Emmett stayed still while he analyzed the scene. Two men stared through the window at him and Dr. Venture.

  The two men had the intense demeanor of undercover officers. They didn’t blink, and they didn’t seem at all fazed by the pool of nanites covering the abandoned store.

  Time slowed down as Emmett stretched out his perception. He followed the signals of the Fast-Response drones circling the block, and he also spread out the edges of his swarm. Unless his enemies had extremely sensitive vision, they wouldn’t notice the edge of the swarm quickly encompassing the block.

  A cluster of nanites moved into Dr. Venture’s ear. Emmett transmitted the thought directly to him.

  “Cyborgs or robots. Yours?”

  Venture didn’t speak. Didn’t move. That was enough of an answer.

  Emmett couldn’t remember details, so he only had his gut feeling and Venture’s reluctance to go on. Both were telling him not to trust these two men.

  A flash of memory came back to Emmett. He remembered hanging from chains in the biolab, and seeing pieces of cyborgs in the back of the room. It had been a gruesome assortment of parts, but Emmett clearly remembered seeing silicone skin among them.

  These two men were part of the Brotherhood. Emmett’s memory was hazy, so he couldn’t remember all the details about the Brotherhood, but he couldn’t ignore the visceral reaction to the name. And he knew that they were the same organization that captured him, chained him up, and butchered him.

  Emmett stood, moving both slowly and deliberately.

  The two men shouted through the window. “Sir, please don’t move,” and, “Stay where you are.”

  Both men raised their hands. Their palms were out, like they had weapons concealed in their forearms. Emmett could just make out thin seams in their skin.

  The two men hadn’t noticed yet, but a thin layer of nanites crawled across their bodies. Another second passed before they were completely coated. But the swarm didn’t stop there. They seeped into gaps in their skin and found wires and circuitry. They were almost entirely synthetic.

  Emmett kept his arms at his side and tried to keep his voice flat. “Who are you with?”

  “We’re with the Summit of Heroes.”

  Emmett tried not to laugh. “...Can you show us some ID then?”

  The two men shared a look. Flickers of emotion passed across their faces. A wordless transmission passed from one of the men to a drone and back again. Emmett couldn’t access the message, but it was clear that the two men were calling a superior for guidance.

  “You need to stay where you are. Failure to comply will result in use of deadly force.”

  Emmett sent another silent communication to Venture. “We need to move. Follow my lead.”

  The two men didn’t give Emmett a chance to run. Their palms flipped back and their forearms unfolded, revealing hidden rifles. They should’ve had Emmett dead to rights, but their weapons malfunctioned. Nanites had already chewed through the wiring.

  A look of surprise flashed across their faces. Emmett didn’t give them a chance to explain.

  Nanites ate through all of their wiring.

  The two men slumped over and froze like half-toppled statues. A second later, their frantic transmissions ceased.

  Emmett quickly put together a plan. His swarm was more than capable on the ground, but he needed something to deal with the drones overhead. He examined the weapons in the two men’s forearms. Even though they were disabled, nanites could quickly rebuild lost wiring. The rifles were clearly made with short to medium range in mind, Emmett didn’t have time to be picky.

  Nanites cut off their forearms. Then the swarm peeled off excess mechanisms and skin. At the same time, nanites formed into bullets and rudimentary feeding mechanisms to complete the stolen rifles.

  The swarm prepared to run. It congealed into a single mass and then cocooned Emmett and Dr. Venture.

  A hail of bullets tore through the building. Inside his cocoon of nanites, Emmett couldn’t see and could barely hear the cracks of bullets passing by, but he sensed the destruction around him. Windows shattered. Shards of glass and wood sprayed across the room. Shredded clothes flew like confetti. The two men were cut down, spraying oil and fluid as they collapsed.

  Underground might’ve been safer right now, but it was a dead end. If they wanted to get outside the city limits, they had to go above ground.

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  The swarm took off—out of the building and down the nearby street. Emmett felt everything through the nanites—the warm sun above, and the alternating dirt and pavement below. He even felt the squad of biomechs across the street. He remembered enough about the word to conjure images of mechs, large and small.

  He tried to move so that he wasn’t between the mechs and the highway. Emmett couldn’t remember much, but he wanted to minimize collateral damage as much as possible.

  The swarm moved quickly, but it wasn’t fast enough to avoid the biomechs’ weapons. Bullets struck the swarm like rain, and it automatically rearranged nanites to disperse the impacts. Because of their small size, individual nanites were seldom lost—not even from armor-piercing or explosive rounds.

  Energy weapons were the most dangerous. Electric barbs and EMP weapons could disable parts of the swarm, and high-heat fusion weapons could melt them.

  Emmett let the swarm flow and become amorphous. After a few tense moments, Emmett found that the swarm was anticipating the impacts. It softened to disperse standard weapons, flattened to avoid fusion bursts, and formed reinforced wedges so barbs glanced off. On some level, Emmett knew that he was controlling the swarm, but it adapted so fast it felt like an unconscious process—almost like the swarm had a mind of its own.

  But Emmett wasn’t content with just surviving—

  He struck back.

  Nanite bullets loaded into the stolen rifles, and the tips of barrels emerged from the rolling surface. Emmett aimed with a combination of his one good eye and the signals from his enemies. First, he targeted the three Fast-Response drones overhead, hitting them with machine-like accuracy. Clearly, no one expected him to have ranged weapons because they didn’t bother dodging until it was already too late. Bullets lodged into their hulls, their packages already dissolving and seeping into gaps in their armor.

  They were already falling out of the sky by the time Emmett turned his guns on the biomech squad.

  They were only a little smarter.

  Emmett took aim at the two heavy biomechs. His first shots struck, but the heavy mechs had electric countermeasures that disabled the nanites. Emmett continued firing and fell into a rhythm. By staggering his shots, he forced the heavy mechs to discharge more and more energy.

  All the while, Emmett’s swarm ebbed and flowed like boiling black water. Even though the biomechs weapons weren’t effective against the swarm, Emmett was losing nanites—a steady trickle that couldn’t be ignored. So while he fought, Emmett commanded a portion nearest to the ground to make replacements. It was miniscule compared to tapping into the nanite lake, but it would be enough to offset the loss.

  Finally, the heavy mechs staggered. Their weapons slowed and stopped firing altogether. The giant walkers slumped over, frozen.

  The smaller human-sized and dog-sized mechs scattered.

  Instead of fleeing, Emmett chased after the smaller biomechs, taking them down one by one.

  It was easier than it should’ve been. Even the ones that escaped from sight kept transmitting for help.

  Emmett had just finished tagging and disabling the last two biomechs when someone called out to him—

  Not in the real world. In cyberspace.

  Only it didn’t feel like a friendly voice. It felt like someone suddenly appearing over his shoulder and reaching into his brain—specifically, into his brain implant.

  On instinct, he flinched away. In the real world, the swarm pulsed and sought out the source of the signal. Even without his HUD, Emmett understood the system messages.

  ATTEMPTING TO RECONNECT

  CONNECTION FAILURE

  SYNC IMPOSSIBLE

  “Get out of my head!” Emmett’s voice came out of his throat and echoed through the swarm, becoming a roar that blew out nearby windows.

  A second later, he found the source.

  Three signals coming toward him at high speed.

  Emmett felt them but couldn’t see them—even when they stopped close enough that he should’ve been able to.

  They were spread out around another nearby store—clearly positioning to attack him. The swarm writhed, mirroring Emmett’s irritation. At least they had the courtesy to position so errant gunfire wouldn’t hit the highway.

  Emmett didn’t wait. He fired three shots—one at each signal.

  One stepped out of the way as fast as a speedster.

  The second flared power and the nanite bullet dissolved.

  The last bullet struck true. For a moment, the super’s outline shimmered. Instead of dispersing, the nanites were overwhelmed by something…

  It was a long moment before Emmett recognized what happened—

  These enemies had their own nanites. Ones at least as advanced as Emmett’s, if not more.

  The three supers dropped their cloaking, revealing disguises and uniforms underneath.

  The man who Emmett had shot was enormous, standing head and shoulders above the two others and built like a bodybuilder. His uniform was a mix of form-fitting suit and hoodie that obscured his face.

  The second super was a woman clad in a thin armored suit that shimmered like fish-scales. The sections around her lower legs and forearms were thicker, and the air shimmered around her.

  The final enemy’s suit wasn’t as flashy as the woman’s, and his stature wasn’t as impressive as the man’s… but it felt familiar, like another half-remembered dream. Even after his cloaking ceased, revealing the gray and black swirls of his suit, his form still shimmered—as if his body was made of nanites. Of all three supers, Emmett sensed the most electric signals coming from him.

  Like the cyborg men, this final super raised a hand toward Emmett. But instead of seams in his skin, his entire arm shimmered and reconfigured into a rifle. Power radiated from it, and Emmett immediately recognized the power signature. It was the same as the woman beside him, and the same as the batteries inside Emmett’s nanite swarm.

  The final super called out, “Stand down and identify yourself!”

  Emmett’s stomach turned. The man’s voice was so familiar… When he finally answered, his voice sounded like an echo.

  “My name is Emmett, and I’m with the Resistance.”

  ~ ~ ~