Groaning, Gabriel engaged his generator on low power to exit the room. He would heal in around an hour he thought, maybe less if he laid down and got enough calories in his system. He would make a point to threaten whoever was responsible for this lack of briefing on the training robot’s power level.

Floating out of the training room, he started towards his quarters. About five minutes later he reached his lab. He liked the place, after all, it was the room he had grown up in.

He could feel his torn fibers repairing themselves. The pain along his spine had lessened, but his ribs and sternum still threatened to make his eyes leak tears with certain movements.

As Gabriel floated into his quarters he passed through the foot-thick plexiglass dome that served as his “room”. He was pleased to see food arranged on one of the four tables that took up the center of the room.

For many metahumans, rest and recuperation were a big part of life. Many healed like regular people. Even some Class 4’s or 5’s with nigh impenetrable skin took weeks or months to heal from serious wounds. In some cases, a Super might heal even slower than the norm.

In the unluckiest cases, Supers might not be able to heal on their own at all.

Gabriel couldn’t grow a limb back or anything like that, but his cells tended to want to stick around, to say the least. The process would happen over time, but he could help it along by providing his body more calories. That meant eating, and in this case, eating a lot. He filled his plates with everything from greasy to expensive and sat on a stool.

While he ate, Gabriel thought about the fight. It had been hectic, no. It had been a trial. As his supercharged adrenaline tapered down he acknowledged he’d been lucky to even survive.

Even if they hadn’t briefed him, his carelessness in juggling his inventions had lost him the extra edge his mind had already created. He needed to upgrade his suit soon, as in during the next few hours. Before then he had to debrief. He had a few choice words for the scientists.

He tried to take off his suit, but a few of the straps had fused together from the heat of his generator. It would take him a bit to separate them, so he started eating while thinking logistics.

He would revamp his software, he needed an easier way to shape AM Constructs with a more accessible method than the ocular interface. A more efficient coolant and heat sink system would give him more than the three Constructs an hour in his repertoire for any future battles.

His gut wrenched and he froze for a moment after thinking of a real mission, remembering the elephant in the room - or rather his head - for the first time in a few days. As he had grown, Gabriel developed crippling anxiety. He had been told the anxiety was a side effect of his mutations.

After research, he discovered that mental imbalances were commonplace in the super community. These imbalances could range from fear to joy, but they were obvious in most cases. Higher Class supers weren’t immune to mental illness either. The more extreme a person’s abilities, the greater the chance for mental imbalance.

While he loved people, nature, and culture, he only interacted with them through the Net. He experienced severe panic attacks when he imagined being outside. Even just thinking of a random street or a beach. Gabriel frowned, he told himself he could deal with it when the time came, though no remedy apart from therapy had been found for such problems.

He pushed the thoughts away, returning to the task at hand.

His last project would be adding the titanium-carbon polymer muscles and armor plates to his suit. The armor plates were strong enough to take a hit from a Class 4. The “muscles” as Gabriel lovingly called them weren’t the typical system of actuators and metal rods in most powered suits. Instead, he had designed a system that mimicked the structure of the human body.

Each muscle was designed to act in the same way as the strands of protein in a person. They used hollow bundles of polymer filled with liquid mercury that produced force through hydraulic pressure. They would amplify his natural strength and speed to Class 4.

While Gabriel was lost in thought, Jimmy - one of his main Handlers - walked up to the door of the lab dome, pressed his finger to the reader, and walked inside.

“Hey, Gabe! That fight was crazy! Hope you healed well with that food we left out for you. I made sure to ask for your favorites!” He almost shouted with energy. “It’s almost time for the debrief. Professor Holmes is here, he showed up out of the blue. Are you ready?”

Gabriel watched him, paying close attention to his upbeat expression and honest eyes. Almost instantly, Gabriel knew that Jimmy had nothing to do with the robot. Nothing was hiding in his expression. He just liked Super brawls. It was his partner that enjoyed the actual physics of it.

Gabriel felt guilty for suspecting Jimmy of possibly being involved in what could have been anything from a deadly prank to an honest attempt on his life. The man had taken care of Gabriel since he had been “born”. He and his partner, Harold, had been his primary caretakers since the start of Phase 2.

Jimmy had passed on his obsession with Heroes and the Guardians when Gabriel had been young. He was the only scientist to want to bond with the clone in earnest. Where the others only saw him as an experiment, he had been Gabriel’s only source of joyful human contact.

They would talk for hours, and as Gabriel grew taller, their conversations had grown deeper. He had long thought of Jimmy as his emotional life preserver. The one person he could share his doubts and fears with.

“Yes Jimmy, I healed up quite nicely. Thank you for asking. I’m ready.” Gabriel began to walk quickly towards the exit, passing the approaching scientist. “Which conference room is it today?”

Flinching at the sudden, blurry movement, Jimmy turned to follow the Super out of the lab at a jog. “It’s room 1 today, so on this floor.”

The pair walked towards the conference room through the 3-mile long hallway outside. This level - deep under the city of Houston - the secret third basement of the Iodine Building, was shaped like a capital T. Two large rooms - one of which was Gabriel’s lab - sat on the ends of the arms and the huge training room in the hall intersection of the basement.

The other end of the T held Lucian’s room, but Gabriel was never allowed on that side of the facility. In the long hall between both brothers were hundreds of doors to smaller labs. Where Iodine’s scientists were hard at work developing new tech, much of it based on Gabriel’s discoveries.

Reaching conference room 1 a few minutes later, they settled into comfortable reclining chairs set up around a table to wait for the other participants. Harold stomped in as they got situated. A scowl on his face, as usual, and a new stain on his lab coat over his belly. He’d just sat down when Professor Holmes walked in, wearing an emerald green topcoat and pants ensemble; customary cane in hand despite having no limp.

A world-famous scientist many decades before Gabriel existed, Holmes still looked under 30. Not aging past their prime was common among Class 3 and higher Supers. Nobody on the Net knew what Holmes’ power set was, and no one had ever been able to get a straight answer in interviews.

Holmes rarely made an appearance at Iodine, always off on some mysterious business trip or another. According to the hidden logs Gabriel discovered, most of his trips were black market deals. Holmes had always given him the creeps.

“I understand congratulations are in order Gabriel. Your AM Cannon tests are complete!” Professor Holmes said in his British lilt. “We can begin Phase 3 soon! I saw the footage myself and I must say, it was a marvelous show Old Boy!” He grinned from ear to ear.

The smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Gabriel fought hard to contain his anger. “I may deserve praise, but what happened in that training room was unacceptable! That robot was far too strong to be Class 3, why was I not told before I was almost sent to my death?!” His frustration boiled over quickly and he belted out the final words loudly, not quite yelling.

Confusion filled and a frown formed on Holmes' face. “What? You expected the last trial of your antimatter Cannon to be against a Class 3 training robot? Why would you think we would send you against such a weakling?”

Weakling?

Holmes must pack quite the punch if that’s what he thought of a Class 3 brawler with a Class 3 lance weapon and Class 3 speed. Those attributes were known as the trifecta of mutations for a reason.

“I was told that the robots only went up to Class 3, and yesterday they said that the robot would be set to max. Ergo, I ASSUMED I WAS FIGHTING A CLASS 3 AND SOMEONE ALMOST GOT ME KILLED!” Now he was yelling.

Holmes poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table and took a drink while Gabriel’s anger flowed. “Are you quite finished?” He asked expectantly, ready and waiting to just sip his drink while Gabriel vented.

“Yes I’m done, but it doesn’t change the fact that my anger was and is wholly justified,” Gabriel responded in a more even tone. “There was no excuse to keep me out of the loop. I should know what the machines I work with daily are capable of.” The anger slowly ebbed away.

Holmes stared at him, pensive, for what seemed like forever. Then his gaze hardened with a coldness that wasn’t there before. He turned to Harold.

“You have some explaining to do. Any advances made to the Warbots are your area of expertise. So tell me. Why did you not tell young Gabriel of the improvement of an entire Class in capability? You didn’t, perchance, intend for anything to happen to one of our greatest treasures, now did you?” His eyebrows rose as he made his final statement.

Harold withered under his stare, almost physically cringing away. “I c-c-could have told him, b-but it was deemed more valuable for research purposes that the data collected was… that of a real fight… and that means… unpredictability.” He trailed off when he saw Holmes’ expression, and gulped.

“And who, pray tell… made this decision?” Holmes’ glare didn’t let up as the seconds ticked by. Harold started to sweat from stress.

“I-I-I’m the one who made the final call, b-but i-it was Greg from lab 132 who made the suggestion, and the rest of his team recommended the same, they’re my seniors… I couldn’t very well snub them now could I?”

Harold’s hands clenched and unclenched in his lap, eyes darting side to side, his face looking like he wished he had an invisibility mutation.

Holmes frowned. “We will discuss this later. I need time to decide how I’ll punish those responsible.”

Harold started to stutter a response when the Professor cut him off. “Not another word out of you for the time being, if you so please”. The scientist shut his mouth with an audible snap.

“Now then Gabriel, let’s move on to the actual debriefing. Provided you’ve finished voicing your distaste with the circumstances of the test.” He waited until he was sure Gabriel wouldn’t interrupt before continuing.

Glancing at his Wrist Pad for data reference, he said, “First off, I thought the battle was spectacular. It lasted approximately 30 seconds with damage outputs on a scale comparable to Photon. You fared better than the average Class 4 would have.

The recording shows you almost died more than once during the fight, but you kept adapting and responding to the situation at hand. Consider your combat training complete as of now. There will be no further exercises unless you desire to practice with your equipment.

I understand that armor has already been 3d printed for your exo-suit. That should make you much more sturdy in a brawl. I would also suggest augmenting your arsenal with more options. Something that could be tuned down for lesser targets and higher for more formidable enemies.

Furthermore, I would recommend that you get an alternate form of defense on your exo-suit, aside from the armor plates. The more creative the better. Remember, you always want to keep your enemies on their toes.”

He paused to take a sip of water. “I only wish Lucian was as receptive to my suggestions as you…” He sighed theatrically.

At the mention of his brother, Gabriel perked up. He hadn’t had any sort of contact with Lucian since the day when they picked their names a year before. The day ended in the cold-blooded murder of one of Lucian’s handlers.

Gabriel needed to satisfy his curiosity. “Is he not doing well with his progress, Professor?”

The man sighed once more. “Well, as you know Lucian’s particular mutations have long been under his control, but his psychotic tendencies don’t make interaction with him easy. I’ve marked it unnecessary to continue his combat training. He has, however, become dormant again…”

Jimmy and Harold shared a frightened look.

“WHAT!? He went catatonic again!? Jesus Christ the implications! He could come out of it in a rampage like the first time!” Jimmy mumbled nervously.

Lucian’s power had grown to legendary heights under Holmes’ meticulously planned tutelage. There was no guessing how effective any contingencies for a rampage would be.

The older super looked at his audience with grave eyes. “That, my comrades, is why I am here personally. To avoid any… undesirable consequences. Rest assured I have everything well in hand. I must now formally advise you against continuing this line of inquiry.”

Discouraged by the breakdown of communication, Gabriel sat and waited for the Professor to confer with Jimmy and wrap up the meeting.

“Now I will bring our meeting to a close with an order for Gabriel to remain well-rested during the next few days in preparation for the commencement of Phase Three. Implement those upgrades my boy. You will need them soon enough.” With that, the tall man stood and exited the room with unrestrained energy, disappearing in the flicker that revealed Holmes was at least a Class 4.

Gabriel sat in stunned silence while his handlers mumbled their farewells and left. Jimmy patted him on the shoulder on his way out, but the Super didn’t even notice. Lucian’s return to a catatonic state was a disaster waiting to happen.

Lucian had been as rigorously tested as his brother. The tests found that Lucian was at least a Class 6 Telekinetic. The scaling system wasn’t foolproof, though, and tests for Supers higher than Class 4 could be inaccurate. Lucian’s results indicated he was likely more powerful than Class 6.

Considering the last known Super with Class 6 telekinesis died 50 years before the first invasion, Lucian’s powers were comparable only to Quantum’s control of matter on a subatomic level. If Lucian were to become enraged, he might be impossible to stop.

The news of Phase Three was a new variable to factor in as well. Gabriel learned that Phase One had been their successful infancy and growth stabilization. He also knew that Phase Two had revolved around training them in the use of their abilities as well as their physical bodies for use in combat.

Logic would say Phase Three would involve real engagements, considering the Professor’s cryptic advice. This gave him pause. How many more fights like the one in the training room could he survive before his luck ran out?

He returned to his room, stressed. Worrying about Lucian as well as trying to solve his agoraphobia, he felt a wave of weariness take hold. Tearing off his unfinished suit - ripping the fused straps without a second thought - he fell into bed.