmett woke to both Max and his mom shouting across the apartment.
Alright, it wasn’t shouting—Max and his mother just didn’t have a concept of volume when they talked to each other.
Emmett groaned as he rolled out of bed to get dressed.
Emmett brushed his teeth in a daze and tried to ignore his roommates. His new living situation wasn’t perfect—not by a long shot—but it had its perks. When he was done, he put some water in his hair and combed it before stepping out to start the day.
“Ah, there he is!” Max’s mom said. “You should be more like Emmett.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Ma?” Max asked incredulously.
“He gets up on time.”
“I hit the snooze button!”
“Well, you snooze, you lose. Back in my day, we didn’t have snooze buttons…”
Max’s mom—whose real name was Marlene—was a stocky woman with frizzled gray hair. Whenever she moved, she always did it quickly and with purpose. Even when she finally decided to sit down and stop moving at the end of the workday, she did so decisively.
Max and his mom frequently went back and forth in animated arguments, but Emmett had quickly noted the eccentricities: It felt like a family joke or tradition that had gone on too long and turned into a parody. For one, they only ever argued loudly about trivial things and always maintained an air of humor beneath it. Sometimes Marlene’s stories and anecdotes even changed from argument to argument.
The whole dynamic was so far removed from what Emmett used to, that the first time Max and his mother raised their voices, Emmett had stood there dumbfounded. Emmett couldn’t even imagine how his family would’ve reacted if he raised his voice to his mother or father. He’d probably be buried out in the backyard somewhere.
Still, as strange as it was, there was something comforting in the whole thing. As long as Max and his mother were loud and animated, Emmett knew things weren’t that serious.
When Marlene got quiet—that was when you really needed to worry.
A few minutes later, Marlene unlocked the stairs to the repair shop, and led the three of them to work, continuing her monologue as she went. Emmett and Max followed.
The electronics repair shop was one of the perks of living with Max and his mom. Marlene owned it, and together, the two of them ran it.
And she was all too eager for Emmett to start working there too.
Despite the rough exterior, Circuit Surgeons was captivating. The two floors were absolutely packed with equipment. Boxes of spare parts and small electronics rose in stacks up to the ceiling, and bigger things like TVs and stereos lined the walls. Most of them were half cannibalized for spare parts and wiring. Shelves of tools and workbenches lined the rest of the walls.
Somehow, both Max and his mom knew where everything was, no matter how obscure the part. Emmett had tried to learn as he went, but he had eventually enlisted TINA to help catalog where things were.
The lab might’ve had better tech to work with, but the repair shop was a treasure trove of spare parts. Also, the job paid better than his internship with Dr. Venture.
Marlene unlocked the front door and took stock of their orders for the day, her monologue finally ceasing as work started for the day. Then she divided the list up between the three of them.
Marlene liked to work in silence, so she manned the front desk while Emmett and Max migrated upstairs to the second floor and put on a synthwave playlist. Since the workroom on the second floor had become their unofficial base for the workday, Emmett had talked Marlene into letting him install four TVs along in the corner. He’d done it under the guise of using them for entertainment, but he’d linked them to the network and then to the lab.
Through the TVs, TINA was able to send schematics they needed, as well as help Emmett with the rest of his research projects. TINA insisted that no matter what the status of Emmett and Dr. Venture, that she continued helping him. For now, the screens merely showed abstract screensavers that pulsed in time with the music.
Emmett and Max set to work, each hunched over the desks that were scrunched in the center of the room.
~
Unlike Marlene, Max didn’t like to work in silence.
“So I was thinking about our route tonight. We should go by South Side. Cherry wants to spar.”
Emmett glanced up. “Again? We didn’t beat them bad enough last time?”
Max smirked. “I guess not. They’re going to need to come up with something, though. Having Clara on our side just isn’t fair.”
He was right. Emmett and Max had been a match for both Cherry and Larian, but having a third member made it too easy. Especially when that third member was an experienced super who had a top of the line set of power armor.
“Are you going to talk to Clara?”
Emmett scoffed awkwardly. “I always talk to her.”
“Dude, you know what I mean.”
Emmett kept his eyes on the soldering of the handheld video game console in front of him.
Max was either talking about his trust issues with Dr. Venture or… he was fishing for Emmett’s true feelings about Clara. And Emmett was going to play dumb with the best of them.
Max added, “You should probably talk to the Doc too.”
Emmett let out a sigh of relief. As awkward as the situation with Dr. Venture was, it was a cakewalk in comparison.
“I will,” he finally said, “I just haven’t made a decision yet.”
Max nodded and turned over the circuit board of a music player to examine it. Both Max and his mother were gadgeteers, which were similar to reality warpers: They could make completely impossible technology. But when it came to repairs, they had to do everything the old-fashioned way. They couldn’t fix anything brought into the shop with their powers since they were limited to distance and duration.
Max looked up with a devilish grin. “You should probably tell Clara how you feel too.” Emmett groaned, but that didn’t stop Max. “Come on. It’s obvious you two have something going on. I’m surprised you can’t see that with your special mutagen-robot vision.”
“Nope. Not happening.”
“You’re no fun.”
Emmett paused. “It’s just… There’s no point in saying anything until I figure out what to do about her dad.”
Max rolled his eyes. “You mean to tell me you’re going to let some old dude get in the way of true love?”
“First of all, that’s dramatic. Second of all, you mean to tell me you would date a girl that your mom didn’t approve of?”
Max glanced awkwardly around the room. “Fine. Point taken.”
~ ~ ~