Emmett wondered how long it had been since anyone used the side entrance to the lab.

  Midas, Savanus, the drones, and the biomechs—from TINA’s data, it looked like everyone used the drone access tunnel. Everyone except Wight, the spymaster of the Summit of Heroes. The man that could walk through walls still used the front door; Emmett was sure that was a deliberate choice on Wight’s part.

  Just because the side entrance was less traveled, didn’t make it any easier.

  The lab stairwell descended several stories underground, lit only by small red emergency lights. Muffled hisses and clangs of machine echoed up from deep underground. The sense of nostalgia left Emmett as the door hissed shut behind them. This was enemy territory now.

  As Emmett and Lock crept into the passage, nanites slithered along wires and pipes in the walls. More nanites crawled along the walls, searching for hidden sensors and traps. Emmett was attuned enough to them now that he could feel every sensor and circuit they were bypassing. They were small enough that the nanites themselves wouldn’t trip any sensors and they were spread out enough that even with Emmett’s magnification he could barely see them. The whole process felt like watching TINA silently pick a series of locks, one after another.

  Emmett and TINA assumed that every security countermeasure was still active, and that there were probably even more that TINA couldn’t remember.

  They weren’t sure how many nanites it was going to take to infiltrate the lab, so Emmett had brought as many as he could hold without jeopardizing his disguise or his cloaking. Emmett’s nanite storage capacity had started at five hundred percent. Once nanites had infiltrated the walls, the number stabilized.

  NANITES 320% CAPACITY

  They would lose a few more along the way. TINA planned on leaving a trail in case they needed to transmit information out. Instead of using the lab’s wiring, she would leave packets of nanites on standby that could act as wireless bridges.

  Initially, she’d been worried that the lab would have countermeasures for nanites or small infiltration robots. Small-scale electromagnetic fields and pulses could disable chunks of the swarm, and it took time to build more nanites. But so far, they hadn’t encountered any.

  TINA’s swarm set the pace as they descended into the lab. Emmett and Lock followed just behind.

  They made it to the bottom of the stairs and to the first hallway—the same one Emmett had spent months going between as a new super.

  Emmett kept his eyes half-closed and focused looking over TINA’s shoulder. Nanites flowed down the hallway, hacking sensors and looping cameras.

  He felt a newfound respect for Dr. Venture and the patchwork assortment of security measures. The different levels of tech were clearly meant to slow down other artificers, like Midas and Savanus. It might’ve slowed TINA down if she hadn’t already prepared for it. Seeing it now reminded Emmett of McGuire—it was definitely something the gadgeteer would approve of.

  Slowly, Emmett and Lock walked past the old sections. Past the living quarters where they’d all eaten pizza, and where Clara had fallen asleep on his shoulder. The mechanical wing where Emmett had built his first mods. The fusion lab where his first projects as an intern had been—unknowingly continuing research into controlling and harnessing Clara’s power. The Armory, where he’d only been a handful of times and where all Clara and Dr. Venture’s exosuits were stored. Past the Gray Room where he’d taken his first careful steps as a super. And the biolab, where Venture and TINA had brought him back to life—twice.

  While Emmett reminisced, he was vaguely aware of Lock beside him. His friend stared at the doors as they passed. Each door was marked only with numbers, so there was nothing hinting at what was on the other side. If Lock cared that much, he didn’t ask.

  In another life, maybe they could’ve both worked for Dr. Venture. In another life… maybe a lot of things would’ve been different.

  Emmett pushed the thought from his head. What was the point in thinking about other timelines? You couldn’t change the past—Emmett thought he’d made peace with that.

  Everything that had happened had led to this moment. Emmett’s accident… Lock getting used by Gnosis… Venture getting ousted by the Brotherhood… War with the Deep Ones and the cold war between super organizations that followed…

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  All of it had led to this. To Emmett and Lock coming back to the lab.

  They weren’t trying to change the past.

  They were trying to change the future.

  ~

  Emmett and Lock crept deeper into the lab while TINA crept through the walls and through the lab’s systems.

  The two supers walked in absolute silence thanks to their innate abilities and nanites coating the bottom of their boots. Their cloaking was still up, but relaxed since TINA was hacking cameras and sensors as they went. Still, neither men let their guards down.

  If everything went according to plan, TINA would take care of everything. All Emmett and Lock had to do was walk in. Once TINA found a server cluster, she would set up a copy of herself in its software and use nanites to start taking over its hardware. Once her copy was ready, they would grab Dr. Venture and walk back out the same way they came in.

  Of course, none of them thought it would be that easy.

  Progress was slow, but steady and without incident. Soon they were on the second floor—

  Then the third—

  Then the fourth.

  Emmett had never been past the first floor. He’d never seen more than the biolab—room 006.

  It was odd, though. Past the first floor, none of the room numbers were in order. Rooms jumped up and down multiple digits at a time. There wasn’t a numbering convention for individual floors or for types of research. It felt like all the room numbers were assigned at random.

  If Venture had meant for it to confuse intruders, then it was working. It hadn’t just confused Emmett and Lock, it was confusing TINA too.

  As they crept deeper into the lab, Emmett continued peering over her shoulder. In addition to bypassing defenses, TINA also peered into the sections they passed. Most were additional research wings, though finding out more involved peeking into their systems—a risk TINA didn’t want to take. Approximately every fifth section was for storage, but it looked like most of these were empty.

  Eventually TINA asked them to pause so she could examine a storage wing closer…

  It looked like piles of dirt inside the room. Emmett immediately recognized the black sand as nanites, and the rest of the dirt as powdered metals and plastics. Emmett was just as surprised as TINA.

  It only took another moment for TINA to piece together what had happened, and she communicated it wordlessly to Emmett.

  Before the lab was taken over, Venture and TINA had sent signals to scrub certain information from the servers. They’d done the same thing with hardware using disassembly nanites. Instead of making more of themselves, the nanites had simply shredded everything to powder and left it alone.

  As Emmett formed the questions in his mind, TINA continued answering wordlessly.

  There was no way to tell what had been disassembled. There were countless projects in the lab, and TINA didn’t remember all of them anymore, and many of them used similar materials. If she had enough time, she could have analyzed the piles of matter, cross-referenced different projects in the lab, and figured out which ones had similar levels of materials. But that would take time—time they didn’t have.

  But why had these projects been disassembled when thousands of drones had been left untouched? Even if Venture could shut down all of drone manufacturing, destroying the fleet would’ve bought them months—maybe even years of time. It would’ve handicapped the Brotherhood significantly.

  Disabling the fleet just made too much sense, which meant…TINA probably tried… and failed. Maybe Midas intercepted the signal. They still didn’t know the full extent of his powers.

  No matter what, the thought of Midas overpowering TINA was frightening.

  Emmett tried not to dwell on that thought, but it was hard to tell just how much of that fear was his and how much was TINA’s.

  TINA’s own thoughts ebbed and flowed, sloshing against Emmett’s mind like waves. Curiosity… Fear… Anger… The push and pull of her emotions grew as they went deeper into the lab. Emmett couldn’t tell if this was something new—a side effect of their strengthened connection—or whether TINA had been hiding her emotions from him all this time, and she was now too distraught to keep up the ruse.

  Are you good? Emmett asked wordlessly.

  No, TINA replied.

  No.

  No. No, no, no!

  Sounds came from all around. In the walls and deep within the bunker, machinery stirred. Emmett didn’t just hear it. He felt it through his connection with TINA—like the ground beneath their feet shifted. TINA’s fear redoubled. They were bugs scurrying through the fur of a giant predator, and they’d woken it up.

  Bastion opened its millions of eyes and looked at them. Alarms echoed through the hall. Red emergency lighting began to strobe.

  There was something else there too—a shadow hovering behind the lab’s systems. It felt like another predator—

  Or someone holding Bastion’s leash.

  Speakers along the wall crackled with static, and then a pretentious voice echoed through the bunker.

  “Well, well, well… The prodigal son returns.”

  ~ ~ ~