Alchemist sat in his own lab, far away from Andromeda’s mess, his brain hooked up to the computers as he processed information as quickly as possible.

  Most of his labs had succeeded with their tasks, though all of them were under some level of stress as he ramped up his timetables and the heroes did their best to squash them. And the cause of it all was one subject who got an escape power.

  Alchemist chuckled darkly as he considered the odds of that subject interfering if they hadn’t taken that one friend.

  If they had just dumped their evidence to law enforcement, it would have gone nowhere. He had contingencies for that.

  But he knew what a super with seemingly nothing to lose would go through to end it all, and, low and behold, he did.

  Losing Subject Frost was also irritating. She was the only success out of trying to give someone super powers by grafting another super onto them.

  More than that, they’re working with a tech genius and other heroes in the city, though he wasn’t sure where Cannonball or that shapeshifter came from. The real problem child was the phaser. Not only had he developed his ability to go in the opposite direction, he also seemed to have a detection ability, which was the worst.

  He had a few resources that could probably work in trying to take down the phaser, but the question then is, could they take down everyone else?

  More information was needed.

  He also needed to decide if it was even worth it to try and take back that town. Andromeda was a useful resource, but they had done the bare minimum he required of the labs already.

  As he considered his options, Alchemist pulled up the video of the still unnamed phaser beating the stone mimic in a fistfight.

  The black color was familiar enough; he had more than a few from his experiments that ended up with that color. Historically, they can either interact with each other in some way or both are unresponsive.

  A slower response from whomever he sends would be the most efficient, and it depends on how the full team wants to work, if they all want to stand in the day as heroes or not.

  Alchemist actually considered the fact that the phaser hadn’t taken a name yet as a chance he could go with an easier plan. If he hadn’t fallen into the trap of being a hero, then there could be room to maneuver.

  He took a moment to mentally design a few containment cells that could work against the phaser with his current displayed abilities. Most of them involved just suspending the man in the air.

  “Gloomwraith, I want you in ten minutes.” Alchemist said, projecting his will through the tech integrated into him to make sure his subordinate showed up.

  Having Andromeda get captured was thankfully not a concern. Of all the people chosen to run the labs, Andromeda was the one least likely to betray him. After all, she was the only one who truly believed in his mission.

  Unfortunately for her, she was truly expendable. Her only real use was in decreasing the amount of assistants he needed to send to a lab.

  Vortex wouldn’t be ideal to lose; he had only successfully engineered so many spatial manipulators, so he would probably have to call that one back.

  The mummy was useless; he had more useful fighters. Same with Kurt. He was fine, but he wasn’t even that skilled of a telekinetic, so Alchemist felt no strong desire to rescue him.

  Vertiga gave him pause. She was one of the few natural-born supers in his company, even rarer in that she was one of two naturals who had a physical mutation that was unrelated to her actual power.

  He had made substantial progress in his research because of her existence and incapacitation types were useful. Especially ones that could work through technology.

  He would attempt to set things in motion so that they could escape. Though he couldn’t allocate more resources to them.

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  Even Gloomwraith was probably too much to send, but he was being sent for a different purpose, so he let himself lie that it was allocating unused resources to a new project instead of trying to support one already failing.

  “Andromeda,” Alchemist said, his voice crossing the distance and coming out of the phone she was using at the moment.

  “Yes, boss?”

  “Besides you and Vortex, what resources or supers do you have at your disposal?”

  “Direct disposal or I can get access to?”

  “You can get access to.”

  “Well, we’ve made a lot of friends in this town, and for the most part we didn’t use them just randoms doped up with temporary powers. So I could probably get them. Though they might get a little rowdy till I remind them who’s in charge.” Andromeda explains. Thankfully, staying on target.

  “Do you think you could spring your compatriots from whatever cell they’re in?”

  Andromeda makes sounds of consideration. “Well, boss, I have some bad news in that I may have sort of been part of the reason Vertiga got captured.”

  Alchemist was glad he couldn't be seen as it was bad form for him to almost break the glass in his hand in irritation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we were being attacked by Subject Forty-Three and his friends, and I wanted to escape with everything I could, so I had Vortexy teleport her and Forty-Three away, so she might be a little bit upset with me.”

  Alchemist stayed silent for a moment. He most certainly would have made the same decision after all; that’s how he had gotten as far as he had. It did make rescue a little bit difficult.

  Most people don't respond particularly well to being thrown into jail because of you.

  “Still move forward anyway. Regardless of how this operation goes, I do plan on sending Gloomwraith to switch the city to plan B,” Alchemist said, bracing himself for the irritation that was convincing Andromeda.

  “Gloomie is coming! I haven’t seen him since the last time I saw him!” She gasped. “Does this mean you’re going to send me somewhere else? But I like this city!”

  “We have limited resources, so I don’t want you to keep wasting them in a place aware of you.”

  “That’s fair, but you want me and Vortex to spring them from the slammer and then escape and get mustaches and hide our identities in Mexico?”

  “No?”

  “Well, I can at least wear the mustache, right?”

  “If wearing a mustache will be what helps you deal with the situation, feel free.”

  “So I’ve been watching the videos of the people that beat us, and I think that at least the phaser and cryokinetic don’t really know what they can do yet,” Andromeda said.

  “Not the other two?”

  “Cannon boy has been around for ages. He’s either really stupid or knows what his powers can do and chooses to not doesn’t matter to me. As for the shapeshifter, I don’t know. But I do know Frostie and I do know thirty-seven. Both of them are a lot stronger than they were when first displayed, but I bet they can do more.”

  “Enough that you don’t think that Gloom and his men can handle it?” Alchemist asked, tapping at the air. Andromeda was insane, but there was intelligence buried somewhere within all the madness.

  If she thought her opponents could still grow, then there was good reason to believe her.

  “Gloomie can probably do it. Those abyss powers are pretty fancy, though I do hope someone on the team can mess with gravity much better than space. Even when shiny and black, thirty-seven is affected by gravity.”

  “We have someone for him.”

  “Awww okay. Do you need anything else from me, boss man?”

  “No.”

  Andromeda hangs up off to plan her operation.

  Gloomwraith slinked into the room, the black tendrils fading as he returned to his completely mundane appearance once he’s in front of Alchemist.

  “I need you to go to Silver City,” Alchemist said, cutting right to the chase.

  “Silver City?”

  “Yes, the lab is self-destructing and most likely Andromeda will be captured.” Alchemist said as Gloomwraith nearly gasped in surprise. “So I’m going with plan B, so I want to send you and your men out to try and get the city on track.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to have to find a new one of the seven?”

  “Probably not. Andromeda is still highly useful, and I doubt that they’re going to kill her. She’ll just be in a storage facility till we break her out.”

  “Don’t want us to do that but watch and try to run a city instead?” Gloom asked, barely able to keep up with the information.

  None of this was to his expectations, and most of it flew in direct opposition.

  “No, they have a couple of supers that could chase after me, so I would like them occupied, and I think they could have some interesting potential, so I want them pushed, understood?” Alchemist asked.

  Gloom nodded before waiting to be dismissed. If that was what the boss wanted, he couldn’t say no.

  Once Gloom was dismissed, Alchemist kept an eye on the man as he went through the facility collecting his men and heading to one of the war rooms so that he could begin planning out his operation.

  Alchemist wasn’t sure what odds he would put the operation at. Gloom was a powerful super, probably third strongest in the entire company if Alchemist was being realistic, but this will be the first time he had faced someone with skill and the same source.

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