Chapter 1.1.14 — Gray Room

Emmett followed Dr. Venture out of section 002 and to the door of section 005, carrying the pile of modifications in his arms. The whip dragged behind him on the ground.

Venture paused at the door, allowing the camera and system to scan him.

Emmett regarded the screen, camera, and speaker next to the door, realizing that these seemed to be the most modern of the entry systems.

“Thank you for verification. Please step through, Dr. Venture,” TINA said, its voice coming through with eerie clarity.

Emmett hadn’t realized just how accustomed he’d become to the background static of the old speakers strewn throughout the bunker.

“Why did you only upgrade these systems?” Emmett asked as the doors hissed open.

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Venture replied without looking back.

Emmett rolled his eyes. That was code for when Venture wanted him to figure out a question on his own.

Even the lighting system seemed new—white lights came on as they walked, illuminating the hall in time with their steps. It made Emmett feel like he was already a famous cape.

Next, they entered a small locker room, and Dr. Venture pointed him to a black bodysuit hanging on the wall.

Emmett set his armful of mods on the nearby bench, walked over to the suit, and ran the fabric through his fingers. It felt thin and sleek, yet sturdy. He was sure it was some kind of futuristic material that Dr. Venture or Gnosis or the government had designed, but that didn’t stop Emmett from suddenly feeling very self-conscious—he’d never worn anything like that before.

“What’s wrong?” Venture asked.

“Why is it always leotards?”

“All the supers wear them. And not to be pedantic, but that’s a bodysuit. Leotards don’t have leggings.”

Emmett rolled his eyes. “Not all supers wear them.”

Venture added simply, “Most do. In addition to being sturdier than jeans and a T-shirt, skin-tight clothing is protected by the body’s innate fields—the same forces that keep a shapeshifter’s original form or keep a pyrokinetic from burning themself extend a fraction beyond the skin. That is unless you’d prefer to stash spare changes of clothes around Belport.”

“No, that’s okay,” Emmett replied quickly. “I’ll take my chances with the suit.”

“I’ll give you a minute to put that on,” Venture said. “I’ve taken the liberty of scanning your measurements. The material is form fitting but more durable than any leotard. It should provide some additional protection against any small arms you come up against.”

Emmett thought about asking when Venture could’ve possibly scanned him, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to know.

Venture stepped through the door to let Emmett change. Then Emmett set to undressing and pulling on the suit.

…Which wound up taking longer than he thought it would.

The oddest part was the ‘shoes’ of the suit, which seemed to shrink around his foot and contour to his toes. That was the only easy part. The rest of it felt like pulling sausage casings over his legs, torso, and arms.

Scratch that—the weirdest part was the right arm of the suit, which had cutaways on the back of the upper arm and the underside of the forearm for his storage compartments.

Then he couldn’t reach the back zipper.

“Dr. Venture wants to know if you’re alright in there or if you fell in?” TINA asked.

Emmett finally succeeded in pulling the zipper up, grabbed his mods, and stepped out into the hall.

Venture chuckled. “It gets easier.” Then waved for him to follow.

A few twists and turns later, they stepped into this section's variation of the testing hub. It was similar enough that Emmett recognized it, but the screens were configured differently and there were other additions: Namely, a viewing window that looked out into darkness beyond and a large platform to the right—It was the second thing that drew his eye.

The platform looked like it was made of white bathroom tile, except that the grout in between glowed bright blue. An outfit hung on the wall that at first looked like pieces of a suit of armor. It wasn’t until Emmett walked over and realized that they were pieces of a Virtual Reality suit—Helmet and visor, gloves, vest, knee pads, and shin guards.

TINA’s voice came through the intercom. “Which training course would you like me to prepare?”

Emmett whirled around and looked at Dr. Venture expectantly.

Venture was peering out through the viewing window, hands clasped behind his back.

“Normally, we start with the ‘jump’ program, but seeing as how you already practiced running across the rooftops of Belport, it’s safe to say that we can skip that one…”

Venture trailed off, leaving Emmett feeling slightly awkward about being followed. And defensive.

Emmett set the armful of mods on the center table. “Are you going to follow me all the time?” he asked.

Venture turned, impatience bleeding onto his face. “I meant what I said before. Passive monitoring. I have better things to do than listen to your conversations. That’s what TINA is for.”

“‘Passive monitoring’ involves listening for specific phrases—”

“That’s enough, TINA,” Venture said, before continuing. “It’s a happy medium between safety and privacy. If you’re going to be a mask, then I’m afraid it’s non-negotiable. It’s the only way my Fast-Response Drones can bail you out if you get in over your head.”

Emmett nodded reluctantly. He wanted to trust Dr. Venture—he did trust him. But Emmett couldn’t shake the fact that Venture had been surveilling him for months without Emmett knowing or the fact that Venture was a former cape with who knew how many secrets.

“I trust you,” Emmett said, as much to Venture as to reiterate it to himself. “But I want you to let me in—”

Venture held up a hand. “Trust goes both ways. I’m trusting you enough to bring you into the fold. Slowly. Trust me to keep you alive until you can swim on your own.”

Emmett nodded. “Deal.” Then he turned to the white platform and the VR pieces hanging from the wall. “So, what training course am I starting with?”

Venture chuckled. “That’s not for you. That’s for me.”

~

Dr. Venture led Emmett through the joining hall and out into a large testing chamber. Instead of solid metal, the walls, floor, and ceiling were made of tiles about six inches square. Each changed color, giving the impression of a wave of light rippling across the room.

Darkness receded into the distance.

Emmett’s eyes widened as he realized the true scale of the room—not just hundreds of feet deep, but equally tall.

When all the tiles finally lit up, Emmett and Venture were standing alone in a gigantic white room.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Venture said with a hint of pride in his voice.

“How big is your lab?” was all Emmett could stammer out. He’d brought the armful of mods with him, and clutched them a little tighter.

“Not that big,” Venture replied.

TINA’s voice came through, seemingly from everywhere at once. “The Gray Room is only three hundred feet square, but through integrated haptic and visual feedback, it can give the sensation of moving through a space ten times its size.”

Venture answered Emmett’s question before he could ask it. “Stick around long enough and I’ll show you how I developed them. For now, think of the tiles as holographic and spongy. One day, you might be fast enough to cross a thousand feet in a split second or leap to the top of a skyscraper—the Gray Room should be able to keep up with you until then. As long as you don’t learn to fly. Flight is… harder to simulate.”

Venture turned and walked back toward the door—the one small portion of the room that wasn’t slick and white.

“What should I do?” Emmett asked.

Venture muttered something as he walked through the doors, but Emmett couldn’t hear what it was. The doors hissed shut behind him and the metal turned into white tiles—

Leaving Emmett alone in the enormous white room.

He set the armful of mods down near where the door had been, and felt a little better having some kind of marker in the room.

Thankfully, TINA’s voice echoed around him a moment later.

“Loading movement training, lesson two.”

~

“No mods,” Venture said, his voice seeming to come from everywhere, just like TINA’s did.

Emmett looked around the Gray Room. He assumed Dr. Venture was in the training hub, looking at him through the viewing window, but Emmett couldn’t see anything except featureless white walls all around him.

Venture added, “Let’s see how you do getting around the city on your own.”

The floor shuddered beneath his feet—so subtly that at first Emmett thought he imagined it.

Then tiles began to rise out of the floor.

Emmett watched as tiles rose and shifted, adjusting into walls and platforms. Some even wrapped around themselves, forming cylinders that became faux streetlights. They moved with eerie silence until segments clicked into place.

Emmett stood in the middle of the road, watching as a city block rose around him, complete with buildings, alleys, curbs—all of it clad in featureless white. The stretch of city reminded him of the edges of downtown Belport, filled with two and three-story buildings that he’d run across with Athena.

And when the room stopped moving and tiles stopped clicking, the entire room began to flicker like static on a screen. Moments later, the city block flooded with grayscale like a noir movie.

Emmett didn’t wait for a signal; he started jogging across the street and toward the nearest alley, looking for a way up to the roofs.

He felt like he should be up high and off of the street.

Emmett ran down an alley, turned a corner, and climbed the first fire escape he found. Then he looked down on the grayscale room from the roof. It was an eerie sight, not just for lack of color; he knew there was something off about the skyline of the city and Emmett wasn’t sure what. He could see clear across Belport, even see a drab version of the bay in the distance.

Maybe the horizon didn’t move quite right—after all, the Gray Room was really only a few hundred feet square.

He didn’t have much time to dwell on it though, because someone else leapt onto the rooftop opposite of him.

At first, it looked like a man wearing a cross between high-tech armor and an old, bulbous diving suit, but the joints were far too thin for a person to be inside.

Dr. Venture said, “This is my training robot.”

As Venture spoke, two things happened: The robot shifted color from dull gray to white, blue, black, red, and back to blue, and Venture’s voice shifted until it came only from the robot.

“See if you can keep up,” Venture said, and the robot waved exaggeratedly for Emmett to follow.

He did.

Even with the faux grayscale of the room and the weirdly silent steps of the blue robot just in front of him, Emmett quickly lost himself in the joy of his newfound powers. For the second time in two days, Emmett found himself racing across the rooftops of Belport.

He easily kept up with Venture’s robot, even as it changed course—turning left, right, or completely around and running back the way they came.

“Not bad,” Venture said.

“Easy,” Emmett corrected. He wanted more.

Venture scoffed through the robot. “Very well.”

The robot ran faster, weaving across the roof of a third story building while grayscale Belport stretched out around them.

Then it bolted—running toward downtown.

For the first time since using his newfound powers, Emmett felt his heart pump and his chest heave as he sprinted to catch up. His feet pounded and alleys passed beneath him in a blur as he hurtled from rooftop to rooftop.

The robot ran toward a four story building, the face of it stretching up another ten feet above them, and it leapt—

Practically exploded from the roof, soared clear up to the top, and disappeared over the edge.

Emmett was only a few steps behind and wasn’t about to stop now.

Emmett ran to the edge and jumped, arms outstretched.

The side of the building passed in a blur and then he saw the top of the building—right before he slammed chest-first into the wall. Emmett gasped and clung desperately to the ledge of the roof.

He hung there a moment, catching his breath, while the blue robot stared at him from across the roof.

Emmett swore he heard Venture chuckle.

The robot crossed its arms. “From now on, you’ll spend an equal amount of time in here training as you do working in the lab. You need to learn what your body is capable of so you know what risks you can take, who you can fight, and when you need to run.”

Emmett nodded, then hauled himself over the ledge. The ease of it caught him off guard, and he stumbled as he stood.

“Again.”

~ ~ ~