As it turned out, Emmett could control a lot of nanites.

  When Emmett received his nanite canister, Dr. Venture had put limitations on the amount that Emmett could control. Just a month after the war, Emmett had figured out how to bypass the restriction. It wound up being easier to do than expected—so much so that Emmett sometimes wondered if Dr. Venture meant for him to do it all along.

  Emmett was a general on a battlefield, and the different types of nanites were lower officers and soldiers. There was a limit to how many soldiers fit in a squad, and how many squads fit in a platoon.

  But that wasn’t quite right—it wasn’t that there was a limit on numbers. Emmett was limited on the number of commands he could give.

  If he tried to issue too many commands—tried to control too many nanites—Emmett could hurt himself.

  But Emmett had grown since then. He’d been practicing nanite control. His brain had gotten more efficient, and now he had the brain implant.

  Even without access to his HUD, he could estimate the amount of nanites he was controlling… at least for a while. His normal nanite canister was the benchmark of one hundred percent, and the most he’d ever had at one time was when he’d broken Lock out of Gnosis. That day, they’d had two thousand percent spread out across Emmett’s body and three suitcases. Emmett had only controlled a small part of that swarm. TINA had controlled the bulk of it.

  His current swarm was going to crush that record.

  The larger the swarm grew, the faster it siphoned power and nanites out of the lake. Now that the swarm was focused on growth again, that growth became exponential. Emmett felt the numbers break the one thousand percent mark. A few minutes later, the numbers were growing by one thousand percent.

  The influx of nanites felt like a mental and physical weight pressing down on Emmett. It was hard enough keeping up with the strain, but Emmett was also trying to keep his body still. He pushed away and partitioned everything—

  And Emmett found a new well of strength to draw on.

  Each thought he partitioned freed up mental resources to control the swarm. He silenced his pain and his fear, partitioned all his worries about the plan and his curiosity about the lab, and the swarm grew in their place—oozing into the gaps like mortar in a crumbling house. He kept almost nothing except his desperate need to escape and a rough blueprint of his route to freedom.

  The swarm’s saturation numbers grew into the ten thousand percent mark, then blew past the one hundred thousand percent mark.

  Emmett had spread the increased mass across the swarm, and the roots had grown too thick. Eventually they’d trip a sensor. So Emmett redoubled his efforts and pulled everything toward him. Nanites sloshed through the walls like floodwater, bringing a dozen fusion batteries and many more cells toward him.

  The swarm flowed along the walls of the biolab and then down the chains to Emmett. These nanites couldn’t cloak, so it wasn’t long before there were enough nanites that the streams were visible to the naked eye. Seconds later, the walls were completely covered; the surfaces churning like black water.

  They covered Emmett too. The new nanites were cool to the touch and so thick it felt like he’d fallen into deep water. Into a whirlpool.

  Again, he resisted the urge to react—partitioned away his discomfort. He rearranged the nanites around his face so that there were air holes, then rearranged them again—turning them into air channels as the nanites thickened around his body.

  As the swarm grew exponentially, so did Emmett’s connection to it. It felt like discovering the backup lab all over again—when his mind fell into cyberspace and expanded through the lab. A process both mechanical and organic. Except instead of crawling through circuits and systems, he was flowing through black sand.

  Batteries and cells arrived, ferried through the hollow walls of the lab. With each new power source, Emmett’s sense of connection and perception grew.

  An alarm tripped.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  It was expected, but almost disappointing, how long it took for Bastion to notice something was wrong.

  Emmett was too enveloped by nanites to hear the alarm or see the flashing red lights, but he felt Bastion’s attention on him. Even without a direct connection, Emmett sensed the lab’s systems shifting—doors locking, countermeasures and weapons deploying. He could even read the system alerts Bastion was sending:

  SUBJECT EL — MULTIPLE ANOMALIES IN BIOCHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY

  BIOLAB DISTURBANCE

  BIOLAB ALERT — CODE RED 4

  DEPLOYING COUNTERMEASURES

  A pitiful electric shock came through the chains, but Emmett was far too insulated for it to hurt. And the batteries and cells were wrapped in their own protective bubbles of nanites. There would be other countermeasures, but didn’t matter. None of it did. Emmett knew what he had to do.

  The swarm surpassed the one million percent mark, and Emmett was still drawing the swarm toward him. He was only vaguely aware of his surroundings, but he knew that nanites were filling up the biolab and in another few seconds, the biolab would be full to the brim.

  It was time.

  Emmett ate his chains. Nanites bored through the links and reconstituted matter to fuel the swarm. It was a small addition compared to drawing from the lake, but it came automatically. The tension in Emmett’s back released as the chains went slack. A second later, he couldn’t feel the hooks at all. Everything had been dissolved. Instead of falling, Emmett floated in the center of the swarm.

  Then Emmett ate the door. The entrance to the biolab wasn’t reinforced like a blast door, so it lasted only a second longer than his chains.

  The door buckled and gave way, releasing a flood of nanites like a dam burst. It crashed into the hallway, carrying Emmett with it.

  Except that Emmett wasn’t carried by the swarm. He didn’t flow with it—

  He controlled it.

  It happened both consciously and subconsciously, like the swarm was just another part of his body—an arm reaching out for a glass of water or one foot stepping in front of another as he walked. Except instead of wielding a prosthetic arm or a fusion rifle, Emmett was moving a two ton swarm of nanites.

  Emmett didn’t scream, but the churning swarm grew to a roar.

  He swept through the halls like an avalanche. Grenades and bullets were swallowed. Turrets were ripped off their mounts. Laser grids were dismantled. Blast doors lasted a few seconds before the swarm ate the locks and forced them open.

  Baston sent out more system alerts. It was trying to reach Midas, but Midas wasn’t in the lab.

  It would only be a matter of time before Ava Savanus responded, or they reached out to nearby Summit members. The plan was to move fast enough that they wouldn’t have a chance to intercept them.

  Emmett held onto the one taproot—his lifeline to the lake—for as long as he could. It was stretching thin, and his swarm would soon outpace the flow of new nanites. He was able to connect to another root at the stairwell junction, but then he had to sever the connection.

  For a moment, Emmett mourned the loss of power. He could feel the lake drifting away from him. Deep in the bottom level of the lab, those now disconnected nanites trickled back into the lake—

  But Emmett’s power swelled. Now that he wasn’t tethered, the swarm moved with reckless speed. Emmett burst through the next stairwell and tore through the next level of the lab.

  He felt the lab flexing around him. Felt circuits and the flow of power. Thankfully, it was concentrated on the immediate hallways and floors. So far, Bastion hadn’t sent signals to the armory. Maybe it wasn’t sure of the swarm’s capabilities, and didn’t want to risk losing more exosuits to an unknown threat. After all, Venture’s exosuit collection was one thing that the Brotherhood couldn’t rebuild.

  Then Emmett felt something else, like dozens of gates opening up. More nanites flowed out of the walls. Bastion was bringing its own miniature army to bear.

  Emmett never would’ve been able to tell them apart with his eyes, but he could sense the division between the two swarms. Emmett had tons of nanites at his control. Bastion was still bringing its nanite army together.

  In short, Emmett’s swarm dwarfed Bastion’s by a factor of one thousand to one.

  Instead of two waves colliding, Emmett and his swarm crashed into Bastion’s army like a boulder. Bastion’s nanite swarm exploded and the walls, floor, and ceiling cracked under the strain.

  On the smallest scale, that same devastation was replayed a billion times over. Emmett’s nanites overwhelmed Bastion’s with sheer numbers. Ninety percent of them were utterly destroyed—carved apart and reconstituted into Emmett’s swarm.

  By the time Emmett got to the last ten percent, he’d figured out how to hack their signal. Emmett didn’t need to destroy them—he just took them.

  By the time Bastion realized what was happening, it was too late. Emmett controlled all the active nanites on the surrounding floors.

  He barreled toward the 5th floor stairwell. The same spot he’d almost escaped through last time.

  Nothing stopped him. Nothing even slowed him down. Nothing could.

  Emmett couldn’t see through the swarm, but he knew exactly where Lock had broken through the wall. It would’ve been remade by now, but Emmett didn’t care. He was going through it.

  The wall of the 5th floor stairwell shattered like it was made of glass, and the swarm continued into the tunnels.

  ~ ~ ~