Chapter 1.2.31 — Data is Compiled

After Friday classes, Emmett found himself back in the Gray Room with Clara—

Well, with Clara’s robot.

They were testing the limits of his enhanced night vision against the powerset of a magic-wielding super named Inkarnate who used a magic staff to command darkness and forge it into solid objects. It reminded Emmett of Green Mask, who he’d fought twice on the South side of Belport.

Emmett had been right about his vision—it felt magnitudes better than before. Not only had he been able to see the stars above Belport through all the light pollution, now he could still see—even in the near-total darkness of Inkarnate’s spells.

Both Clara’s robot and Emmett were inside a faux warehouse, slinging furniture at each other in the dark. Gray tables and chairs sailed past the two combatants and shattered on the walls behind them. Even though windows were shattered and daylight should be spilling in, Inkarnate’s powers kept the floor of the warehouse almost pitch black.

To Emmett, the strangest part wasn’t that he could see—it was what he could see.

To Emmett, the room was almost completely black, except for the vague outlines of the walls and of Clara’s robot.

TINA’s voice came through the intercom, confirming Emmett’s hypothesis. “Your enhanced vision is picking up the little ambient light that remains. In addition, you’re also seeing traces of ultraviolet light from the active portions of the Gray Room and infrared light from the training robot. You can now see slightly outside the visible light spectrum.”

Emmett and Clara didn’t pause their fight while TINA spoke.

For a moment, Emmett thought he heard a hint of irritation in TINA’s voice before she stopped speaking—almost as if she was upset that they hadn’t paused to listen to her. But he quickly cast the thought aside.

TINA was a lot of things, but emotional wasn’t one of them.

So, he ignored it and kept fighting, nearly blind. Only seeing the vague outline of squares that made up the walls and the ghostly image of Clara’s robot.

Errant furniture was another problem entirely:

Emmett couldn’t see any of the furniture in the room—none of the desks, chairs, or shelves that littered the floor, nor any of them that Clara hurled in his direction. He made up for this by using his whip to feel around the room; he alternated between snaking it across the floor like a blind person’s walking stick and waving it in front of him like an insect’s antenna to feel incoming furniture projectiles.

“How are you doing that?” Clara shouted as Emmett ducked under another flying desk. He felt the violent rush of air as it passed overhead and heard it slam into the wall behind him.

All the while, Emmett cackled maniacally. “It’s like TINA said. Limited UV and IR. Maybe I should lean into it and swap out my eyes so I can see the full spectrum.”

“Uh! My helmet can see both of those.”

Emmett’s cackle turned into a cough. “Maybe I’ll make goggles instead.”

Across the room, Clara’s robot motioned for a timeout. “Seriously, how are you using the whip like that? It’s creepy.”

Darkness faded, and the Gray Room came back into view. Dividers and inner walls had been blown apart, and mangled white furniture littered the room.

Emmett caught his breath, basking in the scene and in Clara’s disbelief.

He explained how he’d been using the whip, then elaborated. “I can’t see much, but I can see the robot. Your weight shifts differently depending on if you’re throwing something small or throwing a whole desk at me. Then it’s just a matter of using the whip to feel where it is in the air.”

Clara’s robot put its hands on its hips. “I understand that—in theory. But I didn’t think you’d be able to use the whip like that. It’s like you’ve got a third arm or something, except that it’s, like, twenty feet long and moves like a snake.”

“Thanks… I think.”

“It’s pretty cool,” she added, miming out a snake slithering through the air. “Just weird.”

The pair of them called on TINA to reset the Gray Room, and while the shattered furniture disappeared into the floors and new pieces rose up to take their place, Emmett dwelled on what Clara had said.

It was weird.

Not just how much Emmett had grown into his prosthetic arm and his mods, but how the dichotomy between what he considered real and not-real had changed.

He had a futuristic prosthetic arm and a whip that was so much a part of him it was like having a third arm. Not only could he use his prosthetic hand and whip simultaneously and independently, but Emmett had caught himself almost using the whip in the middle of his apartment on several occasions—it was tempting to use it to grab the remote when it was too far away, or snake over the counter and into the fridge to get a soda.

But then there was the Gray Room and the practice robots that Clara and Dr. Venture used. As much practice and excitement as Emmett got out of sparing against the robots and the hundreds of different powersets the Gray Room could reproduce, there was something mechanical about it. Something cold.

He much preferred when Clara donned her own training suit and flew around the Gray Room with him, or when they both traversed the rooftops of Belport.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the training… It was just that he preferred something real—

Which was a conundrum for the cyborg who kept thinking about mutagens and upgrades. The more Emmett thought about it, the less he could reconcile the two feelings.

But before Emmett could dwell on his thoughts and before the Gray Room fully reset, Dr. Venture’s voice came over the intercom.

“Report to the hub of the mechanical wing. We’ve finished analyzing the data. We know where the mutagen variants are coming from.”

Like most puzzling feelings, Emmett resolved to put it off until some arbitrary time in the future.

Instead, he focused on the task at hand.

~

They met Venture in the hub of section 002. The entire wall display had been coordinated to display a giant map of Belport overlaid with satellite imaging. Venture was staring at it intently and mumbled a quick greeting. He seemed as eager to get to the explanation as Emmett and Clara were to hear it.

Venture quickly explained the traces they ran on the delivery drivers while TINA added the routes to the map. Emmett and Clara watched with bated breath while several things became clear:

The first was that the distribution of mutagen variants was a massive operation—lines traced chaotically all over Belport. Yet, it was also organized. At first, this was only a gut feeling, but as Venture explained their tracing algorithm, lines began to coalesce into well-worn routes and patterns. This led to TINA circling four points around the Northern side of Belport, just outside the residential areas.

“These are the distribution warehouses. There are four of them. Mutagens are manufactured, stored in these locations, then shipped to their local distribution points—the ones that Athena has been attacking. As capable as Athena is, that strategy is only going to get us so far. It’s like cleaning up the mess from a pot boiling over without ever turning off the burner.”

Clara crossed her arms. “It’s about time we step up our game.”

Emmett asked, “Who owns those warehouses?”

Venture sighed and pushed up his glasses. “We’re still figuring that out. Two of them are real companies that may or may not know that bootleg mutagens are being run through their warehouses. The other two are shell companies—they exist on paper, but their owners and money are obfuscated. Unfortunately, it will take days, possibly weeks, to figure out who owns those warehouses… The good news is that it doesn’t matter who owns the warehouses. They aren’t our target. TINA, show them.”

New lines appeared, this time running from the distribution centers through the Northern outskirts of Belport. They all coalesced outside the city limits at a single building.

“That’s it?” Clara asked, confused.

The warehouse didn’t look like anything special. It was one of several unmarked corporate buildings clustered together just outside the interstate. As TINA zoomed in on the warehouse, confusion settled between the two youngest members in the room.

Emmett finally said, “I don’t know what I expected, but this isn’t it.”

Venture chuckled. “Did you expect a supervillain lair with black smoke pouring out over Belport?”

“No, I guess not… Have you scanned the place with drones yet?”

Excitement flashed across Venture’s face and was gone just as quickly. “No, I haven’t. This is why…”

TINA zoomed in further and showed energy readouts beside the warehouse.

“They are actively scanning in UV and IR ranges,” Venture said. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear a detailed explanation of the limitations of cloaking technology, but suffice to say that my drones are highly advanced pieces of technology, but they aren’t magical. The cloaking systems can hide from the visible light spectrum. Some can hide from UV for a time, and if they’re in a low-power mode, then they can hide from infrared… But doing all three while moving… Well, they’re not magical. This is the best view I have.” Venture shrugged for emphasis.

Clara asked, “What defenses do they have?”

On cue, long distance drone footage appeared on the screens. Venture said, “There’s multiple guards and other workers on the premises, along with several supers.”

Still frames of the video enlarged to reveal blurry images of four supers along with a small dossier compiled from various sources: The punk-rock looking Feedback, the anti-gravity super and creepy looking hair-girl, both from this previous mutagen bust. The fourth super was one that Emmett hadn’t seen before. She seemed completely mundane compared to the others, wearing a plain coat and jeans, except that she was listed as a pyrokinetic and in some dossier photos she wielded a sword made out of pure fire.

The last super was clad in a black mask and hoodie, and the sight of him made Emmett’s blood run cold—the super that killed Porcelain. The one soaked in Mutagen-X that had trounced Clara at full power.

Venture continued, “Not all of the supers are present at any one time, but we can expect that at least two of them will be on site no matter what time we engage.”

Emmett shifted uneasily. He didn’t like those odds—not with Clara at half power. Even with Athena on their side, Emmett wasn’t sure they could win against the Mutagen-X super, especially if their enemy had backup.

Athena was powerful, but Emmett wasn’t sure she could beat the X super on her own. Emmett and Clara would be distractions at best and liabilities at worst.

Emmett and Clara exchanged a glance, and he knew immediately what she was going to ask. There was one organization they could contact for assistance.

Clara asked, “Are we going to tell the Summit of Heroes?”

Venture hung his head in thought before answering. “I know I haven’t exactly been forthcoming—with either of you… But I don’t trust the Summit.”

Clara said, “Dad, you can’t hold a grudge against them forever.”

“It’s not… It’s not about that. Any of that. This is about the power structure that they’ve allowed to endure. There’s a reason why corporations like Gnosis are untouchable. The world powers have deemed them so. The world is stuck the way it is—in a stalemate of supers, secret cabals, corporations, and governments—because they have all decided to keep their hands off of one another. While the rest of us fight over scraps.

“I don’t know who is behind this operation. It could be an inside job or a well-coordinated competitor. Either way, they cannot continue flooding the streets with these products. Evidence would be nice, but either way, the warehouse must be destroyed. I worry that if the Summit gets involved, they will turn everything over to Gnosis. So, we do this on our own.”

Emmett stared at the overhead view of their target. Despite the daunting prospect of taking on a well-organized operation and the chance that the Mutagen-X super might be there, he felt a well of resolve in himself.

They needed to do this. Needed to see this through.

But it was more than just that to Emmett. If they could do this and make a difference in Belport, maybe they could eventually do something bigger. Maybe they could make the world a better place.

Even just thinking about it felt both ridiculous and naive but Emmett didn’t care.

That was what being a hero was all about. Making the world better. Changing things.

Emmett broke the silence, his words sounding more stoic than he meant them to. “We’ll need to prepare.”

Venture smirked. “Good. Let’s talk preparations.”

~ ~ ~