The reality warped area flickered and died. At first, Emmett thought it had timed out, but then he heard Midas’s groan of frustration. He must be having trouble concentrating…

  Emmett took a quick breath and glanced down at the bisected jet-suit. “Thanks, Midas. That trick would’ve never worked on Venture.”

  “You insolent little shit!”

  Further down the hallway behind him, Lock and the boulder-suit were still exchanging blows. Each punch and shove sent the other slamming into the wall. Even without TINA feeding him information, Emmett knew it wasn’t going well. Lock’s cries were bleeding from frustration to distress. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t break through the boulder-suit’s armor. He could barely even scratch it.

  Meanwhile, Lock’s healing factor was working in overdrive. His skin was covered in bone, but even that wasn’t enough. The boulder-suit was still breaking through it. TINA was monitoring Lock’s vitals, and bone was metastasizing inside his body too. His bones were growing uncontrollably, and his muscles and ligaments were stiffening. If this kept up, Lock wouldn’t be able to move, much less fight.

  Emmett called back to Lock, “Hold on!”

  The shard-suit flickered and suddenly appeared in front of Emmett—moving so fast it appeared to teleport. Twin blades unfolded from its forearms, each one glowing white hot.

  Emmett moved on instinct—his bo staff was out, extended, and he flicked the blade switch.

  The shard-suit flickered again—

  And cut off Emmett’s left arm at the elbow. His forearm dropped to the floor.

  There was no pain, just the sudden lack of feeling below his elbow. Emmett wasn’t sure if that was worse. Diagnostics were already running in the background. It was a clean cut, and there was no damage to his upper arm. His impact shield was in there…

  Emmett pushed the diagnostics aside. Desperate, he flung a single handful of gadgets. A flare and a signal jammer… He was going to throw his whole utility belt, but stopped abruptly.

  Both the flare and the signal jammer were hanging in the air—frozen in mid-throw by the shard-suit’s time warp. They hadn’t even engaged yet.

  The shard-suit stood hovered menacingly just a few feet away. It lifted a glowing blade up to marvel at it.

  Midas sneered, “It would be so easy to kill you… You’re lucky Savanus wants you alive. Now, surrender—before I change my mind.”

  Emmett stared back, trying to play up his injury and uncertainty. “Wait… Just wait…”

  Hopefully, it sounded convincing because there was no way he was going to surrender.

  Beneath his ablative armor and exosuit, ports on Emmett’s still-attached arm opened, offering a direct connection from his fusion canister to his rifle. He didn’t bother raising it. Firing from the hip was good enough for what he needed to do.

  The same power that coursed through Clara flowed through Mod’s arm. He’d only done this a few times since TINA gave him the ability. Each time it risked burning out his rifle and connections in his arm, and it hurt.

  But this time the burn was welcome—it meant everything was still working.

  Text flashed across his vision:

  FUSION RIFLE OVERLOADING

  POWER DISPERSAL RECOMMENDED

  The tip of the barrel flattened, and Emmett fired a line of plasma as wide as the hallway. It shot toward the shard-suit and stopped short—caught in the time bubble. The exosuit didn’t bother moving.

  Midas snorted. “Pathetic.”

  But Emmett kept firing as quickly as his connection allowed. After each shot, the barrel rotated. In just a second, bars of fusion filled the hallway like spokes on a bicycle wheel. Heat seared Emmett’s one remaining arm, but he held the gun steady. The air around him steamed.

  A barrier of molten plasma hung in the air between them. The rage-filled Midas sputtered incoherently.

  The shard-suit could’ve stopped him before the hallway was barred off. Venture never would’ve fallen for it and neither would Bastion.

  But Midas was full of himself.

  The colors of the kaleidoscope brightened, and a whine sounded from the shard-suit. Midas was flexing the warp generator and pushing it to its breaking point. Instead of running away, he was hanging there dumb and defiant.

  Emmett felt a newfound disdain for Midas, and, in turn, a newfound kinship with Dr. Venture.

  With the shard-suit left in checkmate, Emmett turned to help his friend. The boulder-suit and Lock were stalemated in a shoving match. Lock’s long arms were wrapped around the equally massive exosuit, but now he was stuck. The boulder-suit had shifted its armor, covering parts of Lock’s arms and torso. If Lock had been a normal sized super, it might’ve enveloped him completely.

  Emmett thought of the Fast-Response drones, and those first few times he’d been totally enclosed in one—flying without being able to move.

  The tip of the rifle altered again, this time so that a cylinder of plasma came out. Emmett aimed at the exosuit’s shoulder blade—next to Lock’s hands. He fired and kept firing. Even with one arm, he didn’t miss.

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  Just because the boulder-suit was durable, didn’t mean that it didn’t have weaknesses.

  “Hold him steady!” Emmett shouted. Lock muttered something unintelligible.

  Seconds ticked by as fusion bore into the exosuit’s armor. Thrusters engaged as the boulder-suit tried to pivot, but Lock fought back. The suit jostled, but Emmett’s aim was unerring.

  His arm burned as raw power flowed through it. The air in the hallway grew sweltering and hazy. Warnings flashed in his HUD:

  CHANNELS OVERLOADED

  MULTIPLE SYSTEMS AT RISK

  PROSTHETIC INTEGRITY COMPROMISED

  Emmett grit his teeth against the pain and kept firing. None of it would matter if they didn’t get out of here. Teardrops of liquified metal fell from the wound.

  Then Emmett’s hand started to shake. The beam wouldn’t stay on target anymore, and his aim would only get worse.

  The air burned Emmett’s lungs as he screamed. “Now!”

  Lock dug his fingers into the molten armor. Then he pulled. Metal squealed, and the boulder-suit split apart like a bomb had gone off inside it. The two halves of the suit still clung to Lock. He peeled the broken suit off unceremoniously. Servos whined and finally died.

  Lock looked like shit. His entire body was covered in bone armor, but parts were chipped and broken. There had been injectors and bladed weapons inside the boulder-suit, and blood dripped from Lock’s wounds where the suit had been wrapped around him. Bone healed slowly compared to other tissues.

  Lock’s chest heaved, but he ignored the wounds. He looked past Emmett and finally saw the shard-suit on the other side of the fire barrier.

  “You worried about that?”

  Emmett glanced back at the last remaining suit. The shard-suit flickered in the air, like footage from a bad movie. The whine from its generator grew steadily higher.

  Before Emmett could reply, the shard-suit rushed forward into the barrier, and was promptly cut into a dozen pieces. The bars of fusion winked out as time returned to normal.

  Emmett breathed a sigh of relief—

  But they weren’t done yet. Not even close.

  Emmett stooped down and picked up his prosthetic forearm. He cradled it so that the damaged ends were pressed together. Nanites began reconnecting wires so that it would at least stay together while he ran. Even in perfect conditions, it would be hours before it was usable again.

  Midas’s voice echoed through the hall. The smugness was gone—so was the impotent rage. His words were cold and resigned.

  “Fine, Bastion. We’ll do it your way.”

  TINA’s urgent voice came through their earpieces. “Bastion is taking control. Multiple signals in the armory.”

  She didn’t have to say the rest.

  The only reason they had survived so far was because Midas had been piloting the exosuits. Venture wouldn’t have missed shots or given them an opening. But then Venture would only be piloting one exosuit at a time—not half-assing three suits at once.

  Bastion wouldn’t have any of those limitations.

  Emmett shuddered at the thought of fighting someone that could think as fast as he could.

  Without words, the pair took off running again. The fifth floor hallway became a blur. They needed to escape.

  Thankfully, they had an out. The next stairwell butted up to an abandoned tunnel—part of the Second Civil War tunnel system beneath Belport. The concrete was thin enough that Lock could dig through, and a half-depleted fusion cell could collapse the tunnel behind them.

  Emmett’s stomach turned at the thought of failing—of leaving Dr. Venture behind.

  Hopefully Clara would forgive him—once for leaving without her, and a second time for not rescuing her father. Hopefully Clara would just be glad that he made it back.

  Emmett and Lock barreled into the stairwell between the fifth and sixth floors, then stopped at the far wall. Lock clawed at the wall. Bone had grown thick around his arms and hands and each movement caused cracks as plates rubbed against one another. Lock ripped and tore chunks out of the concrete, but he was slowing down. The overgrowth of his body was hampering him.

  Emmett wasn’t faring much better. His right arm was dull and barely responding, and both it and the fusion rifle were still steaming.

  “Multiple signals approaching,” TINA said. “Contact in twenty seconds.”

  “I know,” Lock groaned in frustration. He threw his shoulder into the wall. Concrete splintered but didn’t give. Lock cursed under his breath.

  Emmett minimized the timer in the corner of his HUD. He gripped his fusion rifle one last time. He probably couldn’t even use it again without melting it, but the weight felt reassuring.

  Lock’s fist broke through to the dark tunnel on the other side. He grabbed the broken wall and tore handfuls out of it.

  “I’m sorry, Emmett,” TINA whispered. Emmett felt it—she couldn’t hold back the tide any longer.

  Another voice echoed through speakers in the stairwell—one that could’ve been TINA’s brother. “No more hiding. No more running.”

  Nanites followed. They poured out of the walls through the speakers and light fixtures. They flowed down the stairwell like a slow-moving cloud of snakes.

  Emmett flared the barrel of his rifle. Then he fired kinetic shots. Each blast barely only traveled a few feet, but they were wide enough to cover the entire stairwell. They wouldn’t destroy the swarm, but the nanites were so light that each blast pushed them back a half-foot or so.

  Emmett doubted he could keep firing for long. His right arm was rattling, and he had to brace the rifle against his body to hold it steady. Soon the connections would fail completely.

  Not that it would matter in seven more seconds.

  Lock had managed to bust out a two foot wide hole in the wall. He clambered through.

  “Go. Get out of here.” Emmett shouted, speaking to both Lock and TINA.

  Lock stared back from the darkness.

  Lock leapt back toward the wall and reached through for Emmett’s shoulder, like he was going to haul Emmett through the gap. But his friend’s grip was weak. Emmett shrugged him off and ejected a half-dead fusion cell out of his rifle.

  Emmett held up the fusion cell and stared down his friend. “Go on, bro.”

  Emotion flickered across Lock’s face—disbelief, denial, reluctance, anger. After that agonizingly long moment, Lock turned and ran.

  Emmett was vaguely aware of the timer ticking down to one… he just wished anger wasn’t the last thing he saw on his friend’s face.

  He sent a flood of power to the cell and overloaded it.

  It exploded.

  ~

  Emmett’s ears rang. He tried to open his eyes, but his lids were heavy and the little he did see was blurry and dark. He was slumped over. Everything felt so… distant.

  Clara, I’m sorry…

  Emmett could just make out a rumbling and shaking. It felt so far away, but he knew…

  The ceiling was coming down.

  Lock would make it out.

  Lock would make it…

  ~ ~ ~