The rooftop landing was clean.
Queen Bee and I touched down without a sound, heels connecting with the concrete edge of Max's apartment roof.
The complex was maintained as usual,
"This is where he lives?" she said, one hand smoothing her hair on instinct even though a strand wasn't moved. almost sounding resigned to her fate.
"Lived," I said, already moving toward the entrance. With a tug I broke the lock of the door.
She followed without further comment.
elevator doors opened and we rode up in silence.
The hallway on Max's floor was empty. I walked to his unit and knocked twice.
Nothing.
I knocked again. Waited.
Still nothing.
I stepped back. The finger print scanner he had was gone. That was unusual enough.
I looked lower, and saw it. A folded index card with my name written on the outside in Max's handwriting.
I pulled it free and opened it.
New location."Paris Invalides" Bring ID.
Below that, an address was outlined on the other side of the city, written out in full with a cross-street included.
He could've just texted, how dramatic.
We were back on the rooftop in under a minute.
we were moving again, Queen Bee keeping pace on my left as Paris opened up beneath us. The streets below still busy with people who had no reason to look up.
The address pulled us toward the eastern edge of the city, away from the density of the central arrondissements and into a stretch of blocks that were quieter. The buildings here were older and not in the historic sense.
We found the building without difficulty with my gps on my flip phone.
I landed on the pavement directly across from it and stood there for a moment, taking it in.
It had been a business or some luxury apartment of some kind, that much was readable in the bones of it. A wide flat facade, large darkened windows that had been built for display purposes once and now showed nothing. Old lettering ghosts above the entrance, whatever the sign had said worn down to shapes that didn't resolve into words anymore. Concrete steps, a little cracked at the edges.
I wondered why he chose a place like this. The place seemed abandoned. but now that im looking closer the windows had been darkened from the inside, not just dirty. The door and its frame looked reinforced, heavier than the original build would have called for. And set flush into the wall beside the entrance, was a slim console panel that very much had not been there when this place was doing whatever it used to do.
Chloe landed beside me, dropping her transformation with a shimmer of yellow light. She looked at the building.
"ugh, who in their right mind would go here," she said.
"I'm wondering the same," I replied contemplatively.
She eyeballed the building up and down. Then she looked at the biometric panel. Then back at me.
I stepped up and pressed my thumb to the reader.
a soft chime rang, I insert my Id next.
'Identity confirmed. Welcome back, Luka.'
The lock audibly disengaged and the door swung inward on its own smoothly.
The short entrance corridor beyond was a lot better lit than I expected judging from the outside, polished concrete underfoot, the ceiling a neutral white. walking to the end It opened at the far end into the main space and I stopped.
At the threshold for just a moment I witnessed the full scale of max's operation.
Max had gutted whatever had been here before and built something else entirely in its place.
The ceiling was high. Workbenches ran along two walls in a long unbroken run,different machines interluded between, with many arranged atop the tables leaving room for any potential accidents. The center third wall was filled purely of monitors and a large control board. many where mounted fixed, others on articulated arms on the roof that could be repositioned freely, currently angled toward whatever needed attention. Equipment I recognized and some I didn't yet lined the shelves above.
In the far corner, floor to ceiling, encased in newly fabricated brushed silver panels, stood the NAS tower. Entirely silver the copper no longer visible. It hummed with a surprisingly quite sound one I picked up only due to my miraculous senses.
more Displays were floating around the room at eye level, several of them, each showing something different. System metrics. A build log cycling through entries. A rendered schematic rotating slowly in three dimensions. They drifted hovering above individual projects.
An inhale of air caught my attention "what, in the world is all this is all of this," she said, not knowing what to make of all this.
"While I was off in New York, It seems my friend here has upgraded again." I said.
Her eyes moved across the room in a slow sweep, the benches, the monitors, the floating displays, the silver tower.
"Your friend," she said carefully, "is a freak."
"No," I disagreed. "He's not."
Max appeared from behind a floating monitor, a cable connector in one hand and his glasses pushed slightly up his nose from where they'd slipped room covered in a blue glow. He looked like he'd been awake through most of the hours I'd been traveling. But his eyes were clear, and his appearance was neat.
"is that you Luka, your finally back." He set down the connector. and glanced to my side "And a miraculous holder?"
I gave a wave and smile "sass scales slither." Sass curled loosely around my shoulder, his small golden eyes tracking nothing in particular.
Seeing me unbothered Queen bee followed "Buzz Off."
"I wasn't expecting— This is. Very surprising to say the least."
"Does it change anything?" I asked.
He considered. "No." He adjusted his glasses properly and moved toward us. "The account. You saw the figures."
"Four hundred and thirty-two thousand," I said. "With just six videos."
A contained satisfaction crossed his face. "Yes it even surprised me a bit, I along with markov managed to find out the algorithm for the platform, with you being the Hero himself it'll only continue faster." He glanced toward the silver tower. "Perseus has the updated my index analysis if you want the breakdown."
"Would you like to start," A tone from across the room. Calm, and even, in a way that gave away it was artificial. much more distinct from Markov's emotion spectrum.
"Yes give me a brief overview."
"All analytics for associated accounts are indexed and available. Currently tracking six content entries across three referencing channels. Growth curve is within your projected parameters."
"He's been running continuously since the move," Max said, with something close to fondness in his tone. "The previous Nas Tower is identical in function, Centralizing all storage, but it must go through him first."
Chloe was looking everywhere, all the unkown machinary was a lot to suck up. one of the nearer displays, with the 3d model showcase fashionable shades, a stylish white with solid black lenses and encrusted rims. Her eyes moved across it with more attention than the rest of the creations and Max picked up her interest.
"That there is my Life navigation system," Max said, following her gaze. "Meant for everyday decision making, it "weighs" probability. The social simulation runs alongside it now and follows Frances economic standing and pressures depending on your class, not to mention it aids in all kinds of social pressures be it a terrible boss or cruel family, both respond dynamically and are personalized with whatever the user inputs." He glanced at me. "Everything you asked for from New York has a physical form now. The wearables are ready in the flesh."
"Show me," I said interested. I couldn't lie I was tempted to test them out.
The bench he led us to was set apart from the others. Items arranged in order of completion rather than process—the things that were done for now nearest to the front, Max began clearing his throat.
The first thing he held in front of me where contact lenses. It was in a small flat case.
I opened it and A single pair sat in the solution. It was completely ordinary looking mostly besides the obvious copper sheets meant to line the iris.
"Put it in quickly," Max said, with a smile he couldn't contain.
I did. And nothing seemed to be happening yet.
"Look at Chloe," he said.
I turned toward her. She was standing near one of the floating displays, arms loosely crossed, not doing much of anything.
Huh?!
Just seconds later I saw a fine overlay across her frame, subtle enough not to block my view of her limbs.
"This, this is beyond impressive."
"It tracks a persons every move, The smallest twitch, a breathe when someone goes to punch, even facial expressions continuously refining for each individual habit. All in order to predict the movement of a person by two seconds."
His implications were tempting, a tool to speed up my reaction, but I wasn't too sure relying on it would be good though, there no way it could actually predict every—
"Every person telegraphs what they're about to do before they do it, no matter how small." Max said clearly knowing what I was thinking.
I sighed, I'd have to test it before I judged, I'll have a little faith for now.
"Could you make another pair for her."
"Not a problem I just need a scan of her iris to get the curvature, iris size and diameter."
Max was already moving to the next piece, and I could see it didn't work on max at all.
The second piece was compact and flat, thin enough to clip at the sternum without printing through a shirt. But then he reached for more. he picked it up a sleeve running from elbow to mid-forearm
"This one took the longest," he said holding it with particular care.
"This here is for your reflex enhancement. it get damaged easily but works for its intended purpose. The nerves of your epidermis are much faster to react than your voluntary muscle cells, this sleeve acts as a sort of receptor like your eyes, skipping the central nervous system straight to the effector which in this case is your muscles. It cuts through a full forty milliseconds,"
Well that didn't make any sense but. A win is a win.
When he finished, I nodded "Good."
"There's more," he said, already moving toward a second station. "The SEM results from your Miraculous came back while you were away. Come take a look."
Max set the sleeve back down on the bench with the same careful placement before moving to the screens at the control panel. The SEM imagery filled the screen. Black and white, high resolution of my miraculous.
"I ran the full scan while you were gone," Max said, studying the imagery with a serious voice I hadn't heard in a while.
"The results came back and I've spent considerable time since then trying to find a useful point of comparison." He pulled up a second window—a comparative chart, known materials indexed on one side, the Miraculous readings on the other. The overlap between the two columns was functionally nonexistent. "The particle structure doesn't correspond to any known element. It doesn't approximate any known compound. It doesn't behave according to any material model I have access to." He paused. "It is, by every measure I can apply, something that should not exist."
Chloe had drifted over from the display she'd been studying, drawn by the change in his voice.
"A material science problem without a framework," he sighed.
"Does that mean it's impossible to replicate."
"Not exactly. Which means before I can interpret the data I have, I need to establish a baseline. A different "Miraculous" object scanned under the same conditions. If the particle structure is consistent, that tells me something fundamental about the material. If it varies between them, that tells me something else entirely." He pushed his glasses up. "Either outcome gives me a direction. Right now I don't have one."
I reached into my jacket without answering and set the Bat Miraculous on the bench between us.
Max looked at it. He didn't reach for it immediately he observed it first, the way he approached anything unknown.
"I got this trinket from New York, do with it what you must, break it wear it, talk to the creature, anything to improve it.
Max picked it up carefully, turned it over once in both hands, then set it back down with the deliberateness of someone who understood what they were holding even if they didn't yet know what it was made of.
Initiating sample analysis queue, Perseus said from across the room. One of the floating displays near the station shifted, Estimated preparation time for SEM imaging: two hours, forty minutes.
"He queued it before I asked," Max said. There was something in his tone that wasn't quite pride but was adjacent to it.
"I'll see how many atoms and of what kind I need and attempt a reinterpretation of this strange material. I'll see what I can do but there no guarantee."
"You've done a lot in a short time, Max" I said.
Max looked around the lab with the expression of someone holding back for now. "The probability of me reaching this stage within the available timeframe was approximately thirty-one percent despite the money."
"And yet," I said.
"And yet," he agreed.
Chloe had migrated back to one of the free-standing monitor arms near the center of the room while Max and I talked, clearly interested in getting one for herself judging by the pictures, Sass apparently since I saw him right by her side.
I pulled out my phone. The private flip phone I used all throughout new york. high tech enough to handle social media without difficulty didn't leave a text trail that was easy to follow.
Once Chloe got her optician eye scan I knew exactly where I was headed next, but before that I contacted Adriene.