Super

36. fire of passion

The testing lab was so much more than Mark could ever have imagined.

His eyes widened the moment they set upon the room the first time—which wasn't very enlightening, so to speak, as it was cloaked in darkness. He took a hesitant step forward, and the moment the sole of his sneaker hit the floor of the laboratory, the spot lit up. Bars of electric blue crossed the length of the room along the walls, like points of light leaving a luminous trail behind them, and connected at the other end. As soon as the square had been traced out, the room came to life—not too suddenly, but with random parts lighting up at once, bathing his face in the shadows of blue fire.

Welcome, Mark Lee, said the same pleasant female voice that had greeted Taemin back in the meeting room, and Mark gaped at recognizing it.

"Sybil?" he exclaimed, incredulous, as if meeting an old friend after a long time. A machine started whirring somewhere, producing clicking noises that were as familiar to him as the lines of his own palm. He glanced around, unable to believe his own eyes, feeling like a much more grateful Alice after landing in Wonderland.

Most of the walls were behind large screens, and there were podiums scattering the floor of varying sizes, each displaying an assortment of different devices that Mark longed to get his hands on. The room itself was large, with a lower ceiling than the meeting room, but with a larger floor area and much better taste in furniture—which is to say, none.

I will be here as your guide for the evening, said Sybil, surprising him. In his awed inspection of the contents of the room, he had almost forgotten the AI was accompanying him. I will leave you to your devices unless you require my assistance, upon which, you are free to ask me whatever you like, be it the location of a part or to perform another function. Mark nodded slowly, wondering if she (he respected the computer's pronouns) could see him. Have fun.

"I sure will," he said breathlessly, feeling overwhelmed and overjoyed at the thought of being left alone to tinker with the inventions of the Lee Taemin himself. Up until now, the superhero campaign had seemed much like a dream, but this was like hallucination, a false oasis for someone lost in the desert. I'm in Nova Tower's testing lab, he thought gleefully, barely believing it to be true. He was in the testing labs. Perhaps not the ones for the company, but for something much more secret and super-cool. Quite literally super­-cool.

A device on one of the podiums caught his eye, and Mark went over it to examine it. It seemed like a metallic sleeve or a developed watch, a contraption of metal and plastic that was hollow and cylindrical, but slightly misshapen. He ran his fingers lightly over the surface, discovering that it was uneven, with buttons and closed screens built into it. He recalled the time he had first met the entirety of the team, waiting by the window-wall with Baekhyun, remembering seeing the same device covering Baekhyun's forearm.

"So that's what you are," he muttered in awe, bending to get a closer look at it. It looked like a black metal cast, but he knew it was only an extended wristwatch. With an extreme delicacy as if he were picking up a butterfly by the wings, Mark lifted the device and cradled it in his arms, surprised at how light it was. "Hey, Sybil, will wearing this give my arm a third-degree burn?"

The voice was around him again, seeming to come from everyone and nowhere all at once. For a split second, he wondered if it was actually inside his head. According to my recent records, updated four twenty-one p.m., it is perfectly safe to use.

"Thanks," he said shortly, feeling like he was getting used to the voice and not wanting to. He wanted everything to feel fresh and as good as new, something that could surprise him every morning when he woke up, even if that morning was twenty years later. "But if something happens to me, it's totally on you."