Chapter 1.1.31 — Clara 1

Clara had found her father in the hub of section 006—the biomedical wing—staring intently at a cluster of monitors. He didn’t so much as turn when she entered.

“I have a lead,” she said.

“A lead on what?”

“Porcelain.”

Her father still hadn’t responded by the time Clara walked over to him. She looked over his shoulder at the readouts.

The screens were absolutely covered with information—charts, diagrams, graphs, and wave patterns, all scrunched together like tightly packed building blocks.

It was so much to take in that Clara only got a vague idea of what her father was mulling over:

Emmett.

The metal arm was a dead giveaway.

He flicked the power of the monitors, turning them dark. Then he spun around in his chair to face her.

“What’s this—”

“Why are you so interested in Emmett?” she asked, cutting him off. She hadn’t meant the question to come out so harshly.

“I’m monitoring his progress. Mutagen-A may be Gnosis’s best-tested formula, but there’s always the chance of anomalies.”

Clara narrowed her eyes. Dad didn’t lie frequently, but he was fond of omitting parts of the truth.

Venture sighed and added, “I’m also looking at ways he might progress, both biologically and mechanically. Emmett has a unique opportunity. His body is taking extraordinarily well to Mutagen-A, and his prosthetic arm is a breakthrough of neural integration—it might very well lead to breakthroughs for other parts of your armor.”

It had been a while since Dad had been so excited and hopeful. He got that way when he found a solution to a problem.

Clara felt queasy, and she had a lump in her throat that felt like it would climb out if she spoke.

She managed to ask, “Is it safe?”

Venture’s eyebrows wrinkled in concern. He’d seen right through her pitiful facade. “Of course it’s safe. Mutagen A is Gnosis’s best tested formula, and I’ll monitor him every step of the way.”

Clara grit her teeth. She hated that people could tell when she was upset. If there was only one thing she could change about herself, it would be that.

Venture moved like he was about to stand up, like he was going to offer her a hug—

“Don’t,” Clara said quickly. “I’m fine.”

“Clara, you’re not jealous, are you? Because it doesn’t—”

“I’m not. I just think you should ask Emmett first.”

He nodded sullenly. “I plan on it. It will be his choice what direction he goes.”

Clara felt her chest clench again. “Then I am jealous.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re giving him the choice.”

Clara turned and walked away before her father could reply. She called back from the hall. “I’m going out.”

Clara stormed off to the armory—section 004—feeling hot and angry. She stopped in front of the blast door and controlled her breathing while she waited for TINA to scan her.

A moment later, TINA’s voice came through the old speaker. “Greeting Clara, what exosuit would you like prepared for you?”

She should’ve expected the question—No matter how old Clara was or how many times she’d entered this wing, TINA always asked it. Still, it didn’t help Clara calm down.

“The only one he lets me wear.”

The double doors hissed open, and Clara disappeared down the winding halls.

~

The Venture armory was the second most secure wing of the lab, second only to Clara and her father’s living quarters.

Every system of the wing was isolated and redundant, including TINA. This meant that even if an enemy breached the outer defenses of the lab or somehow gained access to other sections, the enemy was still locked out of the armory.

When Clara was young, she’d thought her dad was paranoid to put so much thought into the lab’s networks and sequestrations. Then, when Clara was eleven years old, sorcerers from a splinter cell of the Felwardens breached the lab. TINA and the lab’s countless defenses stalled them long enough for Dr. Venture to return. If not for all the defenses, the sorcerers might’ve killed Clara… Well, they would’ve tried.

Now Clara walked the winding halls and entered the armory proper. The hallway ended, giving way to a metal catwalk. The metal walls blossomed out in all directions into a gigantic, spherical room three hundred feet in diameter.

The walls of the armory were far too blocky. To Clara, it looked like giant metal gears were embedded in the walls—frozen and unmoving. Each outcropping of metal hid an exosuit.

The catwalk ended in the center of the room, hanging in the center of the sphere.

As Clara reached the center platform, she turned to her right and watched a small door open in the wall. Then her armor floated out from it and across the room to the platform. When Clara was a little girl, she had asked her father how exactly the armory worked, but he’d never given a straight answer. The closest that Clara could tell, TINA levitated the exosuit over to the center platform.

It was odd to witness—unsettling even, sometimes. As many times as she’d watched the suit float across the room, it was still weird.

Weird like the Gray Room. Like they didn’t belong.

Her suit set down on the center platform, sleek and stealth gray, and the back hatch opened, silently beckoning her in. Clara climbed inside and the hatch closed behind her.

Most suits, including Clara’s, were designed in almost 1:1 proportions with the user’s body—the exception being the forearms and hands. Rather than slipping her hands into gloves, Clara’s hands rested in the end of the suit’s forearms, her fingers wrapped around tightly-packed switches—this allowed the user to control both the hands and internal controls for various subsystems with their fingers.

The next thing Clara felt was the cool, subtle touch of mesh as the pockets in the lining of the suit filled with pressurized gel. These acted as a cushion to disperse impact and as environmental filters for toxins and extreme heat (on top of the heat sinks for the systems). Thin tubes in the helmet helped force air through the gel and into a solidified pocket around Clara’s nose and mouth.

As the exosuit cocooned her, the main system responded to Clara’s presence—regulators funneled her power to the dozens of systems and subsystems. For a split second, Clara saw the world only through the small ballistic window of her helmet, but even that closed once the exosuit booted up.

A breath later, her Heads Up Display (HUD) appeared on the inside of her helmet—her electronic window to the outside.

Blue text appeared: ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL

Clara flicked the switch to engage her thrusters. Even through all the dampening and shielding, she could feel the heat and power funneling from the rest of the suit to the thruster systems that wrapped around her legs and feet.

THRUSTERS ENGAGED

Years ago, Clara disabled the TINA’s onboard voiceover for everything except alerts, opting instead for text displays in the HUD. She preferred to hear the ambient sounds of the city and the wind rushing around her as she flew.

A passage opened up in the ceiling of the armory, and Clara rocketed toward it.

The sound reminded her of fire.

Clara raised her arms overhead as she flew through the passage, weaving through twists and turns as it passed through the underground of Belport.

STEALTH SYSTEM ENGAGED

The matte gray of her suit vanished in a mirage—hiding her not just from sight, but also hiding her radar and heat signatures, and masking the sound of her flight.

Clara soared more or less invisibly across the night sky of Belport.

~

An hour ago, one of Venture’s drones spotted a super matching Porcelain’s description—white mask, white bodysuit—and sent the location to Clara and Dr. Venture.

Her father had been too busy to notice.

Clara followed her guidance system to the coordinates on the outer limits of the Eastside, past the old factories and warehouses. Few were still in operation. Most were boarded up like wooden bandaids over grungy brick and broken glass.

Despite the squalor, it wasn’t completely empty. There were small fires that transients huddled around and small flashes of power as low-level supers fought. The police and the capes turned a blind eye to most of it, since keeping brawls relegated to the abandoned areas of the city spared places citizens actually cared about.

The drone waited atop one of those warehouses, using the same stealth tech as Clara’s suit.

Clara scanned the building as she approached, her HUD showing an overlay of the building’s interior. It was completely empty and quiet, except for three homeless people sleeping on the second floor.

That was fine with her—it was completely empty where she needed to go.

Clara hovered near the roof, then followed the drone through a broken fourth-floor window. She set down and followed the drone as it floated through the dusty hall. The world turned a sharp green as her visor automatically switched to a low-light view, and exhaust gas and dampeners cushioned her steps. Clara walked the abandoned hall like a ghost.

Of all the places in Belport… Why had Porcelain come here?

Was she hiding out after the Champion street attack? Had she been meeting a contact?

Clara followed the drone into a large room with a window overlooking highways that led out of the city. At one point, newspapers had been stuck to the enormous window, but now they were peeling down in sheets and littered the floor. The panes that were visible were cracked and broken.

The drone stopped just inside the door. Its onboard scanning was much more detailed than her own, so Clara patched into its feed.

SCANNING SUITE ACTIVATED

Immediately, Clara’s HUD was overwhelmed by a wall of blue. She fumbled the controls, dialing back the sensitivity. Eventually, the solid blue turned to a cloud and then to a haze.

Porcelain hadn’t just been here—it looked like she’d fought for her life!

Every smear of blue was Porcelain’s residual power signature. The haze of blue that enveloped the room was actually dozens of smaller clouds that had congealed together. Now that Clara had dialed back the intensity of the data, she saw the ground littered with blue crystals.

She stooped down and rifled through newspapers until she found one of the crystals—it was a shard of white glass, exactly matching the chemical signature of Porcelain’s other remnants.

Clara shivered with unease.

“Are you seeing this?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

“Yes,” Venture replied through her headset. “I’m setting the drone to scan for other power signatures.”

The drone’s internals whirred quietly as the drone scanned the rest of the room.

Clara knew from experience that the scan should only take a minute.

Three minutes passed.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s no other power signatures there except for Porcelain’s. I had the drone repeat the scan to be sure.”

Clara looked around the room, once more feeling a pit of dread. Even though her HUD would automatically alert her to any movement in the building, Clara couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t alone.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Do a visual search of the room, grab samples, then return to the lab.”

“Sure thing.” Dad didn’t need to tell her twice.

Clara dialed back the blue highlights in her display and searched with only her low-light view. She walked the length of the room, taking in the ruin and the… atrophy. Shards of porcelain crunched beneath her suit.

The room felt heavy, like Clara could feel the weight of the air or maybe the battle pressing down on her. The weight of loss.

Of something broken.

~ ~ ~