Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.63 - Ava Savanus 1

Ava Savanus was hunched over an operating table in the biolab wing of Magnus Venture's stolen laboratory. Biomech parts littered the room, like gray stones strewn across a desert of white tile. She was working on one of her biomechs, and all of her concentration was focused on it.

The mech in question was a security model, roughly human-sized. It lay on the operating table in fifty-seven pieces—limbs separated at the joints, chest cavity and power sources sitting neatly to the side. Its nervous system could be seen, threaded between each of those pieces, like delicate thread. Most of those fifty-seven pieces were from the chest and brain canister.

Savanus studied the brain through an array of tools. These hung from the spider-like chandelier above the table and fed directly into her own brain implant and retinal display. She controlled surgical lasers with a thought and monitored the changes with a combination of magnetic, electrical, and nanite imaging. All of that was helpful, but most of her focus was on a far more intimate connection.

There are stories of twins who can feel each other's pain. If one twin stubs their toe, the other will feel pain in the same foot. If one twin falls, the other might experience vertigo. Almost all of these stories are bullshit, scientifically speaking. There is no measurable phenomenon linking one twin to another.

Savanus knew this. She'd read all the literature there was on the subject.

And yet, she was also the exception.

Each of her thousands of biomechs was controlled by a brain, and each of these brains were cloned from Ava's tissue. This gave them a psychic connection. Together, they formed a limited hive-mind that could communicate instantaneously across the world—one rivaled only by the Menagerie.

Ava suppressed a shudder. She remembered that fateful day all too well... Her clone was still small enough to fit in a test tube, but it had already started talking to her. Back then, the psychic connection had been so strong that it was almost unbearable, and she terminated the experiments before they grew too large.

But Ava was scientifically minded, and she wasn't one to waste potential. She began experimenting.

Gene therapy and mutagens were a dead end. Ava doubted that the psychic connection was genetically based, but tampering with the genetic makeup even slightly destroyed the connection. So she tried more direct methods. It took years of experimentation and dozens of failed test subjects, but Ava finally developed lobotomy procedures to suit her needs.

The result were biomechs that were unquestionably loyal to their mother. They would fight for her. They would die for her. And they wouldn't bother her with unnecessary conversation.

One year later, she automated the process, and her army had continued growing for nearly twenty years.

But now she was back to the drawing board.

Biomech armor varied from unit to unit, but all of them were strong and sophisticated, and all of them were built with small gaps in the braincase. Ava's psychic link needed that space to function. It was faster and more secure than wireless communication, and something Ava was loath to give up. Most other psychics weren't powerful enough to take over Ava's biomechs. The surgery that made them loyal soldiers also gave them an innate resistance to psychic takeover. So Ava had never been concerned about the weakness.

Until the Menagerie.

Ava didn't pretend to know the Menagerie's thoughts, and she didn't understand why it all of a sudden agreed to work with Midas. All Ava knew was that—for now—the Menagerie wasn't their enemy—

And that she would never underestimate the hive-mind again.

With mechanical precision, Ava's lasers scoured deeper into the biomech's brain. This kind of surgery had proven effective once, and she was sure that it would again. There had to be some combination of scarring that would keep her mechs connected to her and immune to other psychics, even ones as powerful as the Menagerie.