Nanites wormed their way through the lab, reaching deeper and deeper into the structure. Emmett had grown so used to controlling them that they felt like an extension of himself—

  A hand that he no longer had.

  Controlling the swarm had been much easier than he anticipated, even as they stretched progressively farther away from him. Keeping them in one long string effectively gave him a direct connection, but that alone didn’t explain how easy it was—like it was second nature. That was from months of practice combined with his enhanced brain.

  Then there was Emmett’s brain implant, which was now upgraded using pieces of Bastion itself. It effectively meant that Emmett had his own cloaking software specifically designed to hide from Bastion and the lab. If Emmett missed a sensor somewhere, it wouldn’t trigger an alert—if Bastion noticed anything, it would be ignored as a minor fluctuation.

  Emmett had no idea how much time had passed since his imprisonment, but he thought back to walking the streets with Clara and the rest of the team. How the cloaking made them all look and feel like ghosts.

  That was how Emmett felt now, like a ghost floating through the lab. Which was fitting enough, having recently come back from the dead.

  At the same time, he felt whole again.

  Which was weird, considering the state of his body. But Emmett hadn’t been that attached to his body, anyway. Ever since becoming a cyborg, he’d traded away pieces of himself—upgrading some things and outright replacing others. His body was just a vessel.

  ~

  The root of nanites stretched deeper and deeper into the facility, multiplying and tapping into power lines as they went. As the swarm grew larger, Emmett’s perception grew to match it.

  He thought back to finding the backup lab, and following TINA’s path through the circuits as she brought systems back online. The layout of the underground structure revealed itself like someone was turning on the lights one room at a time.

  This time though, Emmett felt like he was navigating through a cave with nothing but a flashlight. As nanites bypassed some circuits and tapped into others, Emmett would catch glimpses of nearby rooms and systems, like shining his flashlight down a narrow passageway. Bastion had its own vats of nanites hidden throughout the lab. Emmett steered clear of them for now.

  Emmett was confident in his stealth but he didn’t stray from his goal.

  Bastion was somewhere in those metaphorical tunnels. And just because Emmett had hidden from the proto-AI so far, didn’t mean he was one hundred percent safe. Savanus was out there—maybe Midas also.

  It wasn’t the first time—or second—that Emmett considered revenge. A fusion canister would be more than enough to bring down the lab. …Thankfully, Savanus had removed Emmett’s canister, otherwise he might’ve done it.

  The problem was that Dr. Venture was locked up here too. He would die.

  Emmett felt a pang of shame at the thought. He would’ve killed Clara’s dad.

  He pushed the thought aside—partitioned it for later. When the thought of saving Venture crossed his mind, he partitioned that too. There was no way he could break Dr. Venture out in this state. He would just get them both killed.

  All Emmett thought about was escape.

  ~

  Emmett had no idea what the nanite storage chamber would look like when he found it. TINA described it as a small lake, which had to be an exaggeration. Then he saw the schematics. Emmett had trouble picturing that many nanites, let alone trying to comprehend the sheer scale of material and time that went into making the swarm.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  He’d been navigating the twists and turns of the lab—metal, wires, plastics, and composites. All of it felt natural and cohesive, and he’d grown used to the way his flashlight of perception shone through the darkness.

  Then he found it, like crawling through a cave and suddenly coming up against a wall.

  It loomed in Emmett’s perception, seeming to dwarf the lab itself. No matter which direction he looked, the wall stretched on into the darkness. It felt bigger than a mountain, like there was no end to it. Like the world had suddenly folded in on itself and Emmett was staring at the beginning of the horizon.

  Back in his real body, Emmett had to remember to breathe. He’d been overcome by awe and riddled with fear, but that fear was quickly replaced with something else…

  Curiosity.

  As his flashlight of perception swept across the wall—the lake of nanites—he realized several things: The wall wasn’t one solid piece—it was made of sand. And they reacted to Emmett’s flashlight. As light and energy swept across the sand, the grains would glow and fade, like billions of lightbulbs waiting for a power source.

  Emmett’s root of nanites had climbed out of the ceiling and was dangling over the nanite lake. He reached out with his own nanites and touched the surface. Instantly, his perception expanded, like a bucket of dye dropped into a pool of water—far wider and deeper than he expected. Again, he was struck by the size of the structure. The sensation of looking at a wall changed to dangling over the open ocean. As far as it seemed to stretch out to the horizon, it seemed ever deeper.

  But Emmett’s perception still had limits. Reaching into the nanite lake took energy, and he could feel the power consumption steadily increasing.

  The nanites that filled the lake were the most basic types—controllers, builders, and manufacturers. The vast majority of each swarm was made of builders, with only a small fraction being controllers. Just like in his own swarm, when Emmett was really sending commands to the controllers, which acted like tiny generals that then controlled the builders. Manufacturer nanites were an equally small percentage.

  Emmett redirected his efforts. Instead of building more nanites, he siphoned them from the lake. And quickly ran into his first hurdle.

  He needed more power. His nanite root was siphoning trickles of electricity from the lab itself. So far, Bastion hadn’t noticed. But trickles weren’t going to be enough for Emmett to escape. Using more electricity from the lab wasn’t an option. The swarm would need constant power, and Emmett couldn’t move quickly while tapping lines. Even if he went big and tapped a main line, as soon as Bastion noticed, it could kill power to the sector. Then Emmett was toast.

  Emmett needed to find batteries. He’d go mobile with as big a swarm as he could manage.

  He had an idea of where Savanus had stashed fusion canisters, but it was going to take some exploration to find them. Nanites from the lake flowed upward, reinforcing the root structure and then branching outward at key points. Emmett focused both on growing the swarm and stretching roots outwards—processes that were as intuitive as they were methodical.

  It felt like TINA was with him still. Like she was looking over his shoulder and guiding his hand. It was impossible—Emmett knew that. But it was still a comforting thought.

  Periodically, Emmett’s perception returned to the room he was trapped in, but he was alone.

  He reached out again—this time sending a root of nanites across the ceiling of the biolab and along the far wall. To a bloody table where his fusion canister sat.

  Emmett had to adapt the nanites to attach to the canister, then reinforce the root’s structure to handle the new load. It went much smoother than expected—after all, he’d done something similar during the war when he’d opened a direct connection from the canister to his rifle. This time Emmett gated the load so that he didn’t burn up the swarm.

  Power flowed into Emmett, and a tiny flame kindled inside his chest. He clung to that feeling. Emmett didn’t have prosthetics, but the power would jumpstart production of his other nanites—the ones that helped his resilience and healing. In his current state, Emmett didn’t need much.

  The rest of the power flowed through his other roots and toward the nanite lake.

  Minutes passed…

  One hour… Two…

  Emmett had hoped to find a cache of fusion batteries hidden in storage. Having everything in one location would’ve made things easier. What he found instead were clusters of power—usually one fusion canister along with several smaller fusion cells. He resolved to take every power source that he could.

  The final part of his plan started—Tapping into the batteries and cells wasn’t enough. He needed to bring the power sources with him. Emmett commanded extra nanites to begin chewing through the walls and floor around the sources of power, like termites hollowing out a house. Bastion had sensors and cameras in a lot of places, but Emmett worked around it.

  There was no way to know how much each canister or cell could power—Emmett doubted he could power, much less control, the entire lake. But he was going to steal as much as he could—

  As much as he could without breaking his mind or killing himself.

  ~ ~ ~