Once we got close, we began to hear the sound of gunfire.

I wasn’t sure I was ready for another fight so soon after the last one, but I was preparing myself nonetheless. With my suit so damaged, I would need to play support and let Alice and Anomaly do more heavy lifting. Hopefully, the enemy had tech I could hack so I wouldn’t be completely useless.

To our surprise, the echoing sounds of gunfire dissipated as we got closer. The noise faded away until it was eerily silent, so I could only summarize that the fighting ended before we arrived. If so, who won? The Cains had to be one of the parties involved, but who were they fighting? More Pandora?

I found my answer when we turned onto the street.

Bodies lay strewn about, unmoving. It was unnerving how many there were, enough to fill a small graveyard. A good portion of them were ECU, while the rest were Cains. My analytic mode revealed that most were alive, but some Cain thugs had bit the dust long before we arrived.

“The hell happened?” Anomaly wondered aloud. “Mutual knockout?”

“Guns don’t knock people out,” Alice drawled, her eyes darting around and looking for clues. She twitched as she switched to Gold, looking down at one of the ECU soldiers. “Blunt force trauma to the back of the skull. Quick and efficient,” her gaze drifted to the other soldiers before frowning. “Unequal force applied. Some suffered more damage than others.”

I shuddered at the thought. It seemed all the soldiers hadn’t even had a chance to react.

“It had to have happened quickly. Someone with Pink’s level of speed,” I said.

Gold’s lip twitched as she raised a hand to her ear to transmit a call.

“Points for subtly, Mia. I know I said to hold down the fort for us but I wasn’t expecting you to end a gunfight single handedly, Good job.”

I looked around, shocked.

Had Mia done this?

I couldn’t see any of her statues.

“Don’t…” Mia’s voice was thick with self-loathing. “Don’t compliment me. Not for this. I tried– I didn’t want to hurt them that badly. I just didn’t want them to kill each other.”

“You did good,” Alice commended again, ignoring her protests. “The only deaths were from the ECU authorizing lethal force. The soldiers will be fine, assuming nothing else comes by to finish the job.”

I didn’t miss the nonchalance in her demeanor. Neither did Mia.

“That’s not— ugh, whatever. Just get up here. The hole’s at the back of the building in the alleyway. I have a statue watching. You should be able to see it.”

Sure enough, a glint of gold hiding in the shadows between two buildings across the street caught my eye. We made our way over, stepping across unconscious bodies. With everything I had been through today, I couldn’t find it within me to feel bad about stepping over unconscious thugs and soldiers.

“God damn,” Anomaly murmured, drawing my attention to the alleyway walls. It looked like a beast with razor-sharp claws had attacked the surrounding walls in a frenzy. “Something big came out of here.”

Alice hummed in agreement.

“And given the firefight in the street, it likely broke out before the fighting started,” she pointed up at the second floor of the clothing store. The hole wasn’t just a regular hole made by an accident. It was huge – like a truck had plowed right through it. “They escaped into the city. With Pandora on a warpath, anything they destroy will just be chalked up to collateral damage.”

“Something that big has to be noticed,” I pointed out. “Unless—”

“A Morpher,” Alice said. “Like Anomaly and Prosperity.”

“If this is a Morpher then they’re a fast learner,” Anomaly said. “It took me about a week to get the hang of switching back and forth.”

“Some learn faster than others, but I don’t believe this is one of those cases,” Alice replied. “Involuntary transformation and overloaded senses. They’re not entirely conscious of what they’re doing and are operating purely on instinct.”

We climbed up through the hole and entered the lab. It was underwhelming compared to the high-tech bunker we had busted before. This place was messy, with notes scattered everywhere. All the equipment was placed haphazardly, like whoever was maintaining this place was in a hurry to leave. As Mia had said, there were three occupied tanks, with the fourth looking like it had exploded from the inside, caking the floor around it in a dried orange substance.

“Well, this isn’t much,” Anomaly said, disappointed. Compared to the Bunker, this place might as well have been someone’s attic they had rented out. “I thought there would be uh, more.”

“There are,” Alice confirmed. “More labs that is. This is just one of them. With the bunker busted, it seems Splicer has spread out his worksites. Not the most effective set up but it does limit losses. We’re close though, look,” she walked over to a desk that still had lights on. She lifted a mug and touched the sides. “Coffee is still warm. They were here.”

“How long?” I asked.

Alice switched to Gold and glanced at the mug.

“Seventeen minutes ago.”

Splicer had likely left in pursuit of the escaped victim. If the markings on the walls outside were anything to go by, there would be a trail to follow – which would, in turn, lead us directly to Splicer.

“Shit… they could be anywhere,” Anomaly said, rubbing the back of his neck. “And I dunno if I could find them with all the crap that's going down. There’ll be a lot of um…”

“Visual noise,” Alice supplied.

“Yeah, that,” Anomaly shrugged. “Maybe if we figure out what direction they were going, I could see what kinda noise is being made and narrow it down. Whatever broke outta here is pretty damn big and big things normally make loud noises.”

“Wait, what about the others? We need to get them out,” Mia’s voice came through the call. Two of her statues were in the lab with us, standing in front of the control panels for the vats. “I don’t know how this stuff works so you gotta help me here.”

“That’s not what we came here for,” Alice said with a tired sigh. “Plus if we get them out, we have no idea how they’re going to react. There’s already one break out here and we need to go after Splicer. We can call it in and let the ECU handle it.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Alice,” I cut in. Her gaze snapped toward me. “You and Anomaly are faster than me and my armor needs to be repaired. Let me stay here while you two go on ahead. My tech can break through but I’ll need time. Splicer’s also bound to have some notes, so if we’re lucky, he’ll have something on Grim.”

“You want me to leave you here with what could be three unstable Supers with Unknown powers?” I heard a sudden rise of anger and disbelief in her voice. “Upgrade, you’re—”

“—Better off here than anywhere else right now. Look at all this tech, we can salvage a whole bunch of it and maybe we can use it to figure out why they’re doing this. Mia and I can make preparations to move it back to our hideout while getting these people out,” I explained. “Besides, my suit is barely holding itself together and I don’t want to risk another fight in this condition.”

Given that it would take seconds to repair my suit, it wasn’t a real reason. I knew Alice would know that.

Alice looked ready to argue, but I counted on Gold to take my side. Mia had a kinder heart than the rest of us. There was no chance in Hell we would convince her to leave these kids behind. If we left, it would break team cohesion. That was the last thing we needed tonight. I also wanted to help – to some extent – but I’d be lying if I claimed getting a look at some of this equipment wasn’t a big part of my motivation for staying behind.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Anomaly cracked his knuckles. “Stay here and get ‘em out while we go track down the mad scientist guy.”

“...Damn it, fine,” Alice hissed. “Fine! Just, just promise you’ll be careful.”

The sincerity in her voice threw me off a little.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Yeah I will.”

Alice looked between me and Anomaly for a few seconds before slowly backing away. I guessed she realized how that came across and was now looking for some way out without things getting too awkward. There was a flash of uncertainty in her eyes before she banished it in favor of her usual confident demeanor.

“Alright then, Anomaly?”

“Right behind you,” he followed, transforming.

I watched as he lumbered to the hole, coiling down before springing out. Alice lingered at the entrance.

“Give me a holla if something happens,” she said before switching to Pink. “Adios, Uppies!”

She was gone in a flash, leaving me alone with Mia’s statues, a room full of Mechatech, and three test subjects. I allowed myself a moment so I could take a breath. Once I had, I found the nearest chair and sat down to collect my thoughts. While I did this, I disengaged my suit and peeled it off.

[Charges: 7/25]

[Type]

* Multi-purpose Armored Combat Suit

[Durability 32/100. Repair Available - Cost 3]

I paid the repair cost and watched as my armor turned to a floating liquid in my hands. In a mesmerizing fashion, it began folding and unfolding like everything else I improved. In seconds, it finished before I turned my attention elsewhere.

Not willing to risk being outside my suit on a night like this, I slipped back into it and engaged its systems. Upgrading or restoring my suit always gave it that ‘fresh new car’ smell everyone liked.

“That’s better,” I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ve never seen you work before,” Mia said, her voice coming through the radio inside my helmet. “Powers are really weird. What did you even do to it?”

“I repaired it. There was some damage after my last encounter and you already know I’m a bit banged up underneath. If anything else happens tonight, I’d want to be in the best shape possible,” I explained, leaning back into the chair. I was more than fatigued by this point, so thankfully, Alice hadn’t argued to get me to follow her. “I’m better off here anyway. They can move much faster than me.”

“Okay,” Mia said, sounding uncertain. “So how are we going to get these people out?”

Right, on to business.

The vats here were identical to the ones in the bunker, which meant there was an interactive panel that controlled the functions of each one. Alice had used Gold to get them open, but that wasn’t an option this time. Fortunately, I invested in my software since last time, so I should be able to get them out now.

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I scanned the vats with my visor and found their security was heavily encrypted. Luckily for me, they weren’t closed systems, so I would be able to connect remotely. It would just take some time to break through the security – which I set my programs to do. I watched as streams of code poured down my visor, but I minimized it and delegated it to the side so that I could still see.

“I’m breaking through the security on these things. I should be able to access them shortly.”

“That’s a relief,” Mia exhaled thankfully. “They don’t deserve to be kept like this.”

“They won’t even remember,” I said. “You don’t.”

“I’ve had nightmares,” she revealed. I felt myself pause for a moment. Alice mentioned in passing to me that Mia would experience phantom sensations from her ordeal. I didn’t realize they would manifest as nightmares instead. “Sometimes it feels like I’m drowning. Other times it’s like I’m burning from the inside out. There’s always pain – but it’s just… numbed. I don’t know how to explain it.”

I spotted a cluttered desk and decided to head towards it. While my eyes roamed the contents stacked atop it, Mia’s words occupied my mind.

“Alice said you wouldn’t be able to recall specifics but that your body would remember. She described it as a phantom pain. Splicer had special biokinetic drugs pumping through you – everyone did,” I said, my gaze flicking toward the people in the vats. All three of them were young, younger than me. If I had to guess, they were early high schoolers. The kids were not from the party Anomaly had described. The Cains had abducted them from somewhere else. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry all this has happened to you.”

I didn’t get a response from Mia. Her statues had moved about the room while I wasn’t looking, but I could tell she was agitated by their frozen expressions. There was a deep-seated anger etched into their faces.

With the silence in my corner, I turned my attention to the desk and began sorting through the contents. There were plates, empty drinks, and pizza boxes to discard, but the real important stuff came from worn notebooks. Aside from a number on the cover, they were not organized in any particular order and remained scattered, some half open.

There were four, each labeled.

Six, seven, eight, and nine.

Four numbers, four vats.

I opened number six and began to read. Sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed. The notebook contained notes on one of the children in the vats. It had all their information: name, age, date of birth, height, weight, and ethnicity. The majority of the book was empty, but the first dozen or so pages were packed full of information.

They recorded the gruesome details of the experiments Splicer had been performing.

Much like the other lab, they were exposing them to various methods of torture to induce Artificial Awakening.

Sickened to the core, I flipped through the other notebooks to see if there was any information on how they were progressing. All I got was that subject six had developed some kind of mild psionic ability that got stronger and uncontrollable when put under intense duress. Seven and Nine remained unresponsive. Eight appeared to have developed an acute sixth sense that could sense danger, but there was speculation that the power had other abilities.

It seemed like Splicer was making good progress. But similar endeavors had failed in the past, so what made his methods different?

Taking the books, I tried to match each notebook to the proper tank. The tanks didn’t display a number to match the notebooks because Splicer likely knew which belonged where, so I would have to do things the old-fashioned way. Using the physical descriptions recorded in the books, I matched the notebooks to the right children. I was disheartened when I read how old the victims were.

The youngest was eleven, with the oldest having turned fourteen yesterday.

I realized who had been the one to escape when I had identified all but number eight.

“Shit.”

“What is it?” Mia asked. “Did you find something?”

“Alice, are you there?”

“I hear ya, Uppies!”

“The person who escaped is young. You’re looking for…” I paused and flipped a few pages in the notebook. “It’s a boy, no older than twelve. He’s developed a sixth sense and can sense danger before it happens.”

“What!? We’re dealin’ with one of them budget Foresights? Aw crud, I thought we’ve been lookin’ for a big scary Morpher!”

“That might still be the case, Splicer speculated that there were other aspects to their power. If my hunch is correct, Splicer was about to do something when the kid’s power evolved, transforming him without him even knowing,” I ran to the hole in the wall and looked out at the carnage it had caused to escape. “Alice, it probably knows you, Anomaly, and Splicer are tracking it. There's a very good chance it’s hiding… or setting up an ambush.”

A Morpher with enhancement capabilities, along with precognition? That was a scary combo, enough to put me on edge.

“Nah, it ain’t hidin’,” Pink replied. “We found some tracks and are following some spooky sounds it's making.”

My brow furrowed. I was almost certain it would’ve been hiding. What else would a frightened child be doing?

“Where are you?”

“We’ve actually backtracked a bit! We’re around Groves Den. Phew, this boy is fast I’ll tell ya that!” Pink exclaimed, sounding somewhat excited. “I can’t wait to see this big bad beastie up close. Gold keeps saying a bunch of crap about how dangerous it is but screw her, I wanna pet it!”

I had to bite back a retort of frustration. I couldn’t imagine how regular Alice must be screaming inside her head right now.

“Pink, please, just listen to Gold.”

“But I wanna give 'em scritches!”

“Pink—”

A scream erupted to my left. I spun around to find Mia collapsing to the floor from where one of her statues stood. She scrambled backward and put her back against the nearest wall, all while screaming at the top of her lungs and attempting to ward off something with her arms.

“Mia?”

“NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

I was over by her side in a heartbeat, my hand clamping down on her shoulder while the other attempted to stifle her screams. She fought against me for a few seconds before she realized where she was. Immediately, she stopped struggling, her hands finding purchase on my arm, gripping me tightly.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice betraying my panic.

“Something broke in!” She shook like a leaf, trying to capture her breath. “I was looking through my statutes and I didn’t— it was just— the window shattered and something broke through. It was huge and black and–and—” she struggled to find the words to describe what she saw. “—angry. It… it pinned me down, I saw its teeth, and then… then I was just here.”

“You switched places,” I said. “Right before it bit you?”

Slowly, Mia’s senses returned, and she nodded.

“Yeah, yeah I did. I didn’t even mean to. It just happened.”

“Is it still there?”

Still shaking, Mia closed her eyes and tried to focus. I could feel her hands shaking from the shot of adrenaline. After a few moments, she opened her eyes and shook her head.

“No,” she swallowed her fear and steadied herself further. “No, it’s gone now.”

“Quick…” I murmured. “In and out. Alice, did you get that?”

“Yeah,” Pink’s quirky voice was gone, and Gold’s cold tone came through. “We’ve been following the trail and it's been leading us deeper into Groves Den towards our base. It’s been tracking Mia.”

“Why?” I asked, unable to hide my confusion. “I mean… how? She’s barely left the apartment, so how could it accurately pinpoint her location?”

“Like you said, Splicer thinks that it has more powers. They just couldn’t identify them without proper field testing,” Gold replied. “As for why… we all know that Mia’s physical changes have been perplexing because they don’t seem to have any correlation with the power she’s developed. We’ve been looking at it from the wrong angle. Her changes are pieces from other people that have been merged into her.”

My stomach churned as I glanced at Mia. She couldn’t hear what Alice was saying because this version of her didn’t carry the encrypted communicator I had left with her at the apartment. Fortunately, that seemed like a blessing in disguise because I couldn’t see her reacting well to what Alice was saying.

“...Merged?”

“Splicer… fuck, it’s in the name. He’s taking parts from other people and combining them with others. Mia’s a mashup of several people, same as the person who attacked her. He’s scared and his senses are heightened tenfold, they’re zeroing in on the scent that’s familiar,” Gold explained. “Upgrade, if Mia’s with you now, then he’s going to be coming back to you!”

There was so much information that I had trouble processing that we were about to be in mortal danger.

I had so many questions.

Why was it tracking Mia?

Why was Splicer merging parts of people with others?

What were they trying to achieve, and what did all of this have to do with Grim?

And the most important, what was the fastest way to get the fuck out of here!?

“We need to go, now!”

“What?” Mia asked as I pulled her to her feet. “What’s going on? Wait, it’s after me isn’t it? It’s coming back here!?”

“Got it in one,” I said, thanking the stars that I didn’t have to explain anything. “Now let’s go.”

“What about the others?” Mia asked, gesturing to the vats. “We need to get them out!”

“I’m still connecting to their systems. Once I’ve broken through, I should be able to release them remotely, but I can’t do that if I’m dead!”

Mia didn’t like that answer, but she followed regardless.

We moved to the hole in the wall. Mia hesitated, intimidated by the height.

“I can’t do it!”

We don’t have time for this.

I grappled to the neighboring building’s roof to use it as a swing to lower us down gently. Mia had initially let out a cry of alarm when I wrapped an arm around her waist and forced us out. She was quick to recover when we landed.

“Leave some of your statues here. I still want that stuff moved back to our place,” I said. “Follow me. We need to keep moving.”

“Where are we going?”

“No idea but we can’t stay here,” I said, guiding us out of the alley. We emerged onto the desecrated with countless unconscious bodies. None of them looked like they were close to regaining consciousness. That was good. I didn’t want to fight off soldiers and a feral Super. “Alice, we’re out of the lab but I don’t know where to go. How fast is it?”

“Considering Anomaly and I couldn’t catch up and I was Pink at the time… I’d say pretty fucking fast.”

“Okay so where the fuck do we go?” I shot back. “We’re not exactly speedsters like you!”

“I’m thinking! Jesus, just gimme— okay! You need somewhere that’ll block whatever scent Mia is giving off. It has to be strong… strong enough to mask the biokinetic stuff.”

“If it was so strong why can’t we smell it?” I asked the question springing to my mind. I quickly shook my head. “No! Don’t answer that. You can tell me later if we’re still alive. I need a destination, Alice, and I need it right now!”

An echoing roar cut through our surroundings, drowning out the distant chaos still raging throughout the city.

“Mia, do you have any statues somewhere safe? Now would be a really good time to switch,” I said, my gaze fixated on the direction the roar had come from. I had already pulled out my laser pistol to prepare myself for the fight of my life. “Can you switch back with the one at the apartment? Maybe you can confuse the thing by going back and forth?”

“Um… no,” Mia said with a tremble. “It’s gone.”

“Gone?” I repeated, stunned. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“I mean it’s fucking gone. Dead. Shredded. Ripped to pieces.”

“Your statues are made of solid metal!”

“Yeah,” Mia confirmed. “Yeah they are.”

Dread pooled in my stomach.

“Okay, what about your other statues?”

“They’re all spying on fights. I was positioning them to feed you guys information. I can’t switch with them, I’d be dropped in the middle of a warzone!”

“Then move one of them!”

“There’s too much going on! I can’t, they freeze when they’re being observed, remember!?”

“There’s no time for this. Go down!” Alice barked through the radio. “Down, underground!”

I looked around frantically, finding the nearest storm drain hatch before dashing to it. I dug my fingers into it and pulled with all my might. The grate groaned as I heaved it out of the ground. Mia scrambled past me the moment the hatch was free from the cement. Terror compelled her down the rusted ladder without complaint.

I was one leg deep into the hole; my foot rested easily on the metal ladder when something slammed into the ground behind me. I turned and saw a black shadow that reminded me of Grim at the end of the street, moving like a blur. It feverishly raced toward me, and I threw away any caution I had in favor of survival. I let my foot slip, and my whole body dropped into the hole, colliding with Mia as I fell.

Together, we plunged into the bowels of Bayside just in time to avoid gashing blood-soaked teeth.