Clara set down on the faux streets of the Gray Room and climbed out the back of her suit. Her muscles quivered under the strain and her bodysuit felt soaked through with sweat. 

She needed a break from training. 

It wasn’t just the fact that her body was exhausted. Concentrating on managing her power was mentally taxing, too. 

Clara could push her body past the point of discomfort and to the point of collapse, but doing the same to her mind was dangerous. 

Her body gave plenty of signs that she was exhausted. If Clara was doing pushups, for example, her skin would grow warm, the muscles in her arms would start to burn. Her breathing would become labored and she’d start to sweat. Finally, her arms would shake with effort before they seized up and finally gave out. 

There weren’t as many warning signs when it came to mental strain. Using her powers required concentration. Using them safely required absolute, unbroken focus. 

Sometimes, it was frustration that Clara noticed first. Today, she was getting sloppy—missing shots with her kinetic blasts and once shattering the corner of a window. 

When she was starting out, there were benefits to pushing herself to the point of a meltdown, but now she got more out of training when she balanced on that knife’s edge of power and control. 

So Clara left her suit behind in the Gray Room. The floor opened up beneath it and it descended into the mysterious workings. Clara walked out of the Gray Room and down the hall, her footsteps echoing softly on the bunker floor. 

“TINA, what are Emmett and Dad up to?”

TINA’s voice came out of the speakers, seeming to follow Clara as she walked. “Both of them are working on their own research. Dr. Venture is in the biolab. Emmett is working on his fusion rifle in the mechanical wing.”

Clara slowed her pace and raised an eyebrow. “What’s Dad working on?”

“I am not allowed to say.”

Clara groaned, then caught herself. “Sorry, TINA. It’s not you. It’s Dad. He’s always secretive, but it feels like he’s been extra secretive lately.”

“Would you like me to put you through to him?”

She scoffed a laugh. “No. That’s alright. I know better than to interrupt him… Well, maybe ask him when dinner is.”

Clara debated with herself while she walked. She definitely wasn’t going to bother her father, but Emmett could get just as absorbed in his work. Sometimes she didn’t mind—Emmett could work on his thing and Clara could do her own research or read… It was just nice to be close, just to be in the same space. 

But right now, she just wanted to be alone and recharge. 

So Clara walked to section 001 and to her room in the back row of guest rooms. The door hissed open and shut behind her. 

Clara’s room was trimmed in black and white. All the fabric was fireproof, and a fine layer of ash covered the entire room. Shelves of art projects lined the walls—metal spheres for doodling, smaller metal blocks for sculpting, wood canvases for burning. Sparring in the Gray Room was only one aspect of her training. Yoga helped with concentration and mind-body connection. Art helped with fine control of her power and with stress relief. 

Clara plucked a metal sphere from the wall. She’d doodled patterns of ocean waves across this one, and she turned it over in her hands, feeling the ridges beneath her fingers. The once pristine steel had splotches of black charr, where the metal was tarnished from repeated heating and cooling.

As much as Clara wanted to doodle and blow off some steam, she’d been meaning to start another canvas. 

She rolled the sphere in her hands, hesitating.

Metal was easier. It could be reworked. The surface of a sphere could be remelted and smudged over. Even a metal block could be melted down and reshaped. 

Metal was forgiving. Wood was permanent. 

Permanent was nerve-wracking. Scary, even. Once burned, a wooden canvas couldn’t be fixed. Once Clara burned a stroke with her fingers, there was no taking it back. Maybe it was the destructive nature of her power and the threat of losing control, but Clara didn’t like making decisions that she couldn’t take back. 

There were two things on her mind that evening. One that had only come to light recently. The second had been on her mind a lot the past year. 

Clara turned the sphere over in her hands while she thought back to just a few days ago, when she, Emmett, and the others went into Belport’s underground to confront The Freakshow. It had gone about as well as it could, all things considered. The Freakshow were dead—even Torque. Emmett had killed the rest. 

Torque bothered her, but not as much as Clara thought it would. She hadn’t really done it. She’d stabbed him with the nanite weapon, but that was it. The nanites did the dirty work. Her dad and TINA did that. Clara hadn’t known what was going to happen… not really. 

Maybe there hadn’t been any other way. It was The Freakshow or her friends, and that wasn’t really a choice at all. 

Clara sighed. She really wasn’t that broken up that Torque or any of the others were dead, or that Emmett had killed them.

Clara was upset that Emmett left her. 

When the wave was coming and they were supposed to evacuate, Emmett had gone on. Alone against two more murderous villains, and against an incoming tidal wave. 

He’d gone on. Without her. 

Clara remembered vividly how TINA and Dad locked down her suit. Vented her power. Kept her locked inside the suit. How Emmett didn’t even turn around when she begged him to stay. 

How relieved she’d been to see him again. 

Clara’s stomach turned. 

She’d told Emmett not to save her—not to let his feelings interfere with their dynamic as a team. Had she wanted him to stay out of selfishness or preservation? 

Had she already violated their agreement as teammates?

She knew deep down that if anyone could handle The Freakshow, it was Emmett. Even as he walked away from her that night, she knew he’d be fine.

But still…

Clara groaned and pushed the thought from her mind. She thought about the other thing that was on her mind—something that had been on her mind a lot this past year. 

Clara put the metal sphere back on the shelf and grabbed a wood canvas. She set it on her makeshift easel and steadied her breath. Heat gathered in her fingertips. 

She started to draw herself. 

Emmett was working on himself—on his own weapons. Clara decided that she would too. 

The faintest lines were first, outlining Clara’s shape as she hovered in the middle of the canvas. Slowly, she darkened the outline of her figure. 

This was how a wood burning of herself always started. First, the outline of the person she was. Then came the hard lines and dark shades overtop as her exosuit took shape.

It was such a familiar process that Clara had to stop herself. She’d started the outer lines of boots and gauntlets, a chest piece and a helmet. Nothing was connected together. Nothing was shaded. She could still see herself—her true self—in the center. 

She’d always wanted to fly without her suit. 

Even in her wildest fever dreams, Clara knew that it was a longshot. She’d feel wind on her skin and immediately wake herself up. There was no guarantee that she’d ever be able to use her powers without a suit, at least not to the level that she was now. Not without having a meltdown. 

But she was going to try. 

She didn’t want to hide or cover herself up anymore. She wanted to control her power without the exosuit. And if she could master her powers, then she wouldn’t need to stay cooped up in the lab either. 

A year ago, Clara wouldn’t have bothered. But now, it didn’t seem so far-fetched. 

Maybe she had Emmett to thank for that. 

She paused her excited burn strokes and sighed. Right now, she was still irritated with him, but she was grateful for him. Emmett had helped her come out of hiding. She’d already taken a leap to go out to coffee—

What was one more leap?

Clara turned her focus back to her wood burning. Slowly, an intermediary set of exosuit components took shape: Thruster boots. Kinetic blasters. A failsafe chestpiece for ballistic protection. A helmet for psychic protection. 

Training wheels.

Clara paused to admire the design, chuckling while tears welled up in her eyes. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. A much needed start. 

TINA’s voice came through a wall monitor. “May I see?”

Clara wiped her eyes and turned the canvas so that TINA’s camera could see it. 

“I like it. Let me know when you want to start R&D.”

~ ~ ~