Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.33 - Center of the Web / Seraphina 3

Mod sat in the depths of the Vault, a maintenance artery long since forgotten and abandoned. Pipes ran like ribs along the ceiling, the metal crusted with a thin layer of minerals. A broken glyph flickered faintly across the floor.

He could've been mistaken for a corpse. His back was against the cold stone. Eyes closed. Breath shallow. But that was only his body... The rest of him was elsewhere.

The physical world slipped into the background hum of conduits and stale air. His awareness stretched outward, the Vault unfolding for him on a staggering scale.

It was like exhaling into infinity.

A part of him reveled in the feeling. For the first time since his two selves had merged, Mod brushed against the memory of the singularity—that impossible clarity where time and self blurred together. In the nanite web, he wasn't just Emmett Laraway, wasn't even Mod. Threads of nanites pulled thin until they touched every seam of the Vault. The nanite web seeped into conduits, suppression rings, and coolant shafts, mapping every channel like veins in a body.

Mod could've lost himself in the Vault—

Except that at the edge of his perception, there were pressure-points. They pulsed in discordant rhythms as workers struggled to patch the holes and as parts of the system failed. Most of those were Mod's doing—distractions meant to keep the bulk of the Vault's forces occupied. But other holes had been unintentional. It turned out that every time he pulled a thread, it caused three more to come undone.

Each newly unraveled thread was a reminder of how perilous their mission was.

And a reminder that Mod couldn't lose focus.

He guided Clara, Athena, and Lock through a maze threaded through the rocks, his instructions read directly into their HUDs. At the same time, Mod split his attention a dozen other ways—forming clones on distant levels, sending them lurching down corridors as false prey for guards, listening for shifts in the mages' wards, and marking worker patrols as they scrambled to keep the prison stitched together.

A voice came out of the ether, distant and amused. "You know, this looks an awful lot like you've got the cheat codes to the Vault."

For a heartbeat, Mod almost didn't place it. Even though McGuire was in the room with him, it sounded like McGuire was in another plane entirely.

Mod managed a dry laugh, which echoed strangely through the web. He didn't open his eyes.

"Jealous?"

Somewhere behind him, in reality, McGuire chuckled. But Mod was already gone again, back inside the Vault.

Emmett broke himself doing something similar two months ago. Back then, the swarm had been a fraction of what he commanded now. He still couldn't place when the break actually happened. One moment he was a prisoner in the lab. Next, he was being carried along by the swarm. Then, Emmett had found himself staring face to face with his duplicate. He didn't even remember breaking Dr. Venture out of the lab. The whole thing was like a dream he couldn't quite remember.

Now, he was threaded through a demiplane the size of a mountain.

The only saving grace was that Mod didn't have to chart the entire mountain. For all the Vault's size and intricacies, it was mostly empty space—like an atom. Still, it was a small comfort, especially considering Emmett was juggling other things at the same time.

He siphoned portions of the swarm to make nanite clones and set them loose throughout the Vault. They moved in groups of three or four, mimicking the powers and fighting styles of other Resistance members. But they were a pale imitation. Mod could only spare a trickle of attention, so each clone was fighting on autopilot.