Emmett was left dissected and hanging in the deepest reaches of the b. Alone with Ava Savanus—

  The woman who had been hunting him ever since he got his brain upgrade.

  Emmett hung from chains. He looked down at her, and she looked up at him—seemingly unaffected by the sight of him.

  Emmett wasn’t sure what he expected. He’d read everything they had on Savanus. He knew all about her biomech army and her powers and personal impnts. She even had her own rudimentary version of a brain impnt—it was limited to information storage and there was no AI assistance. Supposedly, she knew every combat style ever recorded, and she had the strength upgrades to capitalize on it. Even without her army, easily a Css 4 super.

  She was almost as much of a cyborg as Emmett, and in other ways, she’d left even more of her humanity behind. Somehow, that thought was even more unsettling.

  Savanus looked normal.

  But then, so did Emmett.

  “He’s lying, you know.”

  Savanus left the statement dangling in the air like a lure.

  “About what?” Emmett spat.

  She smiled softly. “He’s not done with you, and he’s not keeping you alive for me. Midas thinks he can keep you as a bargaining chip. Same thing with Magnus. And he’s never going to show your dissection tapes to Magnus because… He’ll never let Magnus wake up. He’s going to keep both of you…”

  Savanus trailed off. And again, Emmett felt like an insect pinned in a box.

  Emmett couldn’t tell whether Savanus was more distraught at the thought of Venture being imprisoned or that she couldn’t finish dissecting Emmett.

  She continued, “Midas lies about everything. That’s what he does. He’s a bureaucrat, a CEO, through and through. He doesn’t know any other way to speak.”

  “He’s a monster.” Emmett shrugged his shoulders, causing the chains to rattle. “In a normal world, he’d be the vilin. Not the hero. He wouldn’t be working with the Summit or running the Brotherhood.”

  She sighed. “You’re na?ve. Just like him.”

  Emmett spat. “And you sound like Midas. It’s not na?ve to want to make the world better! That’s what heroes are supposed to do.”

  “We’re all trying to make the world better. Midas thinks he’s going to turn the world into a tech utopia—with him in charge, of course. I don’t think we’ll get that far. Supers and people will always have a pce in the chain of command.”

  Emmett sagged in his chains. Now, more than ever, he realized how fucked the world actually was. Because there were always going to be people like Midas and Savanus—people so blinded by ambition that they truly thought they were making the world a better pce.

  A new wave of exhaustion hit him.

  Emmett, Cra, Venture, Athena, Lock, McGuire… They’d all come so far. It felt like they’d made so much progress. TINA was growing. The Resistance was growing.

  But they still had so much goddamn further left to go.

  “What do you want?” Emmett asked. He tried to keep the exhaustion out of his voice, but failed.

  Savanus stared up at him.

  “You know what I want. I need what’s inside your head.”

  “You gutted the rest of me for parts. I’m surprised you haven’t taken my head apart already.”

  Savanus smiled again. Maybe out of pity—it certainly wasn’t out of sympathy.

  “That is an option. But I was trying not to kill you, Emmett. I don’t like breaking my toys unless I don’t have any other way.”

  Emmett gnced at the back of the room, where parts of biomechs were piled on dissection tables.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Savanus gnced back, as if she’d forgotten all about the grisly scene around her. “Oh, those? My daughters and I have a different retionship. If it’s any consotion, I try not to kill any of them either.

  “This has been a more difficult process than anticipated. You weren’t supposed to wake up, at all.”

  Emmett scoffed a ugh. “You’re saying you would’ve tidied up the pce?”

  She shrugged. “There isn’t much difference between surgery and an autopsy. They’re both barbaric.”

  “What about Dr. Venture? Did you dissect him too?”

  Savanus’s face hardened. The expression was quick and gone so fast that Emmett would’ve missed it without his brain upgrade. He must’ve struck a nerve.

  “Magnus is safe with us. I won’t let anything happen to him.” She sighed. “I could take apart your skull and dissect the rest of you, but you won’t survive the process. And that leaves me in a conundrum…

  “This isn’t just a hardware issue. I can’t just copy your brain and the impnt, and then expect them to work the same way for me that they work for you. There’s a software issue.”

  Savanus paused, like she was a professor waiting for questions. But Emmett didn’t have any. He knew exactly what she was getting at.

  “You need to know how I survived the process.”

  Savanus nodded. “You’re not the first to successfully digitize your consciousness. You’re just the first to survive.”

  Emmett didn’t have time to dwell on that statement before Savanus continued.

  “So, Emmett, you can save us both a lot of trouble by telling us what you know about your brain and the impnt in your skull. Even better, give Bastion direct access.”

  Emmett’s thoughts raced, and for a moment, the world slowed down.

  He was right—they’d been trying to access his brain and memories while he’d been asleep. But Emmett had realized what was happening and stopped them. Then they’d tried to shut him down—just like Venture and TINA had tried to do months ago. Bastion and Savanus couldn’t override Emmett’s mind.

  The problem was, the information they wanted didn’t exist. Emmett didn’t know how the software worked. Emmett didn’t remember it because TINA had never given him the information.

  Even if he didn’t remember how to recreate his brain, he needed to pretend like he did. He needed to buy himself time. So he made up an excuse.

  Emmett asked, “You have perfect recall, right?”

  “You know I do.”

  “I know how my brain works. I know how it was made. It’s all here. I have perfect memory too, but I don’t have perfect recall—not yet.”

  Savanus stared back at him, her face unreadable. “Expin.”

  “My brain is synthetic, so it has perfect storage, but I’m still running old software. Venture said it would take time for my consciousness to acclimate to the new brain.”

  “When did your surgery occur?”

  “In May. During the war.”

  Another flicker of emotion across her face. Surprise. “Did Magnus say how long your mind would take to acclimate to new hardware?”

  “No.” Emmett shrugged, causing the chains to rattle. “It was experimental surgery.”

  Savanus finally looked away from him. She nodded like she was deep in thought.

  “Maybe we can help each other out,” Savanus finally said. “My brain impnts are different from yours, but between you, and I, and Bastion, maybe we can unlock your full potential.”

  “You mean you can get what you want from me and put me back on ice?”

  Annoyance flickered across her face. “I meant what I said. I’m working with Midas because, at the moment, we need each other. But the world is always shifting. Alliances can change.”

  Emmett tried to keep his expression ft. He couldn’t imagine ever trusting Ava Savanus, no matter what she did in the future.

  Emmett shrugged. “I don’t have much of a choice. But unless you’re on a time crunch, I’d prefer not to have other people knocking around my head.”

  Savanus stared back at him. Her expression turned cold and machine-like. “I’m not on a time crunch, for now. But if you can’t give me what I want, then Bastion and I will be going inside your head.

  “Contrary to what it might seem, I don’t want to cause you undue suffering. And I don’t want to torture you… But I will. Without apology.”

  Savanus turned to leave. “You better get to it, Emmett.”

  ~ ~ ~