Mod Superhero

Chapter 5.1 - Standby Mode

Emmett Laraway continued working in Athena's apartment. He was hunched over the kitchen table, dark hair tied back, and mini screwdriver in hand as he worked on one of TINA's new servers. Two more were spread out across the table in various states of assembly. Remnants of a washing machine sat beside him on the floor.

Nanites crawled across the table like ants and swarmed like gnats around the screwdriver.

Together, he and TINA were rebuilding the rest of her brain.

To be fair, TINA probably could've done most of the manufacturing process by herself, but it would've been slower going. Even though she'd succeeded in shrinking her footprint down to something small enough to fit inside Emmett's head, she'd lost a lot of raw processing power in the process.

This way, Emmett took some of the strain off of TINA's systems and, at the same time, he also got to practice controlling the nanites.

In Emmett's prosthetic eye, he saw a three-dimensional overlay of the schematics. Using that, he could manually guide nanites as they reconstituted raw materials from the junk washing machine and built them into the server. The screwdriver helped focus both his attention and the nanites. It had taken some getting used to, but now it felt like he was controlling a 3-D printer.

TINA had once told him that his skill with controlling the nanites would continue to improve, like working a muscle. He hadn't really believed her until he'd looked back on his progress over the past week.

When he'd first started, it'd been hard just to make rudimentary shapes with the swarm. Now, he could hold together a table while simultaneously building parts for the servers. The table was the same matte black color, except their structure was stable—well, mostly stable. Occasionally a ripple would pass over the uncovered surfaces.

Clara's footsteps echoed across the apartment as she paced back into the living room. She was half-hidden beneath her oversized hoodie, her dark hair just long enough to peak out beneath it.

It'd been a week since the end of humanity's war with the Deep Ones, and a week since the Binary Brotherhood attacked the lab and apprehended Dr. Venture.

A week of being cooped up in Athena's barebones apartment.

They'd briefly discussed sneaking out of Belport, but TINA had quashed the idea. In the immediate aftermath of losing the lab and the Brotherhood ousting Dr. Venture, the safest place was here in Athena's apartment—hidden by magic.

Emmett didn't mind being cooped up, but Clara was going stir-crazy. She walked over to the window and stared outside.

There wasn't much to see. Belport had just started allowing people back into the city—mostly engineers and workers assessing damage. Crews worked day and night. Occasionally, a demolition echoed through the city. If it was close enough, Emmett could hear the pops of the explosives. Most times he just heard the building collapse.

The first few times Emmett heard a demolition, the sound made him jump. Now, he merely paused work for a few moments—just in case.

So far, there hadn't been any surviving Deep Ones reported in the city.

In some ways, it was like the war had never stopped. Belport had just traded constant patrols and intermittent battles for rebuilding. It even sounded the same.

A repurposed Fast-Response drone flew over the block, not bothering to cloak itself. It was blocky and roughly the size of a small closet. The surface was a deep metallic gray that hung in the air like a blemish. Until last week, it had been one of Dr. Venture's drones.

Two more drones flew by, accompanied by a Summit cape that Emmett didn't recognize.

So much had changed.