“We have a way to make implants. I have to make sure they’re safe and assuming I can do that, I’ll make them available to everyone.

“Oh,” Julie said. “Is it one of the machines from the island?”

I shook my head, “Nope. It’s older than that, but similar in origin. I’m only going to pass them on if they’re safe.”

She’d stopped smiling, “I get it now. Do you have any other tests you want to run?”

“No. I might need something later, but for now, I think you can go back to the group or whatever you want to do. I’ve just got to look things over and then send out an update to everyone’s suits. That and work on your sonic unit.”

She met my eyes, “Thank you for the sonic unit and looking into implants. I genuinely don’t think about all that you do. It’s a lot. Let me know if you need to run another test.”

I told her I would and she left.

After that, I checked in on the island bots. They’d made it to the big white building and none of them had been spotted. I’d set them into “sneak mode” because I didn’t have time to pay attention to what they were doing.

Their programming told them to find spaces where regular conversations were happening, listen in, and then follow up on leads that developed. I’d passed off decision-making control over to Hal. He’d likely do better than I would. I knew he’d also notify me if anything interesting happened, but it was good to check on my own now and then.

That considered, I rearranged Julie’s sonic unit to disappear from her arm and inconspicuously relocate to her torso. I also made the settings that worked best with her voice the defaults. I didn’t remove any options. With experimentation, she might discover things I might not think of. For example, what would she do with narrowcasting sound?

With that finished, I arranged the sound protection update and tested it on hundreds of simulated suits and a couple of real ones. Satisfied that it wouldn’t brick everyone’s costumes, I added a note that the new update required additional material—so have your extra cubes close.

Then I pushed out the update, including Julie’s update with as part of the larger one,  but with a flag that only triggered it on her suit.

A surprising number of suits started updating immediately and none reported errors, among them Travis’—which felt weird—but also Brooke’s, Alex’s, and Jenny’s, all of them in California and atypical for Alex. He tended to put it off forever. Jenny and Brooke didn’t, though.

Everyone on our team updated too. Well, it would be a lousy time to be vulnerable to voice powers.

As I watched the updates progress, noting when a new suit started the process, Vaughn stepped into the lab. “Holy updates, Batman… This is a biggie.”

He was still in jeans and a Hardwick Industries t-shirt, though. It wasn’t like he was wearing the suit. If he had been, it might have been uncomfortable.

“It is kind of big, yeah.”

Vaughn chuckled, “The sonic unit on Julie’s arm got absorbed straight into her suit and disappeared. I think she’s okay with it, but the rest of us were surprised. She’d just told us what she could use it for. Anyway, that’s not what I was here to talk about. We’ve got a plan. I’ve been talking with Dayton and he thinks we can swing a meeting with a few of us—I’m thinking Daniel and Julie, for sure.”

“Right,” I said, “they’re not using my suits. So Julie’s amplified power should blow right through their buzzer.”

Blinking, Vaughn said, “Uh… I thought Julie would be good because she and Jody got along back in the day. You’re right though, she’s a good backup in case Jody’s so totally out there that we can’t reach him.”

I felt myself frown, raising an eyebrow as I said, “Is reaching Jody on the table? From what I remember he willingly went after Alex with a knife that would have been lethal except that Alex could heal himself.”

Vaughn raised his hands in the air, “Sean’s a lot of things, but one of them is loyal. He’s more than halfway convinced that Jody’s working for Magnus, but he wants to give the guy every chance to admit it and get right with the group. I know it sounds crazy, but they all grew up together, all hid from the Cabal, all went through sports, Justice Fist, and Stapledon…”

Nodding along, I had to admit that he was right—Vaughn, that is. Sean was being unrealistically optimistic. Vaughn was dead-on in terms of understanding Sean and his group. I’d probably learn a lot more about people if I listened to him. That’s not what I asked about though, I asked, “Am I in this meeting?”

Vaughn shook his head, “We’re thinking Jody probably still hates you. The plan is an inside team that Jody doesn’t instantly hate and an outside team that has a good chance of taking him out.”

I smiled, “Which puts me on the outside team. That works. I don’t think my presence would make Jody think twice about betraying us to the Nine. If anything, I’d expect the opposite.”

Laughing, Vaughn said, “I think we all agree on that.”