The group spent the next few days training and formulating their plans. TINA wasn’t sure if Emmett and Clara ever talked about the rift between them, but they were slowly growing close again, like an old wound healing.
Emmett continued growing his swarm. Ever since he’d struggled to control the swarm without TINA, Emmett had insisted on doing most of his practice by himself. Taking the training wheels off had set him back initially, but it had pressured his brain to make new connections. Now he could control nanites just as well by himself. His capacity had increased drastically and his own journeys into the city for raw materials were more efficient than Athena’s.
TINA tapped into Emmett’s HUD.
CAUTION — OVERFLOW
NANITES 210% CAPACITY
Despite his progress, TINA still kept an eye on Emmett. He had a habit of pushing himself dangerously close to exhaustion.
While all three of TINA’s teammates had made strides, Clara’s was the most dramatic.
She’d continued working on her core, as she described it. Clara had gotten used to magnifying it and pulling the energy into different limbs. Her efficiency and her control had grown.
Her real problem was finding somewhere for the power to go after she’d built it up.
Since Athena’s apartment wasn’t fireproof, Clara had to settle for a mixture of TINA’s simulations and the new demiplane to test her powers. Magic kept the demiplane solid and kept the walls from being burned away by Clara’s power, but it took time for the heat to dissipate. After a few rounds of training her core, the demiplane would be filled with steam. If she pushed too hard, heat would begin overflowing into the apartment.
Clara had already moved on to conjuring fusion blasts out of her hands and feet, though she couldn’t direct them. The power would rush out of her in a cone ten feet wide, like someone had turned on a rocket engine.
TINA wished she had the tools to measure Clara’s output. This had coincidentally led to one of TINA’s next projects.
Both Emmett and Clara had ideas for prototype suits and gear, but Manufacturer nanites were only good for making new nanites. What they really needed was a proper lab again. Since they didn’t have access to the lab, TINA focused on the next best thing—
Fabrication nanites.
Even in the lab, fabrication nanites required a vat to operate. Inside the vat, nanites would assemble raw materials into the desired item. Depending on the size and complexity of the item, it would have to be fabricated in pieces and then assembled by hand. Athena hadn’t protested too much when TINA built the couch-sized fabricator. With enough time, TINA could probably shrink its footprint, but this would do for now.
They would never be able to build full-scale fusion reactors or high grade weapons and armor, but Fabrication nanites would be able to make medium-grade materials, systems, and items.
To continue Clara’s training, she needed an upgrade. During the war, Dr. Venture and TINA had proposed a new suit, one made specifically to act as training wheels for Clara’s power. The main components were the helmet, chest piece, gauntlets, and boots. Each would act as a focus and a funnel for her powers. At first, these components would help regulate her output, but eventually, Clara’s proverbial training wheels would get smaller and smaller, until she could fly and fire focused blasts of power without needing a suit at all.
Thankfully, her thinsuit was relatively simple compared to her normal exosuit, and it could serve as the chassis for the upgrade. Additionally, simulations showed that the new components were simple enough for fabrication nanites to make.
Clara climbed out of the basement demiplane and walked over to the vat. She eyed it excitedly. “How’s it going, TINA?”
“The first prototypes should be ready for testing by the end of the day.”
Clara smiled and groaned. “I shouldn’t have asked. The day’s going to pass even slower now!”
~
For the sake of all of their mental wellbeing, TINA encouraged them to get out of the apartment.
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Athena went out at least twice a day. Usually in the mornings, to find more appliances for Emmett, and a second time at night to cool off after being subjected to Clara’s meditation. Emmett and Clara would go out together for walks, making sure they took randomized paths.
While they were out, TINA worked on infiltrating Gnosis.
There were seven parts of the plan that needed fleshing out:
First, they needed to get into Gnosis. TINA was confident that their nanite disguises would fool mundane guards, vampires, and security cameras, and it would be easy to manufacture fake identification to bypass checkpoints.
Second—once they got in, they needed to disable the silent alarm so that Gnosis couldn’t alert the Summit or the authorities. TINA was in the process of locating the main wires. Once the team got into the building, Emmett would saturate the area, then TINA would use nanites to sever connections to the outside.
The third part was gaining access to the lower levels. This wouldn’t be much more difficult, though there might be additional biometric security. If needed, TINA would manufacture additional IDs and implant biometric data in the system.
Even if they got in and prevented Gnosis from using the silent alarm, threats could still arise. The next two parts were about dealing with those threats. Part four concerned the security on the upper levels. This was made up of young vampires and a handful of Mutagen-A enhanced humans, likely Class 1 and Class 2. Emmett could incapacitate them with his nanites.
Part five concerned the lower levels. Security down there was a mix of older vampires and mutagen test subjects. These could be anywhere from Class 2 to Class 3. TINA was confident that Emmett, Clara, and Athena could defeat any of them, but numbers and beating them nonlethally were a concern.
The sixth part of the plan concerned Lachlan. Freeing him was easy, but there was no guarantee that he would be mentally stable. If he turned violent, they’d need to subdue him. There was also no guarantee that the clotting nanomachines would work a second time. With his supercharged healing factor, at best he’d be down for a few minutes.
TINA suggested that Athena could sever Lachlan’s head from his neck. Athena didn’t appreciate the idea—even after TINA assured her that he would survive until they could reattach it later. Emmett and Clara weren’t thrilled about the idea, either.
Keeping Lachlan stable was only part of the problem. TINA was also concerned with keeping him in check once they were back on the surface. Once they broke him out, Lachlan was their responsibility. If he went crazy or turned into a villain, that was on them.
TINA had tried talking to Emmett about it, but he shut down. She understood that it was a hard possibility for Emmett to think about, but they had to have a plan if the worst happened.
TINA resolved to have countermeasures in place, whether Emmett agreed or not.
Part seven—the final part of the plan—involved getting back out of Gnosis… But it was difficult to plan that far ahead, even for TINA.
Dr. Venture used to say that no plan survived unaltered.
Getting back out of Gnosis depended on how cooperative Lachlan was, and whether Ichabod honored their arrangement.
~
Emmett still made servers to expand TINA’s processing power, but most of his time and resources went toward growing the nanite swarm.
TINA would never admit it, but she was jealous—at first. The emotion had surprised her. She’d felt sparks of envy before, but nothing she would call jealousy.
She’d pushed the thought aside. Emmett was right to prioritize the swarm. Emmett and Clara could probably fight their way through Gnosis, but the swarm was their only way to do so without killing anyone. Athena’s shields were powerful, but they could only knock someone out temporarily. And for all of Clara’s newfound control of her powers, she was still relegated to her thinsuit.
Besides, TINA didn’t need the extra processing power to get into Gnosis. She’d already gotten in once, and Ichabod hadn’t patched the exploit.
So, instead of building new servers, TINA requisitioned some from inside Gnosis.
Slipping through Gnosis’s systems was… eerie.
It was magnitudes easier than infiltrating the lab. They had their own passive security, but TINA avoided it as easily as Mod and the others avoided mech patrols. So far, TINA hadn’t triggered an active search, but she wasn’t worried. Gnosis wouldn’t have anything that could compare to the Proto-AI that guarded the lab.
When TINA infiltrated the lab, she’d been overcome with a sense of déjà vu. Even though she no longer had a map of the lab’s systems, they’d felt impossibly familiar. She’d taken some pathways at random, and yet she’d chosen the correct pathway at a 92% rate. At best, she should’ve been slightly higher than 50-50, the result expected from random chance.
Some of that discrepancy could be due to TINA’s current prowess. It was possible that she deduced the logical layout of the lab’s systems.
But that didn’t explain the entire discrepancy.
Did she have memories of the lab that had somehow survived downsizing?
It was possible that she’d developed a hidden layer to her programming, similar to the unconscious mind in humans. If so, that was troubling…
Because she was currently sneaking through Gnosis’s systems and experiencing the same sense of déjà vu.
Dr. Venture had made a deal to work with Gnosis. Had TINA been part of that deal?
The question plagued her until finally TINA pushed it aside. One day, she could examine her deeper programming, but today she focused on the task at hand.
~ ~ ~