Mod Superhero (Book 6 STUBBING on Oct 27th)

Chapter 6.49 - Stage One, Interrupted

Barely controlled chaos erupted across Mod's childhood street. A lifetime ago, he'd run up and down the neighborhood, playing superheroes and villains. Now the game was real.

Deep within his partitioned thoughts, Mod wondered what that kid would think if he could see the battle now? Would he be excited or terrified? Would he recognize Mod?

DId he understand what was at stake?

Those were just a few thoughts of many that Mod couldn't allow himself right now.

He locked them away so they couldn't take away processing power, so they couldn't affect his aim, and so he wouldn't pull his punches. So he wouldn't hesitate.

Mod fired the first shot. Plasma lanced out from his arm and bored through a security unit. A quick flick of his wrist, like a painter's brushstroke, and the beam cut through two more. Smaller rec units ducked under and opened fire.

But not just them. The biomechs and drones were all linked together... They all opened fire.

Mod and Arsenal were up front, and their defenses were already in place. A thin cloud of nanites suffused the air—Arsenal flared power and added heat and gravity to the mix. Mod's wire nanites conducted heat and power far better than air. The resulting defensive barrier was hot enough and thick enough to melt incoming fire instantaneously. Asphalt boiled beneath their feet, sending up a haze of caustic smoke.

It would've been easy if bullets were all they had to worry about. Explosives were harder to deal with. Now that all the mechs were connected again, TINA fed Mod firing data so he could anticipate larger payloads and shift the swarm to compensate. Explosions rippled along the outer edges while Mod and Arsenal were safe in its heart.

Lasers were even easier to deal with than bullets. Mod extended tendrils of nanites through the sphere and used them to drink in incoming laser fire. It reminded him of one of those plasma globes, only in reverse—it absorbed incoming fire.

Mod redirected every ounce of power back at them. Lasers sprouted from his arms and shoulders, searing biomechs and scorching drones from the sky.

And behind it all was the immense processing power of Mod and TINA. Mod controlled the inner workings of the sphere, while TINA helped Arsenal control her power. TINA made millisecond tweaks to Arsenal's exosuit to adjust the output. That was the only way they could maintain formation and keep from setting the block on fire.

Lock and Emmett hurtled past them. Emmett's swarm enveloped them, protecting them from the heat and incoming fire. Not only that, but nanites around Lock's feet dug into the ground like cleats, allowing him to move even faster than he should've been able to. Drones fell in molten heaps out of the sky as Lock crashed into the first heavy mech.

Lock tackled its knee, hitting it like a rocket. It crumbled, spraying a hail of bullets, but Emmett's swarm was already anticipating it. The swarm couldn't touch the hec unit directly without triggering its electrical countermeasures, but it could surround it in a globe of black glass. Any bullets hit the barrier would slow and dissolve before they could cause collateral damage.

While Lock ripped and tore at the hec unit, focusing on its armaments, while Emmett used nanite bullets to deplete its electricity, then disable it from the inside.

Two seconds had passed since the first shot.

In those first explosive moments, the group shouted battle cries. They were muffled by the hums and pops and cracks of projectiles, and filled the gaps between the violence like mortar between bricks.

Emmett screamed loudest of all—guttural, primal. The same scream his ancestors would have uttered from the dawn of humankind. It didn't matter what form death took—whether he was staring down a horde of machines or a herd of lions—the scream was the same.

Good. Emmett needed that. He needed to remember the threat of death. Emmett had been spared. Tortured, but he'd survived. He didn't know what it was like to die.

Mod remembered. He could recall it all with machine-like detail.

He remembered what it was like to feel powerless, to be at the mercy of another. Remembered the relief that Lock would escape, and the sorrow of letting Clara down. Of leaving her behind.

Mod would never lose her again. Never let his team down. He would never back down.

"Never."

Mod wasn't sure why, but he kept repeating the word. And as his team mowed down the enemy, the word became a mantra.

The team blew through the first dozen mechs and drones. If nothing changed, the battle would've been over in less than a minute. But Bastion changed tactics.

Across the street, the first DSA soldiers and infiltration units were joining the fight. The soldiers wore basic exosuits that effectively turned them into Class 1 supers. They leveled kinetic rifles using stolen fusion cell technology. Interspersed between them were normal looking people whose arms unfolded to reveal hidden rifles and lasers.

Mod's still remembered the first time he saw infiltration units—how they could almost pass for human at a glance but quickly devolved into uncanny valley territory.

But some of the infiltration units began to change. Their skin shifted—they turned gray and metallic. They weren't going back to their original form... They looked too clunky, too much like—

As the battle raged, it took a fraction of a second for Mod and TINA to piece together what was happening.

The infiltration units were mirroring the exosuits of DSA soldiers.

The fake armor didn't protect them any better, nor did it confuse Mod or his team—after all, TINA could easily see through their disguises, which meant the rest of the team could too. They knew exactly which targets to use nanite disruptions or lethal force on.

What it did was cause even more chaos.

The rest of the soldiers on the street couldn't see through the illusion. They saw squad mates gunned down, bodies smoking and some cut completely in half. They wouldn't have the bandwidth to see through it. If there had been any doubt in their minds about whether Mod and his team were innocent masks on the wrong side of the law or they were cutthroat villains, that doubt was gone.

There was no chance to combat it either. Everything was happening too fast, and Bastion clamped down on communication channels. In cyberspace, storm clouds rolled overhead. Thin tendrils of lightning stretched from Bastion's dark clouds to each drone, biomech, and soldier in the area. They looked like deadly marionettes with Bastion pulling their strings.

TINA sent an alert to the team. For Emmett, Arsenal, and Lock, it came in as a mix of text and speech. TINA didn't expect them to process all the data, so she sent only the most important details—

But she sent everything to Mod.

The Summit was inbound. The first capes would be there within thirty seconds.

Those three capes—the main squad—were a mix of Class 3 and 4. Even at a glance, their powers would synergize with one another, and it would ramp up the difficulty of an already challenging fight. If it was only those three capes, the situation would be manageable—

But the Brotherhood was sending a dozen low-level supers behind them. Their official orders weren't to join the fight, but to help with triage and battlefield management. It sounded good in theory. Those low-level capes probably thought they were saving lives, but they were being used.

Before the Brotherhood took over, the Summit never would've sent low-level capes into a war zone.

They shouldn't be here. They were just going to get in the way—just going to add to the chaos.

It was hard enough keeping track of all the current battle. Mod and TINA were already stretched thin, keeping the civilians and DSA soldiers alive.

The Brotherhood wanted Mod's team to make a mistake. They wanted innocents to get hurt. The Brotherhood had the media and public opinion on their side.

Mod's didn't think he could hate the Brotherhood any more than he already did—he'd been wrong.

~ ~ ~