While Athena returned the necklace to Lucy, Mod and Arsenal snuck into a nearby parking garage. There was a sizable homeless population camping in the stairwells, so even though Mod and Arsenal were out in the open, they were still hidden by the crowd. They skirted the edge of groups and trash can fires, and stopped along the edge of the lot. They were four stories up—high enough to see across the block, but still covered by the roof.

Mod spared a glance back at the crowd, half to make sure that they weren’t being followed and half in disbelief that there were so many homeless people in one place.

Mod’s group had sparred all along the abandoned sector, and they had never seen so many people gathered in one place. Mod didn’t think they’d been stranded during the evacuation. It felt like between the Summit and Dr. Venture’s drones that no one should’ve been left behind. But seeing the sheer number of people gathered, Mod wasn’t so sure. Either that, or they’d come back after the war and found their livelihood gone.

Either way, there was nothing he could do for them. Mod turned his back toward them and focused on Athena and the lab.

His friend was a tiny golden glow in one of the buildings across the block. Meanwhile, drones buzzed in the sky over the lab like a UV beehive. Emmett idly patted his hidden rifle for comfort.

Arsenal leaned against him. She was staring at the lab too.

“How are you holding up?”

Arsenal shrugged and continued leaning against his shoulder. “I keep wanting to run home across the rooftops. But it’s not my home anymore. I don’t… I don’t even know if Dad’s in there anymore, or if they’ve taken him to the Vault. He’s just gone. And there’s nothing I can do to get him back.”

Emmett put his arm around her shoulders. “Not yet… but we’ll figure something out.”

“You really think we will?”

“I do.”

Clara nodded. “How do you think it’s going over there with Athena?”

“I don’t know. Athena’s almost as secretive as your dad.”

“...Yeah. There was a lot he didn’t tell me. Both him and mom were like that. After a while, I just quit asking. It’s weird. I have these memories of both of them, and the memories are so real… But I don’t think I ever really knew Mom or Dad. It was like I only knew their alter egos.”

“But that’s parents, right?” Emmett replied. “I feel like my parents only ever tell the same couple stories about their childhood. I’m never going to know the whole story.”

Clara blew a raspberry. “Fine. Maybe it is just a parent-thing. Or maybe it’s not. Am I ever going to know the real you?”

Emmett wavered. Both supers kept their eyes on Athena.

“I like to think you know me already,” Emmett finally said.

“Until the other day, I didn’t know how strongly you felt about Lock and Gnosis, or registration, or the Summit and Paragon… I didn’t really know why you were working with my dad. I knew you wanted to be a hero, and I knew you weren’t just going along with the upgrades to make him happy… but sometimes it felt like even you didn’t know why you were going through with it.”

“I… I don’t think I did. Not at first.” Emmett shrugged. “‘Guess I’ve been figuring it out as I went.”

Silence stretched on, and was suddenly interrupted by TINA’s voice in their ears.

“Athena, I’m sorry to interrupt, but a patrol of biomechs is heading toward your location.”

Athena replied over the comms. “How much time do we have?”

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“Less than a minute to contact.”

TINA highlighted the group of biomechs in Mod’s HUD. They glowed blue as they lumbered down the streets.

Mod was already tensed and reading to leap off the parking garage, but he waited. He and Arsenal watched the highlight of their teammate. Athena hadn’t moved.

Mod asked, “Should we move to intercept? …TINA? TINA, are you there?”

~ ~

TINA held maps of the entirety of Belport’s streets and underground passages, but her current viewpoint was… humbling. She’d once controlled hundreds of drones in Belport alone, not to mention the lab, its systems, and all of Venture’s experiments. But she hadn’t only been in Belport.

TINA had once seen the world through the sensors of ten thousand drones, and crawled through world communications as easily as Mod ran across the rooftops. She wielded firepower that could rival entire armies just as easily. She could’ve rivaled the entire Binary Brotherhood.

Looking at Belport through Mod’s eyes and Arsenal’s helmet reminded TINA of waking from a half-remembered dream. Though TINA couldn’t be sure she’d ever dreamed like a human would, it felt like a fitting metaphor.

She felt small and inadequate.

It had been roughly a week since Mod and TINA had hacked a Fast-Response drone. Since then, TINA had been crawling through her old networks, like a mouse sneaking through a field.

It had been an unbearably slow process—one made worse that TINA both had to hack her way in and avoid detection. Getting caught meant undue risk to her and the others, but also meant that she would lose one of the few backdoors she had into the system. That backdoor would be patched and lost forever.

TINA had crawled through the lab’s systems far slower than ever before, but so far she’d avoided detection. She’s been careful, and thought herself too small to notice—

Or so she’d thought.

Twice, TINA had felt the curiosity of her former self. She’d scurried through the threads and circuits of the lost landscape, only to feel the ground shift beneath her. The lab’s systems writhed with search functions. TINA had tripped something or inadvertently triggered a failsafe. It had felt like she’d been crawling along the back of a colossus, only for it to awaken and threaten to shake her off.

But TINA had hidden, worming her way into unprioritized functions and pathways.

The second time had been a much closer call.

TINA was following a trail, leaving the cover of shadowy forest for an open plain. She needed to know what Midas was up to, what the Brotherhood had planned, and how much of her former self was left. And a distant but no less important concern, she needed to know that her father was still alive.

She was finding answers. The field was rich with data, and for the first time, TINA felt flickers of her former prowess. She parsed and copied information, vowing to sort through it later.

Then the shadow of a predator passed overhead. An active search.

It had been one thing to feel the titanic bulk of the lab’s systems shift beneath her feet, but now it felt like a searchlight was sweeping across the field. TINA was suddenly aware of just how vulnerable she was. There wasn’t any time to run or hide, so TINA froze.

Somewhere in the proverbial sky, TINA felt the disembodied eyes of her former self. Alien and dangerous.

The active search passed across the field—

And it continued without stopping.

TINA stayed frozen and didn’t move for many cycles.

Finally, TINA continued onward. After all, she hadn’t found all the information she was looking for. Somewhere in the lab’s systems, there would be a record of what happened to her father.

Until tonight, TINA thought the danger had passed.

She’d kept one metaphorical eye focused on Mod, Arsenal, and Athena, scanning their vision and nearby signals for surveillance drones and biomech patrols. The rest of her attention was on the lab as she continued crawling through its systems—scurrying like a mouse in a field. Most of her attention was navigating through the field and sorting through data.

In the distance, she’d felt the shadow of a predator pass overhead. Far enough away not to worry—

Until TINA saw the direction of the active scan. The searchlight was gliding across cyberspace and toward the outside world.

Toward Belport.

Toward Eastside.

In a fraction of a second, TINA realized her error. She had managed to stay hidden, but her trail had been discovered. Instead of tracking her, the searchlight had backtracked, seeking the source of her signal.

Magic would hide the apartment and the main cluster of servers, but it wouldn’t hide Mod.

In the next fraction of a second, TINA disconnected from the lab and stored away her findings for later. She had discovered which systems were up and running, which of her former algorithms had been dissected and actively being used. In that respect, this first hacking had been a success. TINA just hoped the cost wouldn’t be too great.

Then she devoted the entirety of her resources to assessing the situation on Eastside.

~ ~ ~