Mod could still remember the silence. Something more startling than the hush of a crowd gone still, and more absolute than the lull that came after an explosion. Like the city had stopped breathing.
Mod had been on the rooftops that day Amarque turned the world upside down. Brick and steel sheared themselves apart towers breaking upward like gravity had forgotten which way was down. Chunks of buildings—entire city blocks—had begun to lift. He ran that day. Leaping rooftop to rooftop as everything disintegrated beneath his boots.
Years had passed since that day, both physically and subjectively. Mod had survived the War, survived the Brotherhood, survived exile, and rebuilt himself. He had come an impossibly long way since the boy who scrambled across those failing rooftops.
And yet, as he sat now in the Vault, staring down the shroud of Amarque's through his nanite web, Mod felt the echo of his younger self.
As soon as Mod pushed aside the thought, the sphere began to shrink. It happened so fast that he thought it was collapsing. The sphere shrank at the edges, disappearing until it was little more than a bead. But Mod could still feel it. Amarque was still there... Just outside the demiplane.
Then the tiny bead began to move, sliding along the Vault's passageways, like dew down a vine.
Mod followed it through his nanite web, the way a spider might sense a fly. The bead slipped through junction after junction as though Amarque could see exactly where he was going. Mod clenched his jaw and traced the reality warper's path. It looked like Amarque was heading toward a group of nanite clones.
The other mages might not recognize Mod's tech, but Amarque would.
Mod doubted he could stop Amarque...
But maybe he could steer him.
With a steady exhale, Mod shifted his grip on the web. He didn't try to force his target off course—Mod doubted he could affect Amarque directly. Instead, he pulled one filament tighter, another looser, a hair's breadth of resistance in just the right place. Amarque veered off course as smoothly like it had chosen the alternate hallway itself. Mod's nanite web thrummed like a thousand taut strings, each one vibrating with Amarque's passage.
But the sphere slowed.
Amarque had noticed. The next time Mod tried to redirect him, it took noticeably more effort.
New disturbances echoed across Mod's nanite web. More biomechs, drones, and mages, but their movement had changed too. They were spreading out in a coordinated search pattern, ignoring Mod's nanite clones completely. They were closing nets, section by section, like someone drawing a noose tight. And behind it all, Mod felt the web shiver under another touch—
Seraphina.
She was hunting him.
Mod cursed under his breath. He tried to reroute one of the patrols, tugging at the conduits like he had with Amarque. For a moment, the squad faltered, veering down an alternate artery. But the next time he tried it, his hold slipped—the weight of too many threads and Seraphina wrestling him for control.
Mod hesitated. He continued rerouting paths, trying to keep both his team and Arsenal's team hidden, but Mod's strategy was already falling apart. Amarque was taking more and more effort to redirect, and Seraphina had caught on to what he was doing. Now, when he tugged on a string to alter a path, she undid his work.
Mod adjusted his priorities.
He messaged the others. "Sending you troop positions now."
He sent data directly to their HUDs, marking corridors green for safe and red for nearby patrols.
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...
