While searching the mecha shifter doesn’t reveal anything besides a lonely man who had a vendetta against a person who works at the restaurant, it feels good to be making progress again.

  I don’t know if anyone thought that things were truly calm. The city just felt tired. As if everyone who might act on things is just taking a moment to rest after getting a black eye.

  As I flip through the air, I mentally plot my course to go and visit the lab. They’re almost certainly still investigating but might as well check to see if Andromeda has tried to go back there.

  Slowly, a plan to draw them out is formulating, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the price. If Amelia and I did a conference on how we got our powers and we're going to do something with their research, I’m sure Andromeda would show up.

  The question is if that would be enough for us to take her down. We need the actual clone.

  That’s another reason to get access to their systems again. If Andromeda is a created super like myself and she’s been working with her boss for a long time, there might be information we can get about her powers.

  “How’s the suit feeling?” Asher asks, his voice breaking me out of my train of thought.

  “I’m honestly not sure what you did to it. Feels exactly the same as normal,” I admit as I land, pausing to talk. I’ve gotten distracted while running around a little too often for me to want to continue the practice.

  Both skills will grow slowly.

  “With your limitations, I wasn’t able to add nearly as much, though more upgrades will be rolling in as I clean up their programming.”

  “Are you saying the stuff we got is bugged?”

  “I’m just saying if I was handing free tech to a new superhero team, I would bug the shit out of all of it just to learn about them,” Asher says.

  “Fair point.”

  “When you’re close, feel free to take the time to scout the lab to see if anything I want out of it is viable at the moment.”

  “Besides the stuff you’ve already swiped.”

  “Besides that.”

  With both Cass and Amelia in their respective homes on a sort of standby, sort of rest day, it just leaves me and Asher to work tonight.

  Not feeling particularly nostalgic though mostly because I probably haven’t even been at this long enough to feel nostalgic about anything.

  The old lab is still a hive of activity as people stream in and out though it does catch my attention that they aren’t carrying anything out and a cursory sweep tells me that while most of the things in boxes are long gone all the computers they had hooked up to the place are still there.

  Could they have a deadman’s switch if they’re removed?

  Or maybe they require a specific location to log in? I’ve seen that in movies once or twice.

  Definitely too many people for me to explore any of the main parts of the lab. Though some of the other places I could explore.

  The fact that there’s someone who’s actually paying attention and seems attentive in the security room is enough to stall my decision. I’m not sure exactly what my team’s opinion or their company’s opinion is on the whole shebang, but just staying away from each other seems to be working quite well as a strategy, and I have no need to attempt to break it.

  Bouncing from building to building hopefully quietly, I go to where their escape tunnel was and drop down into the tunnels. They hadn’t used this path; they had teleported, but if this was a plan in place since before me, there could be something here.

  Hopefully, they only used a teleporter because they guessed my abilities, and there’s something useful.

  Walking down the tunnel slowly, my first thought is how they would have seen anything since the place is pitch black.

  My second thought is, I wonder just how many traps I’m tripping at the moment.

  The ceiling is too high for me to leap from here all the way to the surface, and there’s no tunnels above me that I can use as a safe point.

  If this tunnel collapses, I’m going to be trapped here, unable to do anything practically. Theoretically, I have a few ideas on how to use my powers, but nothing I can actually act on currently.

  Mentally taking a note to practice for something like this with Amelia, I try to decide if I should continue going down the tunnel.

  “Hey Miracle, you still there?”

  “Loud and clear.” Asher says, sounding concerned. “Something up?”

  “Too many people in the lab for me to feel comfortable exploring it, but I remembered where their original escape tunnel was and started going down it.”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “You figure that there could be something useful to learn if we think they teleported to counter you? Makes sense, but there sounds like a but coming?” Asher asks quickly, following the thread to its logical conclusion.

  “If the tunnel collapses on me, they have me dead to rights. I can’t go up too far away, and presuming there’s nowhere I can use to go solid, it’ll be too late to go back.” I explain, rubbing my armored forearm as I think.

  It’s one thing to throw my life away when I’m fighting in the throes of battle. At that point, I’m usually not thinking, just acting, hoping to build my bridge as I cross it.

  This isn’t that, and it feels so much harder to be willing to toss everything aside for the sake of learning something which isn’t even guaranteed.

  “Do you want me to tell you to go home?” Asher asks.

  “Not sure, but I wanted a second opinion on it.” I laugh.

  “Well, I could always ask Smoulder to join you. Fractal would for sure say yes, but uh…”

  “She doesn’t exactly scream stealthy, now does she.” I agree.

  “No, the winter witch would much rather go to Valhalla,” Asher says, laughing.

  “So, dollars to doughnuts, what are the odds that this is actually going to be worth a looksie?”

  “I have absolutely no idea. It could be an amazing; find, could be nothing. I would send a drone down there if you can get it here without anyone seeing.” Asher offers.

  It wasn’t particularly hard getting here since I just needed to drop, but getting out without being caught was going to be substantially more irritating.

  Even if I was fast, they were certainly going to catch something and be watching for when I came back and left again.

  The weight of potentially being captured or causing problems for the group is pitted against our desire for no and the need to have a clue that we can actually act on.

  “Let me find a good spot to sneak out and in through to not cause friction between us and Containment,” I finally say.

  “Roger.”

  Leaning against the wall, I tilt my head back and forth as I begin tracing the area both where the cameras are and where some of their men are. Ideally, I would want to avoid both, but I’m pretty sure the cameras are more important.

  It doesn’t take me that long to find what I think is a viable path, so I begin scampering my way through the facility, just barely managing to avoid any eyes, at least as far as I’m aware.

  Entirely possible the person in charge elected to say ignore me and my friends since we helped clear out this entire area.

  Once I’m back on the surface, I go to where the drone is waiting for me, and I then have to figure out how I’m going to carry it before settling for just like a sack of potatoes.

  “Is this thing actually going to work down there?” I ask as I get above the escape tunnel. Thankfully, it’s in an alley, so nobody can see me talking to myself as I prepare to just drop through the ground.

  “It should I build this one especially to work underground since I figured you would be there often.” Asher says, snorting.

  “If that is supposed to be a joke about me falling, let it be known that I noticed.” I say before phasing and dropping through the floor.

  As the drone begins to whir to life, I stand guard, making sure that nothing is coming down the tunnel or to the tunnel.

  “How did they build something like this? I thought they didn’t have any earth elementalists.” Asher mumbles as the drone spins around, a light illuminating the tunnel.

  “Could be he has one on his payroll but isn’t on Andromeda’s team?” I offer.

  “That’s definitely what it was, and I’m almost certain that this place was built long before you came into this situation.” Asher agrees.

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “Alright, I’ll let you go off and patrol other places or head home. I can take care of this,” Asher orders me.

  “You want to send me home?” I ask, surprised.

  “Dude, you’ve been out here since like seven in the morning. It’s past noon now. You can go rest. Besides, you don’t want to do the dayshift anyway now do you?” Asher says entirely right, but still irritating me.

  “Well, make sure to send me what you find.” I finally say before following my escape plan, this time being substantially more harrowing in my effort to avoid everyone’s attention.

  I give myself another hour to patrol before finally returning to the clock tower and going from my currently undecided identity of whatever this is and am back to ordinary Jason.

  Now I head home.

  “Home,” I call out as I enter the apartment. Despite thoughts to the contrary, I do keep my senses reigned in at home. Safety is all well and good, and Asher and I have been discussing some stuff to use here, but I don’t want to take away anyone’s privacy constantly.

  “You’re not home yet,” Amelia teases as she ?rounds the corner carrying Bianca in her arms.

  “I’m not?”

  “Nope.”

  I close the distance between us, hugging Amelia and Bianca tightly.

  “Now you’re home.” Amelia mumbles as I laugh.

  “Now I’m home.” I agree. “It smells delicious. What are you cooking?”

  “I’m trying out a calzone recipe I saw online, so I’m hoping it turns out alright. They’re in the oven for about another fifteen minutes,” she explains as we go to the front room, where it looks like Bianca had been drawing while Amelia did origami.

  “I’m excited to try.”

  “So Bianca decided it's arts and crafts day, so that means you can’t read or watch TV like a normal person; you gotta do something more fun than that.” Amelia explains as Bianca returns to her spot on the floor and grabs a new marker.

  “My arts and crafts skills are terrible.”

  “Well mine are brilliant, look at this cat I made!” Amelia says, holding up an origami creation.

  It looks… cat adjacent?

  “Did you get irritated halfway through and crumpled it up before starting over?” I ask, wondering why the paper looks like it’s been through war.

  “I mean, just because that’s what I did doesn’t mean you have to call me out for it. I did make the Flappy Bird properly.” Amelia points out, displaying the crane's wing-flapping action for me.

  “So, Bianca, should I join you with drawing or should I do something else?” I ask, patting her on the head as she looks up at me.

  Bianca points to a nearby paper, which makes me think it’s a sign to draw with her until I see that there’s already a picture on it, one that suspiciously looks like a stick figure singing.

  Why the microphone is bigger than the person’s head I’m not sure but I laugh regardless.

  “So did Mom put you up to this?”

  Bianca nods her head.

  “Bianca! I swore you to secrecy. I bought more vanilla ice cream for you!” Amelia complains in mock distress. “And stop giggling at me like you’re the cutest thing in the world!”

  Bianca, in fact, did not stop giggling, though I did start looking through my phone for songs I know the lyrics too well enough to try winging it at the moment.

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