Clara was in a newly constructed mechanical wing, but it felt like she was working underwater. She crouched in front of the suspended frame of her thinsuit, the fishscale plating rippling faintly as a web of soft-blue holo displays flickered around her. The harness hissed every time a servo flexed, though compared to her old bulky rigs this one barely made a sound—sleek, responsive, a second skin instead of a walking tank. She brushed her hand along the scales of the sleeve, watching the readouts shift as TINA crosschecked a calibration subroutine.
"Margin of error's still point-three percent." TINA's voice was neutral as ever, but Clara swore she heard a trace of amusement in it.
"I got lucky. Helion still could've melted me down..."
That was the problem with Class 5 powers. When you're throwing around that much energy, physics and reality start to break. At that point, even a margin of error was enough to kill someone.
Clara's chest tightened at the memory—heat flooding her systems, the reactor straining against lead-melting temperatures.
She muttered, "Either a meltdown or being slagged. Not sure which would've been worse."
"You stabilized. Your design held."
"Barely." Clara exhaled and leaned back on her heels to look at her suit.
The truth was, there wasn't much left to adjust. Her exosuits had always been training wheels, but there was nowhere to go from here. She'd already pared away the redundancies, cut the weight, and pushed every tolerance until there was no safety net left. The suit wasn't forgiving anymore.
The only way forward would be to step out of the exosuit entirely and trust herself alone. And she wasn't ready for that.
Not yet.
The hiss of the door made her glance up. Venture stepped inside. He wore a white lab coat over the standard nanite clothes and walked with his hands folded behind his back, the way he always did when he was in observation mode. Maybe it was the Mutagen-K2 or the fact that he'd been frozen for two years... But Dad didn't look like he'd aged a day. Not at a glance.
But seeing him now... there was a tired steadiness in the way that he walked, in how he scrutinized the holograms.
He lingered a moment before he spoke. "Your improvements since I've been back have been both impressive and efficient. I read TINA's analysis of New Venice. You did well. Controlled yourself under pressure. Controlled your tech under worse."
Something in her chest twisted at the praise. He'd gotten better about it over the years, but she still wasn't used to it. It still felt like getting sunlight through a crack in storm clouds. She nodded along, but then her dad trailed off.
He studied the schematics the way he always did—line by line, system by system, searching for weaknesses. Clara's throat tightened. He did this with everyone's work, she knew that. But when it was hers, the weight of it landed differently. Her arms folded before she realized it, shoulders tightening, and she made herself uncross them again.
It wasn't that she didn't value his eye. She did. But watching him comb through her work felt less like partnership and more like surveillance, like she was still the girl who needed every bolt checked and double-checked.
Her jaw worked, the words scraping at her throat until she finally let them out. "I... appreciate the help, Dad. I do." She hesitated, fingers tapping once against the edge of the workbench. "But—can we maybe... talk?"
Venture looked up from the schematics and raised an eyebrow. "Talk?"
Her throat felt dry. She'd practiced thousands of explanations in her head, but right now none of them lined up. "Not... about the suit. Or New Venice. Just—" Clara let out a breath, shaking her head. "I don't even know. Just... talk."
YOU ARE READING
Mod Superhero
Science FictionFor this cyborg, power is just an upgrade away. Emmett was used to being caught between college and his engineering internship, but when he gets caught between a powerful hero and an even stronger villain, he becomes collateral damage. Instead of d...
