I checked Jaclyn's, Tiger's, and Izzy's feeds. They'd been fighting the cadre of guards that appeared to be tasked with defending the teleportation systems.

Even better, they'd stepped inside Teleportation Operations. It said so on a black sign next to the door.

The first word that came to mind was "industrial."

At least that's the first word that came to mind when considering the room. It wasn't the first thing I saw. The first words that came to mind based on what I was seeing were, "shattered power armor."

More than 30 people in power armor with broken breastplates, helmets, legs, and smashed energy weapons lay on the floor around the room. Almost as many had stepped out of their armor and been stuck to the floor with goo.

They were mere decorations to the main event.

The room itself had to be as large as the main room in HQ—at least basketball court-sized. Banks of cabinets covered in black plastic ran down the walls, some of them with blinking lights.

From the cabling, I guessed that many had to be batteries. Teleportation would require support for frequent surges of demand.

Three metal circles, all around ten feet wide, stood near the front. Four more, each around 20 feet wide, ran in a line down the room behind them.

At the far end of the room was a bank of human-sized tubes on a platform spanning the entire wall. Liquid and hazy shapes floated within the see-through material of the tubes, whatever it was.

I had a bad feeling, I knew what it was, and a worse one when I realized what it wasn't.

It wasn't an Abominator birthing chamber. The design appeared similar, but instead of the Abominators' blue-green alloy, the metal was grey except when it had been painted black.

Dr. Mind, possibly in cooperation with Rook, had recreated the system with our own technology. I'd seen a similar machine in Rook's base, but that one had been much smaller.

As I watched, Izzy said, "Oh, no."

Her camera followed her gaze, zooming in, showing a similar skull to the one we'd just fought and an open tube. A spider-like machine with a brain in the center climbed upward inside the tube.

Dr. Mind had said that he'd cloned himself before our grandparents killed him the first time.

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It didn't take a genius to guess that it was heading for the skull, and then we'd be right back to where we were a few minutes before.

Izzy screamed. The main impact centered on the skull, cracking it and shattering the tube that the brain had been inside. Even when she was trying to narrow the effect of the blast, her voice wasn't a precise weapon.

I wasn't sure how hard she was trying to narrow the blast either. Most of the tubes on either side broke along with the one Dr. Mind's clone had used. Plus, the concrete wall behind it cracked.

I could only guess what the fluid leaking out of the machine was. Human amniotic fluid was basically baby pee. The Abominators or Dr. Mind would have come up with something more effective, wouldn't they?

Either way, the brain spider thing had fallen as she screamed, landing in the shattered tube's remaining fluid and sinking to the bottom. Either because of mechanical failure or the brain's death, it didn't move again.

"That's creepy," Jaclyn said. "Why in the world didn't Dr. Mind clone himself a body?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe he was always a disembodied brain? Maybe he enjoyed the flexibility of being able to swap into whichever body was convenient? There are some advantages."

"Don't even think of it, Rocket," Cassie said, "I don't think Night Cat's into disembodied brains."

Ignoring Cassie's statement, Izzy said, "It's dead. I think my scream killed it. You won't be able to see this through the camera, but nothing else is growing in those tanks. I know there were wispy shapes, but I don't think they were alive."

"The shapes were the feeding and waste filtration apparatus," Cassie said, her tone matter-of-fact.

Vaughn asked, "How do you know that?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassie shrug. "I've connected to a couple of those with my Citizen's Mark now."

"Good," Izzy said, "I didn't want to kill more than I had to… But there's one more thing I noticed. We're the only ones in this section of the building now. They were sending more troops, but when Captain Commando killed Dr. Mind, they stopped. They even recalled the Cabal soldiers that were fighting us."

I checked my implant and she was right. The fight had started with some Cabal soldiers and a few people who might have been powered, but even before Cassie shot Dr. Mind, they'd begun to leave. It had started when Cassie hit one of the Cabal soldiers with her gun, but they'd exited by the time we'd knocked out all of the force fields.

Letting go of my focus on Izzy's camera, I found myself standing at the end of the Control Center in front of Brian Hart, Edward Branch, and a host of guards, all of whom were staring in the direction of Teleportation Operations.

Cassie and Vaughn were walking toward me.

Over my implant, Izzy said, "Accelerando thinks we should smash the teleportation circles. I think she's right. We're going to do it."

Part of me wanted to ask them to leave a small one, but I couldn't ask them to figuratively leave the back door open. So, I didn't, and the screech of tearing metal rent the air along with clangs, clanks, and crashes.

I looked over at Brian, "Are there any more birthing chambers and Dr. Mind clones?"

Brian blinked. "Do you think there might be more than one?"

I held up my hands, "I don't know. I don't live here. You worked for the guy."

Brian said, "I avoided the guy. He was a sociopathic brain in a floating giant skull who could burn me to death."

Night Commander Edward Branch looked up from the goo strands that held him. "Dr. Mind was a control freak. He wouldn't have risked releasing two copies of himself. If there is another, it's somewhere else in the world."

Cassie looked him up and down, "I hope not."

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