APPROXIMATELY -1.2.21 PRE-INCIDENT

  Belport was different now.

  There were more drones overhead. Fast-response drones crowded the airspace. During the day, they would’ve looked like bees swarming high above the city. But at night there weren’t any running lights to give them away—they were almost invisible against the black.

  Emmett saw everything. He saw the infrared glow of their thrusters and UV glints of their cameras. He felt them as they flew overhead and passed through TINA’s network.

  Even with the scrubbing protocol concealing them, Emmett was nervous. There were so many cameras now. And there was no telling how much the Brotherhood’s network had grown. Had they integrated street-level security cameras? Were they tracking walking patterns and movement in real time? If so, hiding their faces wouldn’t be enough…

  Athena walked beside him and squinted as she looked up at the sky. “You said there’s more drones up there? Should we be nervous?”

  Emmett didn’t know what to say. Things looked alright… for now. But that didn’t mean the Brotherhood wasn’t playing them. For all Emmett knew, they might be walking into a trap.

  Thankfully, TINA answered for him. He felt TINA’s answer milliseconds before she said it aloud.

  “No,” TINA replied in both of their ears. “I’ll take care of my part. You both worry about yours.”

  Emmett and Athena threaded through the streets and alleys of Belport, keeping their heads down and disguises engaged. The air was frigid now, but Emmett barely noticed. Between his supersuit and nanites, his skin was completely covered. He only felt the cold in his breath.

  The Binary Brotherhood and the Summit of Heroes had divided their forces. The network of drones patrolled the sky and the city. The biomech force focused on former mask and villain raids. This left Summit capes to focus on the growing threat posed by the Menagerie.

  It hadn’t made sense at first, not until TINA intercepted a few more communications between the Summit and the Brotherhood. Apparently, the Brotherhood hadn’t made much progress in hardening their biomechs to psychic override. Instead, the Brotherhood was mass producing entry-level power armor for the Summit. These suits weren’t anything as advanced as Clara’s, but they fully enclosed the wearer’s body and made it impossible for a psychic to possess them—even a psychic as powerful as the Menagerie.

  Emmett and Athena walked the streets in silence. As they did, Emmett considered these new developments…

  And he kept coming back to Ava Savanus.

  Emmett and TINA had stolen schematics and details about every model of Savanus’s biomechs. It only took a few simulations for them to figure out how to shield the mechs from psychic takeover.

  There was really only one option:

  Completely enclose each drone, just like a set of power armor.

  There was always the chance that Savanus was blind to her own mistakes, that she would figure it out with enough time. Or the chance that current TINA was magnitudes more powerful than the old lab, so Savanus was way behind them…

  No. Enclosing the mechs was so simple that Emmett refused to believe Savanus hadn’t figured it out.

  Was she keeping it a secret from Midas? Emmett would hardly blame Savanus if she was.

  But the longer he walked and the more he thought about it, Emmett wasn’t satisfied with any of those. Maybe she had figured out that particular solution, but was holding out hope for another answer.

  Emmett thought it was something to do with Savanus’s power. It was widely known that she was a meta-savant, able to learn any skill within seconds. But she was still only human and her memory was finite. She could only perfect so many skills at once.

  Emmett suspected there was more to Savanus and her network of drones. Some reason that she couldn’t enclose her mechs and why she was after Emmett’s brain…

  The answer hit him like a brick.

  The reason the biomechs were so formidable was because they were all connected. And that connection wasn’t through some advanced technology, like Emmett’s brain-machine interface. It was a power. All the brains of her army were really just clones of Savanus, and they were all connected like a limited hive-mind—Savanus wasn’t a psychic, but this power was similar.

  Enclosing the biomechs would protect them against psychic attack, and it would also cut them off from each other. There goes her army’s best advantage.

  Another realization—that’s why Savanus wanted Emmett’s brain so badly. She could use technology in place of her power, and have the best of both worlds.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  TINA whispered in his ear, “You’re getting distracted… again.”

  Emmett ignored her. They needed every advantage they could find against the Brotherhood.

  Thankfully, the Brotherhood wasn’t as cohesive as it looked to the Summit and the rest of the world. TINA had managed to intercept other communications between their members. While Savanus struggled to upgrade her biomechs, Midas wanted to scrap the idea of biomechs completely, relying solely on the lab network and autonomous drones. He was practically counting down until the lab network was big enough and TINA’s remnant power enough that he could cut Ava Savanus and her mechs out of the picture completely.

  Athena nudged him as they walked. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. Just… thinking.”

  “Well, we’re nearly there. Time to get your head in the game.”

  “Right.” Emmett glanced around, taking in the surrounding street quickly and grounding himself in the moment.

  He took a measured breath. “I’m ready.”

  ~

  Their target was on the West End.

  Rows of apartments dominated the blocks. Emmett and Athena walked past them, toward the nearby townhouses. It was an older part of Belport, equal parts classic and rundown with chipped bricks and barred windows. Leafless trees dotted the sidewalk. The streets were narrow and one way, which made the sight of a biomech patrol all the more ominous.

  The streets were full of people walking and kids playing, but they were already taking notice of the biomech patrol. At first, people were just giving the mechs a wide berth, but now people were clearing the streets completely.

  Emmett didn’t blame them. It was easier to get used to drones overhead than giant mechs walking beside you on the street.

  There were less biomech patrols on the street now that they were focusing on mask and villain raids, but that didn’t mean the mechs were gone completely. There were still some patrols to keep up appearances—to keep from spooking supers that were hiding. Emmett had no doubt that biomech patrols had walked down this block before—

  But today was different. Today, they were here for a raid.

  The heavy biomech lumbered down the street, clipping branches and narrowly avoiding parked cars. The hec units were far more maneuverable than Emmett would have suspected—at least at slow speeds. It was covered in heavy armor plates and bristled with weapons that could pulverize Class 3 and 4 supers. At a glance, Emmett spied a laser and rotary cannon on the one down the street.

  Beside it were two human-sized biomechs. Even though they looked like humans from afar, they could switch between bipedal and quadrupedal as needed. These security units—sec units—sported smaller but still military-grade weapons.

  Smaller still were the three dog-sized reconnaissance—rec units. They were fast, but their smaller caliber weapons weren’t a threat to Emmett and Athena. Emmett’s supersuit would protect him, and Athena had finally let Emmett and TINA design her custom body armor.

  The real danger would come from the biomechs almost instant communication between one another.

  Emmett’s group and the biomech patrol were heading to the same place—both were a little more than a block away.

  The Resistance had grown significantly over the fall. They’d recently branched out from Belport and into the two neighboring cities. But they would never be big enough to foil every raid. As the season grew colder, the Brotherhood ramped up their raids exponentially. TINA had been forced to prioritize saving former masks that would be most beneficial to the Resistance.

  When Dimitri’s name came up, Athena requested that they intervene. At first, TINA refused. When Athena found out that Dimitri had a family, she begged to save them all. Athena said she would go in alone. Emmett agreed to go with her.

  Athena grew more and more on edge the closer they got to Dimitri’s block.

  Athena eyed the biomech patrol. She whispered, “Are they still going to make a move?”

  “Yes. The patrol group is going to take position. There’s another, smaller group of sec and rec units a block over, moving parallel.”

  Emmett scanned the street. At the same time, he overlaid a map of the surrounding block in his HUD. There weren’t a lot of places to hide, which was both a blessing and a curse. Speed was the name of the game. As long as Emmett had line-of-sight, he could take down rec and sec units quickly. Athena could focus on corralling the fight and protecting bystanders.

  “Are you ready?” Emmett asked.

  “Yes,” Athena replied, firmly.

  TINA said, “You’re okay to start walking Athena. Once you’re out of their line of sight I’ll phase in your active cloaking. I won’t be able to hide you from every angle, but you’ll be hidden from both biomech patrols.”

  Emmett watched out of the corner of his eye as Athena crossed the street. Once she was across, the cloaking started causing her form to shimmer.

  Cloaking someone from the visible spectrum was hard enough. Nanites changed color and shade to make the user blend in with the background. This was easy when you were only hiding from one person or one angle. Hiding from multiple viewpoints raised the complexity of the display, and only worked when TINA could accurately predict the viewpoints of the observers.

  Thankfully, biomechs were easy to track.

  But full cloaking didn’t just mean hiding the user from the visible spectrum. It also included the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, and that process wasn’t comfortable. Nanites had to completely seal, trapping the user’s breath and heat inside with them. Eventually, it would get too hot inside just from the wearer’s trapped body heat.

  Even Emmett could only stand the temperature for about a minute.

  But TINA had found a work around. With the scrubbing protocol, she could keep them completely hidden from the drones in the air. So, while cloaked, the nanites left small openings on top of the wearer’s head, allowing some heat to escape and still keeping them hidden from the biomechs viewpoints on the street.

  Emmett watched Athena’s form shimmer. She wasn’t hiding from him, so the cloaking didn’t one hundred percent hide her. She became semi-translucent as nanites displayed the street beyond her. And along her left side—the side hidden from view of the biomech patrol—nanites opened, letting body heat escape into the cold air. In his infrared vision, it looked like she was smoldering.

  She looked like a ghost walking down the street. A ghost on fire.

  Emmett turned and walked into the alley. Time slowly returned to normal for him. His own cloaking engaged, and he leapt up four stories to the roof.

  ~ ~ ~