Mod Superhero (Book 6 STUBBING on Oct 27th)

Chapter 6.25 - Battle of the Minds

TIMESTAMP ERROR DETECTED

POST-INCIDENT

APPROXIMATE DATE — UNCONFIRMED

Emmett had no idea how much time passed. As far as he knew, he stayed chained up the entire time.

He was asleep for much of it—at least, it felt that way. Because Emmett's brain was synthetic, Bastion was able to keep him sedated by sending power fluctuations through the chains and through his nervous system. But Emmett wasn't completely unconscious. It was a mix of twilight and dreams—one he probably couldn't have made sense of without his new brain.

Emmett felt like he was wandering the corridors of his own mind, except that now he didn't remember the way. Emmett knew intrinsically that there was no way Bastion could've gotten in and rearranged his thoughts and memories, but the effect was still the same. His own thoughts had become a ghostly maze, filled with demiplane-like fog.

Emmett wandered the halls, metaphorical hands outstretched—unable to see more than a few feet in front of him. He sought out landmarks. In this twilight dreamscape, there was no difference between physical landmarks in his synthetic brain and cerebral things like memories.

One time, a corridor led to Clara. She appeared in his mind, frozen and beautiful, like an enormous statue. He leapt onto the back of her hoodie and clambered up the folds to her shoulder. Emmett stood and looked out over an abyss of fog. An army of drones was coming—descending on the monument of Clara like mechanical locusts.

Emmett drew his rifle and fired. The same power that ran through Clara melted through drone hulls and sliced others in half. It didn't matter which direction the swarm came from, Emmett fought relentlessly.

It was a battle of willpower. Emmett against Bastion.

Bastion was a shadow of TINA—less adaptable, but utterly ruthless and mechanical. It had unlimited energy and steadily growing processing power. But on this battlefield, the fighters were evenly matched.

It was Emmett's mind, and he was sovereign. Even though Emmett's mind was synthetic, he was still human, and his mind was different than computer hardware. Bastion couldn't just take him over like a powerful psychic or exploit a backdoor like the Menagerie.

Emmett defended himself. On this battlefield, he wasn't burdened by the shackles of his body. His muscles never tired. His prosthetics never failed, and his power never ran out.

Bastion needed to power Emmett's mind in order to attack it. It meant that anytime Bastion attacked him, Emmett knew about it and he could use that power to his own benefit.

The result was Bastion poking and prodding at Emmett's mind, like a wary child playing with an insect. At first, Emmett felt like an insect in a killbox, but he quickly learned how to sting. He became a wasp.

In another battle, Emmett was in the flickering city of Belport. Instead of drones, Bastion's attack presented as biomechs walking the streets. Buildings appeared and disappeared as Bastion sent power surges through Emmett's brain. It threw off Emmett's defenses. Biomechs used the flickering buildings as ambush spots to catch him off guard.

But Emmett was laying a trap of his own. He siphoned off energy from Bastion's power surges. Funneled it and stored it in a bomb. Just when all seemed lost, Emmett retreated back into the fog of his own mind and detonated the bomb behind him.

It didn't do any lasting damage to Bastion's circuitry, but it caused pain. Pain turned out to be enough of a deterrent. After all, Bastion was just a child poking an insect. Emmett was the wasp fighting for its life.