18

I landed with a heavy thud on the rooftop, keeping my momentum as I ran to my next destination. The line of buildings in front of me were all of different heights, but they were close enough that I had no trouble jumping from one to the next. "I'll be at 7th and 43rd in a few seconds." I said over the coms, keeping everyone else informed.

"Copy, arriving at 7th and 42nd now." I heard Aqualad reply. I glanced in that direction, but of course I couldn't see anything as he would be on ground level.

"Corner of 9th and 24th clear, moving to next." Kid Flash said. "Still a little confused as to why we're checking intersections rather than tech companies."

"Because we have no idea which one the Fog will head to." I replied. "We're not even sure what, if anything, it wants beyond its own survival. But we are pretty sure that it needs power, and the only place it can do that is near the main city transformers at intersections."

The doctor had originally tried to build the Fog to only be able to recharge inside its container, but it turned out that when she had made her last minute adjustments she had incidentally added second option (which she had declined to tell the Shadows): the Fog could draw power from magnetic fields. It wasn't very quick and required a powerful field, but it could do it. And the only places in the city that had a powerful enough field were the main power transforms under the street.

So, we had split up to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. Admittedly Kid Flash was doing most of the work by volume, but when you have to search every intersection within a 30 block radius, you need all the hands you can get. Well, save for one, but Robin had a different job. "I'll see if I can give you a target in a few minutes, KF." Robin said. "While the STAR Labs branch here might have been destroyed, they must have recorded something about what they were doing and sent it to main office. If it has anything to do with what the Fog wants, that will tell us where to go." I had no idea where or how Robin was getting access to STAR Lab's network or servers, but for now I had other things to worry about.

"Maybe," Kid Flash said, sounding unconvinced. "But I feel like we're not going to find it like this before its starts carving its way through the city."

It was then that Roquette's voice came up over the coms. "You won't find it tearing through walls. That takes too much energy, which the Fog can't afford to spare now that its recharge hub is destroyed. It will be sliding along the ground, slipping through cracks and gaps until it absolutely has to act."

I reached the end of the line of buildings and slid to a stop just before the roof ended. I looked down at the street seven stories below and did a quick scan to see if anything was amiss, vainly hoping that I wouldn't have to yet again go down under the street to check the transformer in person. It was more tedious than anything else, but it didn't change the fact that I wished I had more advanced scanning abilities. Well, I technically did, but I still didn't know how to use them or if they would even work on the Fog. I had the processing system I had gotten from Amazo running throughout my body to see if it would help, but thus far nothing.

I was about to jump down and investigate in person when it happened. It was such a small thing that I almost missed it, a slight shimmer seeping up through the cracks around a sewer lid. I focused my vision in and saw what looked to be silver-ish sand flowing down the street, a compressed mass not much bigger than a person. Though my vision wasn't good enough to see down to a microscopic level, I had no doubt that I had found what we were looking for.

"I see it. It's moving south down 43rd street." I said, glancing at the various civilians milling about on the sidewalk. There weren't that many at this time of night, and none of them had the top-down view of the street that I had, but it wouldn't be long before someone noticed that odd substance slinking along the edges of the street. "It's keeping flat to the ground, seems to be avoiding contact with anything."

"Stay there, we are on our way." Starfire said. "Be ready in case the Fog becomes aggressive."

"Hard to say, but it doesn't seem like it's going to do that anytime soon." I said as the mass slid closer to my location. For a moment I found myself wondering just what I was looking at. Was it a newly born creature trying to survive in a world it didn't understand? Did it somehow become a person? Or was it weapon with drives and motivations that were alien to everything else on the planet? "Even if it does I'm hesitant to try anything, especially with all of these bystanders. Do we have any-"

That was as far as I got. One second the Fog was creeping down the street in my direction, the next it had exploded into upward motion straight at me. I had only about a second to react before the now bus sized cloud to nanites passed through the space I used to occupy. I rolled to my feet before I jumped even further back the cloud moving relentlessly after me. "Scratch that, the Fog is after me! Why is the Fog after me?!"

"What?! Machina, hold on, I will be there in a few seconds!" Aqualad said.

I didn't bother responding as I dodged to the side, the cloud rushing me yet again. I had to focus on just how to deal with the threat in front of me. My mind rapidly cycled through all the weapons and tech I had a my disposal, but I quickly realized that the thing that would be most useful was still the particular bit of tech I had been using the most, if more than I ever had before. As the aerokinetic core took shape in my chest, the surface of my whole body grew rough and angular, swept back spikes taking shape. I didn't have enough time to complete my transformation though, as only a second later the Fog spread itself wide before trying to encompass me. After being pushed back so far I only have one way left to escape, and I took it by launching myself off the building just as the Fog reached me.

The drop to the street must have only lasted just a second or two, but for me it felt like it was happening in slow motion. I twisted in the air to look back at the shimmering cloud that was almost touching me, my hand sweeping out in front of me. My skin shifted and rippled as the Fog reached me, the edge of the cloud touching my extended hand-

-0f#o7SuRviVe5ib%RvjE3gRowS$vJ3TwhYvj&P9IwhaTogaa55a4ecOnsuME'-

And then my body finished shifting, and with a scream both lightning and wind tore outwards from me uncontrolled. The Fog drew back from me just before I hit the ground with a thud, landing on my back. It wasn't quite as hard as I was expecting. What the fuck was that? I didn't have time to think about before the swarm darted back in. Acting more on reflex than anything else, I scrambled to my feet and cast out my hand at the thing, just trying to keep it away.

Something… processed. Even as lightning surged along my arm, the limb opened and transformed, air being sucked in to the newly formed gaps and channels. An aperture opened where my palm was, and the electricity that tore away from me was accompanied by a burst of wind that staggered me back, but also blowing a hole in the nanite cloud.

I blinked and looked at my arm as it shifted back to normal. Huh. Filing that away for later.

Lightning surged all over my body as the Fog and I collected ourselves, and I took the moment to take stock of my surrounding. I had fallen down onto a side street that was thankfully more or less devoid of civilians, a few parked cars lining the sides of the road. I could see a few people about 15 meters down the street who were taking notice of the impromptu thunderstorm, but hopefully I could keep the Fog's attention on me. I… I still wasn't sure just what the hell had happened a second earlier, but I knew that I definitely had the thing's interest. And that it was hungry.

The Fog emitted a noise that was a mix of high pitched synthetic tones and reverb, the sound echoing down the street at it drew itself up. I paused. Did… it just growl at me?

Suddenly there was a torrent of water between me and the Fog, and the cloud pulled back. Off to the side, Aqualad stood next to an open fire hydrant, the water pouring out following the motions of the pair of sword hilts held in his hands. As he flicked his wrist the stream broke into several tendrils and lashed out at the Fog from several directions. Some of the streams missed while other broke apart and splashed on the ground uselessly, but a few managed to hit the mass of nanites. Steam erupted wherever they made contact, the water being pulled apart as the Fog dismantled it to keep from being swept away.

The Fog decided it had enough of that and shot toward Aqualad, but the Atlantian was ready. He pulled his arms in, and suddenly water began to flow around him into a shell. In a matter of moments he was floating in a bubble of water, and I just managed to catch sight of his tattoos starting to glow before the Fog enveloped him. I felt a small surge of terror as a plume of steam erupted, but just as suddenly there was a burst of electricity. The nanite cloud let out that digital shriek again as it pulled back.

The Fog then seemed to realize that it was not going to be able to take us down, and before I could clear the distance the swarm pulled in on itself and bolted out of sight down a nearby alley. There was a beat before Aqualad dropped the shell of water around himself and settled to the ground.

"That was dangerous of you." I said as I ran past him into the alley.

Aqualad fell in line behind me. "It was a risk, but I felt it was a sound one. Especially after you just demonstrated the efficacy of electricity."

I grunted at him before I got back on the coms. "Fog's on the move again." I said as the two of us burst out of the alley and back onto the main street, juking to the side to avoid a car before tearing off after it. "It's headed down 43rd again. Aqualad and I are in pursuit."

"I'm afraid… that's not accurate." I looked back at Aqualad, who to my surprise was falling behind rather quickly. He simply wasn't as fast as either the Fog or myself. "Go!" He yelled at me. I looked back forward and started to pull on speed, my feet hammering into the street with sparks following my steps. While I normally defaulted back to my xenomorph form when I needed speed, and that form was more maneuverable, I could move at a pretty good clip as a humanoid when it came down to it.

And right now I needed the ability to aim. My arm snapped out in front of me and fired off a couple of low powered bolts, but I had a difficult time getting a bead on the thing. The cloud flew in an extremely erratic pattern, switching from spirals to zig-zag, flowing underneath and around cars whenever it could. I took shots at it when I thought it was safe, but I only landed a few hits. But for all its dodging, it was doing something odd: it wasn't trying to lose me. There were plenty of chances for the nanite swarm to change direction and go into a building, or down a side street, or though the sewers. But instead it just kept flying down the street. And I had a guess why.

"Guys, it looks like the Fog is headed somewhere specific." I said over coms. "Robin if you have any ideas-"

Robin's voice interrupted me before I could finish. "Got it! Cryptarch Industries!"

Huh, never heard of it, I thought to myself as I vaulted over another car. I would have guessed the Fog would have tried to go after one of the larger tech companies. "Alright. Any idea why?"

"In STAR Labs project records there's mention of a collaboration project between it and Cryptarch involving molecular assembly and rearrangement. The latest prototype had been sent back to Cryptarch for analysis. Sounds like exactly the sort of thing the Fog needs to make more of itself."

"If it's managed to figure out its own composition and structure… yeah that might do it."

"It gets worse. Cryptarch is a big time military contractor. It works on things ranging from weapons to electronic warfare and cryptography. If the Fog gets its hands on that the US military's network could be comprised."

"Because the stakes weren't high enough already…" I muttered to myself before I said "Is there any way to stop it before it reaches the building?"

"I'm just about done on the new virus." Roquette's voice suddenly spoke up over the com. "The old one caused a feedback loop that caused the nanites processors to burn out, but that wouldn'y work anymore if it's capable of self-analysis. So instead, I'm going to try to use that against it by forcing itself into a constant state of meta-analysis. This will flood its predictive algorithms with so many possibilities and scenarios that it will be unable to take action and either run out of power or explode."

I was silent for a moment to consider this before I said "You're going to shut down the Fog… by giving it an existential crisis?"

"Not how I would have put it, but yes. Unfortunately, I need to put the virus into system before the Fog co-op it."

"Right, hand it off to me and-"

"There's no time! Besides, do you know how to sneak a computer virus on to a prototype molecular forge?" I was silent for a long moment, and she continued. "I have to do it, but I need a little more time."

"Then we will have to slow it down as much as possible to give you that time." Starfire said. "Miss Martian, bring the doctor to Cyptarch. Kid Flash, take point and make sure the building is cleared out of civilians. Everyone else regroup at Cryptarch but do not engage. I have almost reached your position Machina, I'll intercept and harry the Fog to slow it down."

"Starfire-"

"I will not get close." She insisted. "But my star bolts should be enough to at least hurt it a little. Be ready… now!"

Sure enough, a moment later Starfire appeared from around the corner of an intersection just ahead and streaked down, flames longer than the length of her body trailing off her hair as several green bolts rained down on her target. The Fog twisted in a serpentine pattern to avoid the shots, but I still saw a few chunks of it get vaporized. I think the cloud was starting to look a little smaller than when I first spotted it, but that might have been my imagination.

The Fog made another one of its strange shrieks before it shot upwards towards Starfire. She immediately pulled back and flew upwards, quickly outpacing the nanite swarm as she shot into the sky. The Fog only followed her a short ways before it started to fly back down again and resumed its course, but not before it had to dodge a few more lightning bolts from me. And once it did fly back down, Starfire followed and opened fire on it again.

This pattern continued for a while, Starfire dashing in and out of range to attack while I followed close behind and took shots whenever I had a clear one. But for all that the Fog was too quick, to strange and amorphous a target to really pin down. We may have slowed it down some, but all too quickly Cryptarch's building was in sight. It wasn't as large as the STAR lab's building that had been destroyed, but it was a bland, six story building that I would have never looked twice at under normal circumstances.

I spied the bioship hovering near the building, with Miss Martian and Superboy standing in front of the building itself. As they caught sight of us approaching, Miss Martian rose into the air along with several bits of random detritus she had apparently gathered (cinderblocks, metal sheets, a tire, ect.) She cast out her arm and the pieces shot straight at the oncoming Fog, forcing it to dodge or chew through the improvised projectiles. The bad news was that it wasn't enough to slow the nanite cloud down much.

The good news was that Miss Martian's barrage was just a distraction for when Superboy hurled a dumpster at it.

The Fog though decided that it was done dodging and started to churn and swirl. The moment before the dumpster hit, the Fog narrowed in the front and simply speared straight through the thing. The dumpster all but disintegrated as the nanite swarm passed though it and shot upwards. For a brief, terrifying moment I thought it was going for Miss Martian, but it shot past her and plowed into the building, boring a hole at the fifth floor.

I couldn't quite jump up that high in my current configuration though. I could scale the wall, but I would lose precious seconds I didn't feel I had to spare. But how could I propel myself with enough force-

"Superboy, launch!" I shouted as I altered my direction slightly towards him.

In spite of how the teen only had a second to hear and parse what I said, Superboy reacted the moment I reached him by grabbing me and spinning, adding to my own momentum before he hurled me up to the fifth floor.

Unfortunately, he didn't have a lot of practice hurling people with accuracy, because rather than sailing toward the opening the Fog made I rapidly found myself approaching a solid section of wall about ten feet to the right of it. Before I could brace myself for impact though, a chunk of the destroyed dumpster flew in front of me (courtesy of Miss Martian), impacting the wall and causing it to crumble. I went clear through the hole and landed in a roll. I took stock of the hallway I had landing in with my blindsight, noting the doors lining one side and windows on the other. And as for the Fog-

Before I even got to my feet though, the Fog changed directions from moving down the hall away from me to coming straight at me, clearly hoping to reach me before I could get my footing.

"Down!" I heard Artemis yelled over the coms.

A second later the window next to the Fog breached, and I briefly caught sight of a strangely shaped arrow before it exploded. The Fog screeched and retreated back down hall. I only had sight on it for a second before I saw it flow into a vent at the base of the wall and disappeared. I bit back a curse as I briefly considered diving in after it, but I decided against it. Even with my shapeshifting this building had modern ventilation, which meant that the vents were only a few hands wide. I had limits, and the Fog would have a clear advantage in such small spaces. "I lost sight of the target." I said over the coms. "Doctor Roquette, are you in position? Because if so the Fog is coming straight to you." There was a long pause where I got no response, and I started to get worried. "Doctor, respond!"

Miss Martian's voice came over the com. "The device is in the basement testing lab. I left her there, but the whole area is EM shielded. I'm contacting her now with my telepathy."

"Wait she's alone- tell her to get out of there, now!" I yelled as I bolted for the stairwell, smashing the door open and hurling myself down the middle gap. It was an awkward fall as I had to pull my limbs in to fit in the narrow space, and I stumbled as I hit the ground hard. "If that place has ventilation, the Fog can head right for it!"

"She- she says she can't!" Miss Martian said. "Some kind of lock down has been initiated in response to the Fog! The whole lab is sealed shut!"

"God damn it, we have to get into that lab!" I yelled as I bolted from the stairwell, and promptly cursed again when I found that I was only on the first floor in the lobby. If the lab was important enough to have lockdown procedures, then it likely had a special entrance. One that would be no doubt shut anyway. It only took a second to decide on a course of action, and I quickly moved past the front desk to the center of the floor. "This basement lab, does it take up the whole foundation?"

"Yes, but it's a little difficult to get access to. It will take a few steps-"

"I can do it in one." I said as slid to a stop and my arm shifted. I hadn't experimented with the plasma rifle I had gotten from Sportsmaster much because it was too lethal to use casually, but I had learned that while it was capable of dealing a lot of damage in bursts, it had a bit of an overheating problem. Fortunately, I was able to get around this with the traditional solution to heat dissipation in firearms.

As soon as my arm finished taking shape, the plasma rotary cannon spun to life. I pointed it at the floor and fired, rapidly cutting a hole though the tiles, reinforced concrete, and steel. In short order a roughly circular section of the floor dropped down and I quickly dropped through the gap after it. I fell about 20 feet and landed in a large concrete room, the whole space littered with benches and electronic hardware, with rows of parts and mechanical waldos. It was also a wreck, as one side of the room was occupied by a swarming cloud of nanites. And on the other side me, just a few feet shy of being crushed by a piece of falling ceiling, was Doctor Roquette. The woman had fallen back on her rear, and was now staring up at me and her creation in wide eyed terror.

I didn't have time to think as the swarm shifted in response to me, I just thrust out my humanoid arm and with a shout let loose as powerful a blast of lightning as I dared. I didn't try to direct it other than forward, simply trying to destroy everything in front of me. I could only keep it up for a few seconds before my shout turned into a scream of pain. In my haste, I had forgotten to put electric shielding on my gun arm, and more than a little of the wild torrent of electricity had found its way to the unprotected limb. The lightning cut of as my arm fell to my side, a partially melted, disintegrating mess.

When the light show stopped I got a good look at what I had done. Metal and circuity melted, a few fires scattered around the room, and a lot of nanite dust littering the floor. But, at the other end of the lab I spotted a device that looked like a high-tech kiln, about nine feet tall and covered in a thick layer of nanites. Nanites, which I could see with my enhanced vision, that had formed into a mesh similar to the one covering my own body.

Damn it, stealing things is my thing.

I took a step back as the lights on the machine turned on, and the whole apparatus started to let out an ominous hum. I turned slightly, putting my damaged arm behind me as I looked back. "Doctor, is that…?"

"Y-yes. The molecular assembler." She confirmed as she shakily got to her feet. "I finished, but I couldn't get it installed in time."

I grunted as I returned my attention back to the thing in front of me. If I didn't finish this in the next few seconds, things would get very bad. And yet, even as I watch the surface of the device writhe with the damn things, I couldn't help but think how alive it seemed. For all its erratic motions and strange nature, it struggled to live. That strange presence I felt earlier…

I took a deep breath, and while I made a few gestures with the arm behind my back, I called out "If you can understand me, we don't have to do this! We don't have to fight!"

At my words, the movement of the swarm started slow. For a long moment, I wondered if it had actually listened to me. But that moment passed, and the Fog let out that digital scream before the mouth of the molecular assembler blazed to life, and a whole new cloud of nanites spewed forth from the opening.

I was out of time. Without wasting another second, I sprinted forward and cleared the distance, punching my rebuilt, unprotected arm into the device and the swarm surrounding it.

My assimilation spikes deployed, the Fog swarmed, and on a microscopic scale a war was waged. The Fog could only touch the part of me that wasn't coursing with electricity, so it focused all of it mass on my hand. This time I was ready and managed to keep that scraping, scratching on the edges of my mind out as my spikes spread wide. Nanites tore each other apart as each tried to gain ground, the broken and dead being replaced as quickly as they were lost. Then, the flow shifted and the Fog made a direct move as a dense spear of nanites surged forward and pieced into the center of my limb, trying to consume it from the inside out.

It might have worked… if the center of my arm hadn't contained the virus-laden flash drive Roquette had slipped me while my arm was reforming.

The flash drive was torn apart, and The Fog's motion suddenly stopped. I ripped my arm out of the mass, and I jumped back to level my now forming plasma cannon at the nanite swarm in case it started moving again. But, for the first few seconds, nothing happened. Then there was a faint humming sound, and as the sound grew louder I realized that the swarm was vibrating. It grew louder and louder, and the sound of its scream twisted and distorted. The sound became deafening as it rapidly shifted pitch and cadence, until it seemed like the air would tear itself apart.

And then it was silent.

"…buT wHy?"

There was a flash of light and the Fog disintegrated.

----------------------​

Watching from a rooftop about a block away, Cyrptarch was a mess of activity in the form of police, fire fighters and EMTs. My team and I looked on, keeping an eye on things while we regrouped. Roquette was back in the bioship, shaken by her close encounter with her 'brilliant science', but otherwise alright. And as for me… well I wasn't sure.

Did I just kill another sapient? Roquette reassured me that the thing wasn't really alive, but I don't think she heard what I did, those last words before it… ended. What if, even more horrifyingly, that virus gave it sapience, just so it could die from the shock of it all?

I sighed as I leaned on the lip of the roof, looking down at the mess I was partially responsible for. I'd probably never get an answer, and either way it didn't matter. Whether it was malicious or acting out of self-defense, the Fog was likely going to consume everything around it, and a lot of people would have died as a result. I just had to wonder 'what if'?

I became aware of someone settling next to me. "How much longer are we waiting?" Artemis asked as she sat on the lip.

"Till Robin gets here. And until the Cryptarch technicians arrive and make sure everything is clear." I said. "I consumed every trace of the Fog I could find, but I don't want to take any chances. If we missed something we should be around in case the action's not over yet."

Artemis let out a sigh. "Man, this superhero thing can be tedious sometimes, huh? Is this what it's like on every mission?"

"Several hours of travel, 90 minutes of waiting around, and 1000 seconds of pure chaos." I said as I turned to look at her. "Yeah, that's been my experience so far. Except for that one time a supervillain attacked right outside my house. Then it was right to the chaos."

This prompted a snort from the blonde girl before she looked at the ground. "Yeah well, think I missed most of it this time. Only fired one arrow."

"But it was a well-placed arrow." I said. "Besides, this was a weird one. Next mission I'm sure you can take point while I hang back. You know, take a well-deserved rest on my laurels and all that."

Artemis glared at me for a moment before she smirked and got up. "And here I was assuming it would be because you got all fat from pigging out on crunchy robot bits." She remarked as she started to walk away from me.

"Wha- don't you sass me girl!"

"You know you like it." She called back without turning around.

I stared after her for a moment before I muttered "Damn it she's right."