Mod Superhero (Book 6 STUBBING on Oct 27th)

Chapter 6.48 - Into the Fire

Mod and Arsenal rocketed through the air, towing Emmett and Lock with them. They also towed a hacked and modified Fast-Response drone with them. If Emmett was going to be useful in combat, then he needed to bring as much of his stolen swarm as he could. The amorphous mass clung to all of them, but most of it was contained inside and around the drone.

They crossed into the city limits and kept low, flying just below the rooftops, like they were chasing the setting sun. Moving as fast as they were, there was no way to avoid detection. Bastion likely had sensors spread out across the city that could track overpressure from fast moving supers—

It knew they were coming.

TINA's voice came through their earpieces. "This is a trap."

Mod and Emmett replied in unison, "I don't care."

Arsenal added, "I'm tired of hiding."

Wind roared past them, barely muffled by the nanite swarm. Mod added, "Thank you guys for coming with me." Emmett muttered in agreement.

Lock replied, "We're a team. They go after one of us, they get the package deal."

Mod and Emmett didn't reply. It still meant a lot to Mod that his friends were beside him—that they were still beside him, even after the strain of the last year. And how hard it was going to be after this.

Mod squeezed Arsenal's hand, which was difficult with her gauntlet between them. Maybe it was nanites that carried the signal between them, but she squeezed his hand back.

~

From the intercepted communications, it sounded like the Brotherhood wanted to take the Laraways alive. Mod wasn't going to leave that to chance. Neither was his former self.

Mod was already running through simulations with TINA. He had to partition his emotions—which mostly involved dampening his anger. Emmett had done something similar while he was imprisoned. Partitioning Emmett's emotions and memories had helped him escape, but it had also damaged him.

Even though Mod would be able to recover from the mental strain quicker than Emmett, he had no intention of going through anything like that. So instead of outright forgetting his anger, he turned it down. The anger was still there, like a dripping faucet, but now it was manageable.

If they were going to succeed, it was going to take all four of them operating at their best. Mod couldn't afford any distractions.

He wished Athena was with them. Her powers would've been better for protecting bystanders and managing collateral damage, but Emmett and his oversized swarm were the next best thing.

And TINA had given them a head start. Mod and the team would make it there at the same time as their enemies. There wouldn't be any time for the Brotherhood or the Summit to transport Mod's family. Hopefully, there wouldn't even be enough time for them to breach the house.

As it was, they had a good chance of getting Mod's family out while keeping casualties near zero.

Still, the simulations gave him pause.

First, the simulations heavily depended on which Summit capes showed up. Thankfully, the Summit's heaviest hitters were out of state—at a meeting to remove Wight from the Summit. That meant Mod's group wouldn't have to deal with Paragon, Amarque, Ocean Guardian, and the other top capes. That meant their opponents would be Class 3 and 4.

That was fine. They could deal with those.

Still, no matter how this turned out, it wasn't going to be pretty. Supers throwing punches in the street was one thing, but Class 4 supers and military-grade hardware in the middle of a neighborhood was an entirely different thing.