Waking up was much like falling asleep. Emmett wasn’t sure exactly when he regained consciousness, only that he had.

  He was hanging—chained up, still. He could feel the cold metal of the hooks embedded in his back. Could feel the skin pull taut as he sagged in place. His shoulders, back, and every small muscle he couldn’t remember the name of—everything ached. Except that wasn’t the right word.

  Even with Mutagen-A, his body wasn’t invulnerable. His muscles would ache after a long chase. His bones ached after a grueling fight. But this was so much deeper than that. It felt like he’d been gutted and hung up so all his blood would empty, like there was nothing left inside him but pain and it had frozen him solid.

  The thought of moving or struggling felt impossible. And if he wanted to cry out, he wasn’t sure that he could. His mouth and throat were so dry that breathing hurt. He felt like a husk, left and forgotten about.

  Emmett forced himself not to swallow. Forced himself to stay absolutely still.

  He was still in the lab, and he wasn’t alone.

  Voices—Ava Savanus and Bastion. They didn’t start quietly, like a whisper, and then grow in volume—the awareness came suddenly. The pair were talking normally, like he was still asleep.

  “I have concerns about Emmett Laraway.”

  “I read your report, Bastion. Or did you add an addendum?”

  “No. I wish to reiterate my concerns.”

  “I thought your report made it clear. I understand that his capabilities and awareness are increasing, but it’s within our simulations. We have time before he becomes unmanageable.”

  “We should placate him. Resume cooperating with him so that he can unlock his memories.”

  “Wasn’t he the one that attacked you? Didn’t we also determine that he was lying to us—that he didn’t have those memories?”

  “Both your statements are correct, but there is a non-zero chance that our truth detection algorithms are flawed. He may still have information about how his brain was created.”

  Savanus paused her work. “That is a very large assumption for such a small margin of error. I’m more interested in why you can’t resolve this train of thought.”

  Bastion didn’t reply, and Savanus continued working.

  Emmett didn’t dare open his eye. He forced himself to stay calm and still. Even partitioned away his own discomfort.

  Emmett’s thoughts drifted to his imprisonment. How long had he been locked away?

  Emmett searched his memory and felt a stab of pain where his prosthetic right eye used to be. His Heads Up Display was gone, but the data—or lack of it—came to him intrinsically.

  TIMESTAMP ERROR DETECTED

  APPROXIMATE DATE — UNCONFIRMED

  Emmett had lost his connection to TINA and to the outside world. So he had no way of measuring how much time had passed.

  He pushed the thought aside. Buried it along with everything else that he didn’t need at the moment. And Emmett didn’t keep track of how long he hung there while Savanus worked. His only thought was staying still and biding his time.

  There was only sound.

  Tinks and clacks of metal on metal. Deep groans and snaps of ligaments and bone. Drips of fluid, and echoes of footsteps as Savanus walked around the room.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Part of him wanted to know what she was working on. That small sliver of curiosity made the time feel that much longer—

  Until Emmett partitioned that too.

  Finally, the door hissed open, and footsteps disappeared down the hall.

  Emmett opened his eye as little as he could manage. Just enough to see a sliver of the biolab. His brain resolved the blurry image until it was painfully sharp. He almost wished it hadn’t.

  Everything was there, just like the snippets of nightmare he remembered. The room was part gory battlefield mixed, part operating room, and above it all, the robotic operating arms hung like a bloody chandelier. His stomach twisted, and Emmett quickly partitioned away his disgust and his rage.

  He focused on one thing—

  The scraps of nanites that were left in his body.

  ~

  When Emmett was captured, Midas and Ava Savanus had tried to take everything from him: His fusion and nanite canisters, his prosthetic limbs and eye. They’d kept him sedated, suppressed the Mutagen-A and neutralized the nanites in his body.

  But they’d left him a few things.

  They’d left his brain and brain implant intact out of necessity. And they’d missed some of his nanites.

  Since they lost Venture and the lab after the war, Emmett had spent a considerable amount of time controlling the tiny machines. At first, TINA had helped him out—giving him metaphorical training wheels while he practiced. Over time, his control had grown strong enough that he could control a swarm by himself. He didn’t need TINA anymore—

  The only thing he needed was the implant.

  Emmett guessed they’d used some mix of electricity or chemicals to neutralize the nanites in his body, but it was impossible to get all of them. Nanites were simply too small and numerous to get one hundred percent of them.

  When Emmett was a kid, he remembered spilling red glitter on the floor. Mom vacuumed and vacuumed, but they couldn’t get all of it. They were finding glitter for years after that. On the carpet, on the sofa, on their clothes—even in other rooms!

  Nanites were the same way. Midas and Savanus had neutralized more than ninety-nine point nine percent of his nanites, but they hadn’t got them all. And they hadn’t gotten all of his manufacturer nanites—the ones that could make new nanites. As long as there were some left, Emmett could rebuild the swarm.

  Emmett sent a signal to the nanites left in his body—a mass less than a fingernail. The swarm traveled up his body, through his skin and up Emmett’s chains. Then it started eating.

  Growing the swarm was easy. All he needed to do was supply it with raw materials. Emmett wasn’t worried about getting caught either—he was awake and hadn’t been detected yet. His main concern was time. Without TINA to run simulations, it was hard to say just how long it would take to grow the swarm.

  It was a bit like trying to build a snowman. Right now, all he had was a few flakes, but there was snow all around. Soon he’d have a snowball.

  But a snowball’s worth of nanites wouldn’t be enough to break out of the lab. Both Emmett and Lock had barely made it down a few floors, and they were Class 4 supers. Now he was alone, and there was no guarantee he would be able to rebuild himself before trying to escape. He’d probably have to do it without his fusion rifle and most of his gadgets.

  Emmett was going to need a lot of nanites to make up the difference in firepower.

  ~

  Those first few hours of growing the swarm were agonizingly slow.

  Emmett knew conceptually that building the swarm would be an exponential process. The beginning would be the slowest part, but the speed would steadily increase. It was impossible to say exactly how many nanites Emmett was starting with, but the process was easy to imagine. The swarm would make more of itself—effectively doubling every cycle.

  At the beginning, hypothetically, one nanite became two. Two became four. Four turned into eight, which turned into sixteen. But by the tenth cycle, the swarm was increasing by thousands. By the twentieth cycle, it was increasing by millions.

  In the real world, cycles weren’t as neat and moving the swarm took time. Early on, the swarm nibbled at Emmett’s chains, taking off miniscule layers of metal. Eventually, they entered the ceiling, working their way through the concrete, metal, and other materials. He quickly ran into a power issue, but tapped into wiring in the ceiling to keep the swarm topped off.

  Emmett still remembered where the lab’s sensors and defenses were. There weren’t that many inside the walls and floors, and there were few sensitive enough to detect something as small as nanites. Still, he guided the nanites around so that they gave all the sensors a wide berth.

  Even though Emmett didn’t have his HUD, he was connected to the swarm and could estimate its size.

  When it was almost fifty percent, Emmett moved into the next part of his plan.

  Instead of going up, Emmett ordered the swarm in the other direction. Streams of nanites, too thin to see, flowed out of the ceiling, down the walls, and through gaps in the floor. They threaded around sensors and tapped power where needed. There were enough of them now that they could continue to multiply while they moved unimpeded. The streams converged and grew through the lab’s floors like a root.

  Emmett knew exactly what he was looking for.

  Soon, he’d have all the nanites he could ever need.

  ~ ~ ~