The sensation of the void outside my senses reached a peak when I opened the door, once again revealing the glowing cosmic dust of infinity beyond the doorway, where there should have been a simple bathroom.

I could feel something out there, an almost magnetic attraction that drew me to take a step forward into the emptiness.

The void supported me, and I found myself standing in an ocean of nothing, staring up at…nothing. There was nothing there, but the emptiness drew my attention all the same, radiating strange concepts that I could feel reorienting my perception of reality in real time.

A gurgling noise to my right caught my attention, and when I turned my head, I saw innumerable doorways, with innumerable people standing in them, staring at the same spot that I had been.

Some of the doorways didn’t even have people, containing strange inhuman creatures, although most of them were human.

Curious, I turned my head to the left, studying the doors that receded into infinity. There were no humans there. Only alien creatures of various shapes and sizes.

A thought occurred to me.

Did my placement in the chain of doors indicate that I was the first human to experience this phenomena…or the last?

-Excerpt From the notes of Professor John Stevens

***Three years ago***

“Magneton,” Solaris said in the calmest voice he could muster, “I need you to step away from the magnetic infuser.”

“I can feel it just outside of my vision, Solaris. There’s nothing outside this room but it. Behind every door.” Magneton said, shivering in delight, his eyes, ears and nose bleeding profusely. “It’s too big for us to interact with as we are now. it’s on another plane of existence, the human to our ants. You think it’s distant, when distance has no meaning to it. The gravitation isn’t its body, but its attention.”

“O…kay,” Solaris said, wincing as his head began to throb. “Magneton, your wife is afraid you’re gonna hurt yourself. You remember your wife?”

Solaris hoped the strong bonds could pull Magneton out of the spiral he seemed to be in.

“In order to communicate with it, we have to become higher dimensional beings ourselves,” Magneton said. “That’s what the magnetic infuser will do. I’ll become an entity that surpasses human understanding, composed entirely of thought and living, self-replicating magnetic waves. I’ll leave this reality behind and commune with The Tide in person.”

“Jerry.” Solaris said slowly, “You have to come back to your wife. What you’re doing is going to hurt her.”

Magneton paused and glanced back at Solaris, looking him in the eye for the first time since Solaris had arrived to check on him at the behest of his wife.

Magneton had always been a petty, jealous cape, obsessed with honing his modest Tinker abilities, and furious at anyone who surpassed him. Solaris should have guessed he’d try to find a way to expand his powers.

His gaze now, held none of Jerry’s spiteful joie de vivre. It was almost sad.

“I’ll miss her.”

Magneton turned around and walked towards the ominously humming machine, his arms spread wide to fit into the depression that matched his form perfectly.

“NO!” Solaris unleashed a beam of scouring light. He couldn’t allow Magneton to do…whatever the hell he was doing.

When the light faded, all that was left of Magneton was a human-shaped lump in the machine, rendered into solid metal fused with the machine itself.

Did I…miss?

Magneton should’ve been turned to ash, not iron.

Solaris called an all-hands on deck emergency and waited a few days for the other shoe to drop. But nothing came of it. Eventually Solaris just chalked it up to a Tinker hopped up on Tide-madness that forgot to carry the one, turning himself to iron instead of a being of pure magnetic waves.

Or maybe he succeeded, and that’s all that’s left of his former body.

Either way, the status quo had been maintained.

***Paradox***

“So from a picture of Magneton walking out of a bank after stopping a robbery, we’ve got a fairly accurate estimate of the man’s height and dimensions,” Hardcase said, studying the humanoid lump in the massive contraption.

“That’s him, isn’t it?”

“All the proportions are identical, is all I’m saying,” she said with a shrug.

Perry pursed his lips and glanced between the disabled gramophone and the dead guy in the big engine.

“Why did his wiki say he was killed in battle when he obviously went insane and tried to…I don’t know, romance a machine of dubious origin?” Perry wondered to himself.

“Propaganda, probably.” Heather said with a shrug. “If he’s dead, he’s dead. The higher ups didn’t need to freak the public out with the real story of how it went down.”

“Man, tinkers are a crazy bunch,” Jetset said, “I mean, why make a trap that only targets people fluent in binary?”

“It wasn’t a trap,” Perry and Hardcase said simultaneously.

“If it walks like a duck,” Jetset said, shrugging.

“I managed to get into the main console,” Hardcase said. “There’s a file folder with hundreds of image files in it, labeled ‘Professor John Stevens’. I of course, did not look at them.”

“Who’sat?” Jetset asked.

“Professor Replica!” all three of them said, glaring at the ignorant buffoon.

“Anyway, my best guess is Magneton was experimenting with encoding professor Replica’s notes in multiple layers of obfuscation.” Hardcase said.

“Oh! So he was thinking if the information was slower to digest and took more of the brain to do it, it would be more diffused and less likely to cause…” Perry gestured at the lump. “That.”

“So what did the gramophone say?” Jetset asked.

“Don’t remember,” Perry said, shaking his head.

“Me neither.” Hardcase added. “Also, dumb question.”

“Manic’s gone and I gotta be the dumb one now,” Jetset said with a shrug.

“Anyway, it can be assumed the information is astronomy-related and can cause serious damage to the casual observer.” Hardcase said.

“Yeah, but why would he do this?” Wraith asked.

The tiny Tinker shrugged. “I’unno. Maybe he was trying to invent a technique to make astronomy safer?”

“Nah, that doesn’t sit right. The way this guy’s lair is put together feels mean and selfish,” Perry said, as a thought occurred to him. “Maybe he was trying to find a way to become a more powerful Tinker.”

Hardcase raised a brow.

“Think about it. Professor Replica was the most powerful Tinker ever. He’s the benchmark against whom other Tinkers are measured. I think Magneton thought maybe he could use the notes to recreate some of that power.”

“Well, he obviously fumbled it,” Heather said.

“Truth.” Perry said.

They stood around, solemnly studying the corpse embedded in the huge, mysterious machine for a while longer.

“Who else wants to tear this lair apart for goodies?” Perry said, raising his hand.

“Ooh, me, me!” Hardcase said, hopping in place and barely reaching his collarbone.

The rest of the process of tearing the lair down went smoothly. After they were sure all the traps had been disabled and the entire area defanged, they allowed the much-subdued Manic to explore at his leisure.

First they hauled out all the portable tech, saved anything that looked interesting, and put the rest on the Tinker Marketplace as a Lair Estate Sale, Caveat Emptor.

The Caveat Emptor was important because they had no idea if some of the tech was trapped or not. Sure, it drove the price down, but it was still a massive haul, and they each pocketed a cool half-mil once bidding died down.

Perry stripped the walls, ceiling and floor down to the concrete, running detectors over every square inch to make sure he didn’t miss anything, then re-finished the lair in more inexpensive materials, minus the landmines.

He used the LCC to separate the lair into its constituent rooms, floating dozens of feet apart from each other high in the air as they shuffled, making bystanders stop and gawk for the handful of minutes it needed to do the work. He cut out the gym and shower rooms, and switched their placement so that they jutted off to the side and his lab led directly into the new space, effectively tripling the size of his new lair.

Perry got a letter forwarded to him from his lawyer for damages to the laundromat totaling about two hundred thousand dollars, which stung a bit, but he still made out like a bandit.

Not only from the sale of Magneton’s gear, but also the raw materials he’d scraped up off the walls, and the mind-bogglingly strong magnetic gizmos they’d retained to study.

Perry got some interesting ideas from the gear, but he kind of hit a wall when Magneton’s tech delved beyond what was naturally possible.

Hardcase on the other hand, seemed to be taking to it like a fish to water. Three days later, she excitedly showing him a prototype robot arm connected and powered by solid magnetism.

Pretty sure it doesn’t work like that, but okay.

The model arm was composed of the primary anchor, the elbow, and the hand, each separated by several inches of air. From what he understood, Hardcase had deciphered how Magneton had warped reality with his Tinker abilities to create laser-focused magnetic fields that only manifested in specific places, their field turned inward, rather than outward.

Little floating whirlpools of magnetic energy. Impossible in any other situation.

“Can you imagine how much weight I could drop if I got rid of the supporting structures in the arms and legs?” Hardcase said, coming over to where Perry was working on his magical computer experiments.

“A thousand pounds?” Perry said.

“Maybe! And the way the anchors work, they’ll transfer nearly a hundred percent of the energy of a punch or kick. Joints are no longer the weak point in transferring kinetic force.”

“So you’re gonna weigh less and punch harder?” Perry asked.

“Heck yeah!” Hardcase said, doing a little dance.

“What’s the energy consumption like?” Perry asked, concerned about how much energy it might take to float her limbs.

“It’s LESS!” Hardcase squealed with joy and tapped his chest while she spoke.

“They actually use less power than typical motors and it takes almost none to maintain their position!” she said as she stepped away. “My newest mechsuit is gonna kick some serious butt!”

“Awesome!” Perry gave her a thumbs up as she moonwalked through the lab.

RIIING! The tiny girl’s pants started ringing, prompting her to fish out her phone.

“Yeah?” Hardcase answered her cell phone. “Alright, I can be there in half an hour.” She hung up and turned back to Perry “Titan says there’s gonna be a turf war tonight. We’re gonna do damage control.”

“Good luck. Stay safe.” Perry said nodding. If Paradox and Wraith weren’t explicitly requested to come it would be very rude to show up anyway.

They weren’t on the same team, after all.

Hardcase waved goodbye and started trotting up the stairs, heading to where her mechsuit was parked out back of the motel.

Perry shrugged and turned back to his project.

He had taken Areonite, divvied it up and mixed it with several dozen kinds of contaminants to modify its conductivity, and extruded each of them into a wire. He was now attempting to make a tiny circuit-board that could do some simple calculations. If he could make that happen, then he could turn it into a floating armament and maybe create a magical computer connected to his mind.

Which would be awesome and a great starting point towards making completely magically controlled armor.

Once he found a combination that worked, he could streamline the process with CAD and 3-D printing.

Perry flipped the magnifying goggles back down and picked up where he left off with the soldering tool.

***Natalie AKA Hardcase***

Natalie slumped inside the staircase, leaning against the wall, her heart pounding in her chest.

I can’t believe I touched him!

Something was off with her recently. There was this turbulent sensation in her body that bubbled to the surface and forced her to act.

Sometimes, she felt like she was going to trip and fall off the side of the earth if she didn’t steady herself on someone. This was solved by resting her fingertips on them for a moment, but this presented difficulties, obviously.

Natalie didn’t want to lose the respect of Wraith and Paradox, but she kept touching them, and sometimes, it felt like the words bubbling up from inside weren’t under her control.

She was finding it difficult to keep quiet when that was the appropriate thing to do. It just bubbled up from inside and she had to say something.

Is this love…or am I losing my mind?

There it is again, Natalie thought as she climbed the stairs, the bubbling sensation filled her lungs and threatening to drive her crazy if she didn’t say something.

She gripped the door for support as she exited Paradox’s lair.

“They’re out of my league,” she sighed, letting the bubbling sensation out in a carthartic moment that felt like stretching out a cramp.

“I don’t really think that’s the case, you’re at least as cool as Perry and Heather.” Brendon said, giving her a thumbs up from the reception desk where he and Sophie were going over the list of jobs for the day.

Oh god. My life is over.

“I’m not a slut!” Natalie blurted.

Brendon frowned, cocking a brow. “I…don’t think you are?”

“Brendon, would you mind taking care of the pool?” Sophie asked, eyeballing Natalie as she hyperventilated.

“Sure, ma’am,” The oversized teen cheerfully grabbed the bucket of cleaning supplies and pool net, heading out with a bounce in his step.

“Now,” Sophie said once Brendon was gone. “You wanna tell me where all…this, is coming from?”

Natalie shook her head vigorously.

“Okay,” Sophie pulled out a business card and tucked it in Natalie’s pocket. “My cell phone number’s on the bottom if you want to talk. I’ve got thousands of years of experience in counselling.”

“Aren’t you an angel?” Natalie asked, steadying herself against Sophie. “Where did you get a cell phone?”

“The same place as everyone else?” Sophie said with a hint of a smile.

“Oh.” Natalie said, her heartbeat gradually calming down as she realized that Brendon didn’t understand and Sophie would never use it against her.

“I…I gotta go do the crime-fighting thing,” she said, heading for the parking lot.

“Good luck, stay safe!” Sophie waved, her business card burning against Natalie’s thigh through her pocket.