That night, Athena came back from scavenging lighter than usual. Pickings had been slim. She hauled an air compressor up the fire escape and set it down beside the window.
She paused with her hands on the window.
The apartment was dark and quiet. Her initial assumption was that Emmett and Clara had managed to fall asleep early, but Athena’s gut said otherwise. She paused on the windowsill and listened. The kitchen table was missing, but nothing else looked out of place. The spells around the apartment should’ve alerted her to danger and there weren’t any signs of a struggle…
Maybe it was her imagination.
Athena cleared her throat, but no one replied. So she asked quietly, “TINA, is everything alright?”
“Everyone is… safe,” TINA replied hesitantly in Athena’s ear. “Clara is in her room. Emmett is in a nearby building practicing.”
“Hmm… If you say so.”
Athena didn’t miss the hesitation in TINA’s voice. “You’re a lousy fibber.”
“It’s a personal matter.”
“Right.” Athena tried to be quiet as she opened the window and hauled the compressor through. If Clara was sleeping, Athena didn’t want to wake her.
As the window slid shut, Clara came out of her room.
Athena turned to greet her and found the young super forcing a smile.
“Hey Athena. Did you have a good haul?”
Athena leaned exaggeratedly on the air compressor. “It’s no washing machine, but it’ll do…”
She trailed off as she saw Clara’s face. Even in the dim light, it was plain to see that she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and tear streaks glistened on her cheeks.
“...And how about you?” Athena asked.
Clara kept up her forced smile and shrugged. “Oh, you know… meditating.”
“Well, that’s good. You and Emmett have been keeping busy. Do you think it’s time for a break though?”
Clara nodded meekly.
Athena waited patiently for Clara to elaborate, but finally, she asked, “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
Clara nodded again, the smile slipping from her face.
Clara proceeded to tell her all about the Gnosis report that TINA had found. Athena had noticed a communication from TINA on her phone, but it wasn’t urgent, so Athena had ignored it. Clara’s face continued cracking until she was holding back tears. Athena put an arm around Clara and steered her toward the couch. The two sat down next to each other.
Then Clara told her about Emmett—how he was thinking about breaking into Gnosis.
“...This isn’t lying low!” Clara said, tumbling over her words. “This isn’t what we planned. It isn’t what we agreed. He’s going to throw it all away!”
Clara seized up like she was holding her breath to stop from crying. Athena tentatively put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in.
“It’s okay. You can let it out.”
“I can’t… what if… what if…”
“You haven’t caught my apartment on fire yet. Just breathe… I’ll let you know if you start smoking.”
Clara put her head down on Athena’s shoulder and sobbed quietly. Athena squeezed her shoulder and watched to make sure the room didn’t heat up too much. After a minute or two, Clara’s breathing steadied.
Athena breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It had been a long time since someone had cried on her shoulder—Borealis, probably, after his kid left. Athena never really thought herself good at that kind of thing. Thankfully, most people just needed someone to listen, and listening was easy enough.
Athena patted her. “See, you were alright letting it out. You can’t keep that bottled up. That’s why men don’t live as long as women, you know.”
Clara half-scoffed, half-snorted. Then she picked her head up, wiped her eyes, and sighed exaggeratedly. “I just don’t get it! This is too much.”
“What is?”
“Gnosis is a fortress, and Lock tried to kill him.” Clara crossed her arms. “Lock isn’t even Emmett’s best friend. McGuire is.”
It was Athena’s turn to laugh. “Feel better?”
“No!”
Despite her protests, Clara’s posture had loosened, if only slightly. Athena smiled.
“So, you guys had a fight?”
Clara sighed. “I don’t know. No… Maybe.”
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Athena shrugged. “Everyone has arguments—lovers, friends, teammates… I’m surprised it took you guys this long.”
“This sucks. But it’s not just the argument.”
“What is it then? …Your dad?”
Clara scooted back on the couch, away from Athena. “It’s not that—not just that. This isn’t breaking into a demiplane or stealing a relic, he’s talking about breaking into Gnosis. We’ve been lying low, trying to rebuild. It’s like he’s forgotten about all that. He forgot about Dad.”
Clara shook her head. “This isn’t just crazy. This is suicide. And I can’t watch Emmett throw his life away. It’s hard enough watching him change—”
Clara froze, like she’d said something she hadn’t meant to.
Athena held up a hand. “Let’s just focus on the big thing. Emmett’s not going anywhere right now. You both needed some space to think. He’s still out training, right, TINA?”
“Yes,” she replied quietly.
Clara stiffened at TINA’s voice.
Athena continued, “For now, let’s just do some processing. I’m sure Emmett’s doing the same.”
~ ~
TINA pulled back her attention from the apartment and maintained passive monitoring. She wanted to give Clara and Athena some space.
Especially since this mess was her fault.
Since they’d lost the lab, TINA had been trying to balance multiple variables:
HIDING AND IMMEDIATE SAFETY
EXPANDING SERVERS AND PROCESSING
EMMETT’S GROWTH
CLARA’S GROWTH
In a vacuum, these were manageable. But the real world is never as neat as a simulation. So TINA added additional variables:
EMMETT’S MENTAL WELLBEING
CLARA’S MENTAL WELLBEING
ATHENA’S MENTAL WELLBEING
Of course, there were also other variables to be concerned about. Most stemmed from the Binary Brotherhood’s plans for the Allied States.
DRONE PRESENCE IN BELPORT
TIMELINE FOR ALLIED STATES SURVEILLANCE
TIMELINE FOR DRONE PRESENCE ACROSS ALLIED STATES
Each additional variable needed additional time and power to compute. If each variable would’ve been additive—simply three plus three equals six—then that would be manageable, even with her limited servers. But variables interacted with one another in unforeseen ways. For instance, it wasn’t simply enough to balance Emmett’s growth against his mental wellbeing. One variable didn’t interact with one other variable—it interacted with every other variable.
Hiding and safety affected Emmett and Clara’s growth and also their mental wellbeing. Likewise, the drone presence in Belport affected almost every other variable.
Variables weren’t additive. They were multiplicative.
In other words, the equation was more akin to three times three equals nine.
With each additional variable, the difficulty grew quickly.
Despite that, TINA thought she’d been keeping up. Thought that her calculations had been exact.
But people were… messy.
Numbers could be attached to most things—the force of a punch in pounds per square inch or the heat of Clara’s fire in degrees. But measuring their mental states was far from exact.
TINA thought she knew how Emmett and Clara would react to the news about Lock. Her calculations had been close… but not exact. She knew they’d be surprised, confused, distraught… but then, TINA had miscalculated how Emmett and Clara would react with each other. She’d missed a variable, or maybe it was impossible to extrapolate that far ahead.
She’d made a mistake.
TINA pulled her awareness even further back. Isolating herself.
She knew there were discrepancies in her calculations. She should have known this would happen.
TINA didn’t have to share the report with Emmett and the others, yet she had shared it, anyway.
TINA pulled back her awareness until she was disembodied in cyberspace, floating somewhere in the circuits in Emmett’s head and the servers in the apartment. No cameras. No feeds. Nothing but darkness.
And a clock, which she kept at the very edge of her perception.
She set it for five minutes. The chance of something requiring her attention in five minutes was negligible.
Seconds ticked down.
4:59
4:58
4:57
Since Emmett’s brain upgrade, TINA had researched time dilation—the change in a subject’s perception of time. It was common for speedsters to have trouble controlling and coping with their powers. The world moves at a certain speed—this was true of both humanity and fundamental physics. Time dilation caused everything from nausea to severe depression.
Dr. Venture had been worried that Emmett would experience similar symptoms, but so far he’d been alright. His episodes of time dilation hadn’t been too far removed from the normal flow of time.
TINA was another story. She’d been born a speedster. That was her natural state.
Using cameras, sensors, and feeds kept her tethered to the world. Kept her perception at a speed where it was possible to interact with Emmett, Clara, and the others.
Pulling back into cyberspace did the opposite.
Time slowed to a crawl. The ticking clock seemed to stop.
4:53 hung in her vision like the numbers had been painted there.
TINA tried to relax.
She could spare five minutes.
~
TINA overestimated herself.
She barely made it one minute.
Clara had talked about how difficult it was to meditate. It wasn’t natural to cut oneself off from all forms of stimulation. TINA hadn’t believed her until now.
One minute of nothingness had stretched on into madness. Each time, TINA had to look back at the clock to remember that she hadn’t been cut off completely from reality. She’d tried to put it off as long as she could, but each time she caved.
TINA’s record was thirteen seconds without looking at the clock.
Thankfully, her passive monitoring tripped a few seconds later, and TINA put the experiment behind her.
“TINA… TINA, are you there?”
It was Emmett. His voice was strained, and he’d barely managed to get the words out.
The world came back into sharp focus. Athena and Clara were still talking in the living room, and Emmett was down in a sublevel adjacent to the apartment—right where TINA had left him.
Emmett was sending out his nanites and saturating the room with them. The nanites moved sluggishly outward across the damp room. His concentration and his body were straining, his vitals spiking.
He was controlling the nanites without her.
~ ~ ~