Mod Superhero (Book 6 STUBBING on Oct 27th)

Chapter 6.22 - Ultimatum

Emmett was left dissected and hanging in the deepest reaches of the lab. Alone with Ava Savanus—

The woman who had been hunting him ever since he got his brain upgrade.

Emmett hung from chains. He looked down at her, and she looked up at him—seemingly unaffected by the sight of him.

Emmett wasn't sure what he expected. He'd read everything they had on Savanus. He knew all about her biomech army and her powers and personal implants. She even had her own rudimentary version of a brain implant—it was limited to information storage and there was no AI assistance. Supposedly, she knew every combat style ever recorded, and she had the strength upgrades to capitalize on it. Even without her army, easily a Class 4 super.

She was almost as much of a cyborg as Emmett, and in other ways, she'd left even more of her humanity behind. Somehow, that thought was even more unsettling.

Savanus looked normal.

But then, so did Emmett.

"He's lying, you know."

Savanus left the statement dangling in the air like a lure.

"About what?" Emmett spat.

She smiled softly. "He's not done with you, and he's not keeping you alive for me. Midas thinks he can keep you as a bargaining chip. Same thing with Magnus. And he's never going to show your dissection tapes to Magnus because... He'll never let Magnus wake up. He's going to keep both of you..."

Savanus trailed off. And again, Emmett felt like an insect pinned in a box.

Emmett couldn't tell whether Savanus was more distraught at the thought of Venture being imprisoned or that she couldn't finish dissecting Emmett.

She continued, "Midas lies about everything. That's what he does. He's a bureaucrat, a CEO, through and through. He doesn't know any other way to speak."

"He's a monster." Emmett shrugged his shoulders, causing the chains to rattle. "In a normal world, he'd be the villain. Not the hero. He wouldn't be working with the Summit or running the Brotherhood."

She sighed. "You're naïve. Just like him."

Emmett spat. "And you sound like Midas. It's not naïve to want to make the world better! That's what heroes are supposed to do."

"We're all trying to make the world better. Midas thinks he's going to turn the world into a tech utopia—with him in charge, of course. I don't think we'll get that far. Supers and people will always have a place in the chain of command."

Emmett sagged in his chains. Now, more than ever, he realized how fucked the world actually was. Because there were always going to be people like Midas and Savanus—people so blinded by ambition that they truly thought they were making the world a better place.

A new wave of exhaustion hit him.

Emmett, Clara, Venture, Athena, Lock, McGuire... They'd all come so far. It felt like they'd made so much progress. TINA was growing. The Resistance was growing.

But they still had so much goddamn further left to go.

"What do you want?" Emmett asked. He tried to keep the exhaustion out of his voice, but failed.

Savanus stared up at him.

"You know what I want. I need what's inside your head."

"You gutted the rest of me for parts. I'm surprised you haven't taken my head apart already."

Savanus smiled again. Maybe out of pity—it certainly wasn't out of sympathy.

"That is an option. But I was trying not to kill you, Emmett. I don't like breaking my toys unless I don't have any other way."