Mod Superhero (Book 6 STUBBING on Oct 27th)

Chapter 6.2 - Reboot

The door hissed open, revealing a small control room beyond.

The walls of the control room were covered in display screens, and the center of the room was taken up by a familiar metal platform. Emmett was struck again by the sense of déjà vu. He knew that when they restored power, the center platform would become a holographic display. He could imagine power restored and everything lit up with camera views and readouts—even imagine Dr. Venture in his lab coat, hands folded behind his back and watching the screens intently.

For a moment, it felt like Emmett was walking into the lab for the first time after his accident. After he became a cyborg—after he became a mask.

But Dr. Venture wasn't there. This wasn't the lab. And a lot had happened since then.

Everything had changed.

Lock ducked under the doorway and passed him. It was enough to shake Emmett out of his thoughts, and realize that Clara had a similar faraway look in her eyes.

Lock leaned over and ran his fingers over the lifeless holographic table, then examined the dust. "Doesn't look like anyone's ever been here." No one replied.

Athena looked at Emmett and Clara knowingly. She'd never seen the inside of the lab, but she knew her friends well enough.

"Are you both okay?"

Emmett wrapped an arm around Clara.

"I'll be fine," Clara replied, and gently pulled away. She walked into the small control room and examined the screens. "TINA, how is everything looking?"

Athena patted Emmett on the shoulder, then they walked into the room as well. She leaned the magic staff against the wall. Runes glowed softly along the length of it.

"It will take me a few minutes to fully restore power and bring systems back online."

TINA directed Clara to place several fusion cells in the room. At the same time, nanites flowed off of Emmett and out of the storage container in his torso. They moved across the room like streams of black sand. Some coalesced around the holographic table, while others flowed through gaps in the walls and floor.

As they worked, the rest of the group's disguises faded away, revealing their supersuits beneath.

The black and gray swirls of Emmett's suit hid a thousand tiny scales, each full of non-newtonian fluid. Emmett thought it looked like futuristic dragon skin. His suit was one of his proudest achievements. It was also one of the reasons he was a Class 3 super and how he'd unlocked the full strength and flexibility of his prosthetic limbs. The fluid in his suit hardened under stress or when Emmett sent an electrical charge through them.

Emmett pulled back the hood of his suit and pushed back his frazzled hair. A moment later, Clara did the same.

Her dark hair had grown out over the Summer, and now it hung over her ears. That wasn't the only change though—she was wearing her thinsuit instead of her old exosuit. Her exosuit had been damaged during the war, and since losing the lab, they hadn't had the facilities to rebuild it. Clara was still a force to be reckoned with in her thinsuit, but it didn't have the same flight or long-ranged capabilities that her bulkier exosuit had. Her thinsuit had the benefit of being sleeker and fitting easily under a disguise, but it also excelled in close-quarters combat. The thin metal looked like dark-blue fish scales, and those scales acted as a full-body version of her combat thrusters.

To anyone else, Athena's appearance would've been obscured by magic, like an out-of-focus photograph. But Emmett and the others saw her true appearance. She was an ageless super—almost four thousand years old—and a warrior to her core. Her long white hair was pulled back, and she'd kept her jacket with shards of broken glass woven into it.