The door hissed open, revealing a small control room beyond.
The walls of the control room were covered in display screens, and the center of the room was taken up by a familiar metal platform. Emmett was struck again by the sense of déjà vu. He knew that when they restored power, the center platform would become a holographic display. He could imagine power restored and everything lit up with camera views and readouts—even imagine Dr. Venture in his lab coat, hands folded behind his back and watching the screens intently.
For a moment, it felt like Emmett was walking into the lab for the first time after his accident. After he became a cyborg—after he became a mask.
But Dr. Venture wasn’t there. This wasn’t the lab. And a lot had happened since then.
Everything had changed.
Lock ducked under the doorway and passed him. It was enough to shake Emmett out of his thoughts, and realize that Clara had a similar faraway look in her eyes.
Lock leaned over and ran his fingers over the lifeless holographic table, then examined the dust. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s ever been here.” No one replied.
Athena looked at Emmett and Clara knowingly. She’d never seen the inside of the lab, but she knew her friends well enough.
“Are you both okay?”
Emmett wrapped an arm around Clara.
“I’ll be fine,” Clara replied, and gently pulled away. She walked into the small control room and examined the screens. “TINA, how is everything looking?”
Athena patted Emmett on the shoulder, then they walked into the room as well. She leaned the magic staff against the wall. Runes glowed softly along the length of it.
“It will take me a few minutes to fully restore power and bring systems back online.”
TINA directed Clara to place several fusion cells in the room. At the same time, nanites flowed off of Emmett and out of the storage container in his torso. They moved across the room like streams of black sand. Some coalesced around the holographic table, while others flowed through gaps in the walls and floor.
As they worked, the rest of the group’s disguises faded away, revealing their supersuits beneath.
The black and gray swirls of Emmett’s suit hid a thousand tiny scales, each full of non-newtonian fluid. Emmett thought it looked like futuristic dragon skin. His suit was one of his proudest achievements. It was also one of the reasons he was a Class 3 super and how he’d unlocked the full strength and flexibility of his prosthetic limbs. The fluid in his suit hardened under stress or when Emmett sent an electrical charge through them.
Emmett pulled back the hood of his suit and pushed back his frazzled hair. A moment later, Clara did the same.
Her dark hair had grown out over the Summer, and now it hung over her ears. That wasn’t the only change though—she was wearing her thinsuit instead of her old exosuit. Her exosuit had been damaged during the war, and since losing the lab, they hadn’t had the facilities to rebuild it. Clara was still a force to be reckoned with in her thinsuit, but it didn’t have the same flight or long-ranged capabilities that her bulkier exosuit had. Her thinsuit had the benefit of being sleeker and fitting easily under a disguise, but it also excelled in close-quarters combat. The thin metal looked like dark-blue fish scales, and those scales acted as a full-body version of her combat thrusters.
To anyone else, Athena’s appearance would’ve been obscured by magic, like an out-of-focus photograph. But Emmett and the others saw her true appearance. She was an ageless super—almost four thousand years old—and a warrior to her core. Her long white hair was pulled back, and she’d kept her jacket with shards of broken glass woven into it.
The only one that cut a more impressive frame was Lock. Emmett’s former roommate towered over the others. They’d found him the largest hoodie and sweats they could, but they still barely fit him. At least his skin had smoothed out. Thanks to TINA’s nanites, he no longer had a buildup of bone or scar tissue on his skin. But this was only a temporary solution—it wasn’t a cure.
Developing a cure was on their growing list of objectives and one of the many reasons they needed a new lab.
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Emmett eyed the magic staff. “How’s the apartment’s demiplane holding up?”
Athena picked up the staff and concentrated. The pattern of lights along the staff changed while she stretched her perception back to the apartment.
In much the same way that TINA and Emmett could sense the structure of the lab, Athena could sense the structure of the demiplane. As its creator, she was intrinsically tied to it. Emmett couldn’t help but note the similarities between his technological perception and the magical equivalent. No one had succeeded in marrying artificer technology or magic, or gadgeteer powers—they were as incompatible as oil and water… But Emmett was sure that there was something there.
After a moment, Athena shrugged. “The demiplane feels stable enough. Toldrei was able to come and go from the Felwarden base without it collapsing, but there’s no way to know for sure. I was starting to like the idea of having a basement. Hopefully, it’s still there when we go back.”
Lock folded his arms across his chest. “I thought magic just worked. What’s the deal?”
Lock hadn’t been around for all of Athena’s magical trial and error over the Summer. It had taken several weeks to make the basement demiplane. Lock hadn’t even been free for a month. They’d tried to catch him up on most things, but magic must’ve fallen through the cracks.
Thankfully, TINA chimed in. “Master Toldrei was a skilled mage and her connection to the staff was stronger—both will affect the power and stability of spells cast. There is also no way to tell whether opening multiple demiplanes will affect stability.”
Lock replied, “Seems like there’s a lot you don’t know.”
Athena raised an eyebrow at the light-hearted jab. “You want to take over magic duties?”
“Hell no.”
“Athena is more than capable of handling magic duties.”
Athena smirked. “Thanks for backing me up, TINA.”
“Any time.”
Emmett watched his teammates banter, but he couldn’t have been further away. TINA was charting a path through, and Emmett was utterly absorbed in following the flow of power around.
The process felt both mechanical and organic, and felt as much like bushwhacking as it did gardening. When a room or a section came back online, it would light up in Emmett’s perception—as quick and simple as flipping a switch. In reality, the process was much smoother. Emmett could feel that too—nanites trickled through the lab, flowing along wires, building connections and bypassing gaps. Power trickled steadily through, flowing from the fusion cells into the dry recesses of the backup lab.
The layout of the backup lab came in camera views and floor plans. The first few flashed through his HUD, but the rest came almost unconsciously. The layout of the backup lab was similar to the old lab, but not quite the same. Still, as he absorbed more about the layout, Emmett felt he knew the place so well he could find his way through with his eyes closed.
Information came much the same way. With each new sector, Emmett just knew things about the backup lab. It almost felt like a flash of inspiration, except much more thorough and complete. Emmett didn’t just get an idea of the lab’s defenses, he knew where every trap and turret was. He didn’t just get an idea of the files stored in the backup lab—he instantly saw all folder names and hierarchies.
Emmett lost track of time, but eventually, the backup lab blossomed in his vision. Rooms and systems that he thought had been properly lit now flared with light. Deep in the heart of the backup lab, the fusion generator hummed with life. It felt like a dam had opened. The trickle of power redoubled into a churning flow.
“—He’s fine. No need to worry.”
TINA’s voice was faint. Emmett barely heard it. It wasn’t until screens started blinking around the control room that Emmett came back to the moment.
Everyone was staring at him. Lock had a hand on his shoulder. “You good?”
Clara grasped Emmett’s hand. “Hey, where did you go?”
“I’m alright,” Emmett replied quickly. “I just… I could see what TINA was doing.”
Lock shook his head. “What do you mean? You looked like you had blue screened on us.”
Athena nodded. “That’s one way to put it.”
TINA interjected, “The backup lab is online. All systems are operational, though some will take another hour to bring up to full capacity.”
Emmett fumbled for the words. It was one thing to experience his newfound senses, and another thing completely to try to put them into words.
“I could see exactly what TINA was doing. I could see the map of the lab as it came back to life… I’m alright, really. I’m good.”
Athena asked, “Is that… normal?”
"Kind of… I don’t know what normal is anymore.”
TINA replied, “Emmett experiences the world through a mix of technology and biology. He isn’t the first cyborg, but Emmett has undergone significantly more enhancement than others. His experiences may not be normal, but they aren’t cause for alarm.”
Clara nodded along to TINA’s explanation, but the micro-expressions on her face made it seem like she was reassuring herself more than anything. Emmett shoved the observation aside and tried not to read into it anymore than he already had.
Emmett changed the subject. “Look, the lab’s online. Let’s take a tour and see what we’re working with.”
~ ~ ~