Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.57 - Mod Prime

It was easy for Emmett to forget just how far he'd come. Just how different he was now.

Most of the time it was little things, like not needing to get up to get a tool that he needed. A year ago he might've used nanites to bring the tool over to him. Now he could just make the tool out of nanites. Eating was another one. Emmett didn't need to eat; he got all his energy from his fusion core. But he still did. Sometimes it was performative, like when his family shared hot cocoa in the Sim Room. Other times, it was for nostalgia, like having a burger and fries with Clara and McGuire. But eating was always redundant.

Sleep was one of those things.

Emmett's relationship with sleep had changed over the last few years. He didn't sleep in the biological sense of the word, so much as reboot. But even that had changed. Instead of completely powering down, now he just shut down portions of himself, like a dolphin or a shark resting one half of their brain at a time. Except that process was written across a night sky's worth of processes, whole constellations blinking while new ones emerged and redundant ones winked out completely.

Splitting his consciousness across tasks or shunting his consciousness from one body to another was a similar process. Even the CONTINUUM PROTOCOL felt like that—just waking up from a dream into a different body.

His most recent body was enough to take down Class 4 supers, mages, and mutagen-enhanced soldiers. The hard inner skeleton and complex nanite layers were a winning combination, allowing Mod unparalleled power output and weapon flexibility. Even though the tech was always improving, Emmett had assumed that was going to be his final body. He assumed they wouldn't have time for any more upgrades.

He'd been wrong.

Emmett was in a newly constructed wing of the backup lab. He'd been reborn in a room like this one—several times. But this room was completely featureless—devoid of fixtures and amenities. Not that anyone could tell. At the moment, it was filled with a churning mass of nanites.

Emmett was at the heart of the swarm, undergoing his final evolution.

Mod Prime, as it was designated, was the culmination of all of Emmett's upgrades and every iteration of new technology. It retained the black and gray swirls of dragonscale that Mod had become known for, and the hard inner skeleton and nanite layering of his most recent design.

They'd rebuilt his body from the ground up, improving on everything.

His skeleton, which had already had the strength, durability, and healing of a Class 4 super, was further reinforced and now bordered on Class 5. The layers of specialized nanites that made up the rest of him had been overhauled again so that they could keep up with his ever-growing processing speeds.

But the most impressive growth came from his nanite swarm control and power output. Emmett's monstrous processing power and architecture meant that there was no upper limit to how many nanites he could control. If he needed to, he could move a swarm the size of a mountain—

And now he had the power to do it.

Inside the swarm, Emmett reached up and touched the center of his chest where his antimatter core was located. Nestled beside the antimatter core was a shard of the Mirror of Borrowed Fate and a set of twin fusion cores. The cores acted both as backup power supplies and as jump starters for the antimatter reactor.

Not that his antimatter reactor would ever run out of power. Once it came online, he'd have all the power he would ever need.

MOD PRIME CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE

System diagnostics and notifications flooded his mind, and he parsed all of them in an instant. Everything was within range. The only thing he couldn't test yet was bleeding his antimatter reactor.

Mod's fusion cores hummed with power and began the process of jumpstarting his antimatter reactor. That was okay though. He still had a few days until the main event started.

The swarm drained out of the room, revealing Mod in his new body. For a moment, he retained his signature swirls and dragonskin pattern. Then he sent a silent command, and his appearance changed. Now, he looked more like Emmett, clad in nanite clothes.

A small smile crept across his face.

The biggest improvement of all wasn't in his hardware or his software—it was in the manufacturing process itself. His prime body hadn't needed specialized manufacturing equipment. It had been made by a regular nanite swarm.

Emmett could make more Prime bodies, and he could do it quickly. The hardest part was securing trace elements and shards of the magic mirror, and TINA was already shuffling these to other locations across the world and the remaining copies to the lunar surface.

If everything went according to their best projections, Mod would never need to use these backup bodies. In principle, Mod only wanted to use one body to beat Paragon. And he wanted to do it without bleeding his antimatter reactor.

Mod didn't want to win. He wanted to send a message—the most powerful and overwhelming message he could.

If Mod could beat Paragon when his opponent was at full power, then hopefully, they could convince organizations like the Summit and the Brotherhood to stand down. And if they would listen, then hopefully the Dunamen would as well.

TINA thought the rules were needless and self-imposed. Emmett didn't really have a counterargument. But just because he wanted to fight fair didn't mean he wasn't above using every trick and technology at his disposal. If he needed to, he'd activate every copy of himself and bring an army of hundreds to bear. If the Dunamen insisted, then a fleet of Mod Primes would protect Earth.

Winning was the goal. Losing wasn't an option.

Emmett reached out to TINA wordlessly, and a moment later the notification came through.

BEGIN MOD PRIME FLEET CONSTRUCTION

Clara was coming. Emmett watched her through cameras and sensors as she walked down the hall and entered the room. She stepped in slowly, and the door hissed shut behind her.

She looked him up and down as she walked over to stand in front of him. A mix of emotions were on her face. It could only have been a few seconds, but it felt like time was stretching out and the weight of the world was pressing down on him. Like he was caught in a singularity.

Emmett shifted on his feet and took a deep breath—one he didn't need.

"So, what do you think?"

Clara was looking up at him, studying his face intently. She didn't answer, and he desperately wished she would. At that moment, all the power in the world didn't seem to matter.

Finally, she nodded. "You took a page out of Lock's book. And I think my neck is going to hurt from looking up at you like this."

Emmett chuckled and pulled her into an embrace. The weight of the world receded, forgotten. Even though he was a foot taller, it only took them a moment to fit together again, and it felt like nothing had changed.

When they finally separated, Clara looked up at him again.

"You look ready," she said.

Emmett nodded. It was an impossibly small motion for how much weight it carried.

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