Stepping away from the warehouse Rachel held tightly to her things as she flew off towards Caleb’s house. Stepping inside after a few knocks on the door she found him busying away at a black box of wires and sensors. When she closed the door he didn’t even look up.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Sorry about the scattershot of stuff around the living room. I’ve had a lot of projects to finish in rapid succession.,” said Caleb. He motioned around the room and once she got passed the hallway she saw the messes he had accumulated.

“It might be better if you had a separate space for this instead of right next to your TV and twenty feet from your kitchen.”

“That might be a better idea for some, but I need all my stuff and work within range. It helps speed things up when I can telekinetically connect to every device in my house from one location. It is also why the stuff is all piled up here around me instead of in a corner room somewhere.”

“I see.”

“Anyways I assume you are here for an update?”

“An update would be great if you have one for me.”

“Let me grab the hard drives for it,” said Caleb.

He spun around looking at the devices around the room. His eyes glowed for a few seconds and then he stopped his spinning.

“There you are.”

Caleb moved aside boxes and underneath one of the packages he brought out a hand-sized hard drive for Rachel to see. Caleb brought out some wires as well and connected them to the TV. As he started pulling up the files he continued speaking.

“The camera footage I’ve gone through have been a pain in my ass to decrypt. Every one of the frames is a blurry mess whether it was inside the restaurant or in the surrounding area. I did figure out the effective range however which is about 300 feet. Once the killer stepped past that range then the camera for the most part would return to normal. That gave me some idea of the direction the killer came from; south by the way. The cameras couldn’t give me much more than that initially. I tried tracking the guy through cameras but around the 2-mile mark along all streets in the area the camera were killed. Every camera needs to be replaced and so do their internal storage systems. They all were overloaded with electricity. I will need to do a more thorough autopsy of the camera systems but needless to say the trail has gone cold there. If they showed up on other cameras it would be hard to link them in particular to the scene based on the information we have now. We will need more information to ID them properly. I even tried skimming through the most recently updated super databases and no power set matches what the killer did. The database is also mostly shit and out of date, but I digress.”

“Based on their entrance strategy to get onto the scene what kind of skills would be required to make the tools necessary for the camera killing?”

“It is not a very difficult task for someone like me or one of the super-geniuses that break the rules of the world as they craft. I mean give me twenty-four hours and I could whip up a similar device that could do what happened. The main issue I have with the camera killing is how overboard it is. There are often better ways to avoid cameras than to kill everyone in the vicinity. Killing all the cameras also presents the idea that either the killer didn’t care that law enforcement would be notified that a camera blackout had occurred after 20 minutes or so or they had a way to know that at the same time as the murder the superhuman task force was already busy which would leave many options open for using their powers.”

“I can’t say for sure if the killer planned the kill or not, but things are definitely leaning that way. Then if that’s the case they also looked at police information which is almost as big a problem as a murder. I’ll notify security and have them do a sweep for data security breaches.”

“Have them check for corrupted data and have them look for this. One moment. This is the clip.”

Caleb pressed play on a video. It showed one of the streets nearby the restaurant. Cars drove by in a stop-and-go fashion during the rush hour period. A few people walked on the sidewalks and in and out of the shops. Shortly after Rachel orientated herself in the scene she was seeing the footage cut to static images with interspersed frames from the last scene. The audio changes as well. Instead of the hum of cars and the chatter of people, there was only one sound. A ’thump’ ‘thump’ every second. The heartbeat contends to play until the footage ended and everything went to black.

“What is that supposed to be?” Rachel asked more confused than anything else.

“It was a heartbeat,” Caleb answered plainly.

“Of course, I know it was a heartbeat but why was the camera’s footage replaced with that?”

“I can’t be certain. It seems like an aspect of a super power to me but an aspect of what is uncertain to me. I know for certain though that I’ve never seen a technomancer or crafter’s tool do that before. I have two other files of heartbeats just like that one and another that has the camera’s frames intact except for a semi-repeating EKG-like effect. Frames are removed and edited such that when viewed with only the removed footage it looks like brainwaves.”

“A psychic that is also a technomancer?” Rachel wondered aloud.

“It might be possible. Being able to connect with people, places, and things as a superpower are all branches a part of the same theoretical tree of power. Maybe instead of a super, that has two powers that are theoretically possible. Instead, they have one of the base powers closer to the root. I remember a case almost a hundred years ago now. There was the first documented case of an elementalist super. The fight to win the favor of the young super was deadly and is the reason Titan Tech branched off from the Rodriguez’s in the first place. Among other issues.”

“I’ll raise the threat level on this case from what you’re suggesting. We might need to call in a specialized team to deal with this, but I’ll see what Dan and the others have to say. In the meantime, I have this sketch,” said Rachel. She pulled the drawing from her bag and handed it to Caleb. “I knew Jason has the ARGO system to help him out with his armory stuff and I thought it might help with this and the longshot made it at least part way. He did a memory scan, I guess, of that night and sketched out those features. It is no picture of the guy but hopefully, you can do something with this.”

“Well, his drawing is subpar but there is some stuff I can work with. It isn’t the worst police sketch I’ve had to work with before. Come back next week and maybe I’ll have something with this and maybe I’ll have a breakthrough on the footage.”

“Doubt it.”

“It is always a possibility. I may have failed with that last assignment but that was a fluke. I’ll be sure to crack this one. And as usual, if you have anything else send the files my way.”

With the message she intended to give sent Rachel left Caleb to his work and flew back to the police station.

The next day I returned to the warehouse ready to start on the mask. I was excited to do so because it would represent me more than anything else that I planned to wear or have on me. The rest of the suit conformed to the expected super-suit design philosophy, but the mask was where I planned to stand out while filling the requirements I needed.

In the front and center of the mask, I planned to have a gas mask and breathing apparatus. After some thought, I decided to have a gas mask because of an older notable villain from a few years ago called Terry the Toxic Giant. Despite the silly name, he was a formidable foe to members of the dynasty that fought him. Thor’s lightning would ignite the fumes causing excess damage and other members when fighting him would fall weak or unconscious if they stayed too close. It exposed a fatal flaw in many heroes and a flaw of humans in general. They needed oxygen.

While I have no plans to fight Terry; he has since been locked up in prison. I could fight like him and had some similar weapons to my arsenal. Being able to paralyze and distract enemies would be key to my survival fighting on the streets. I could also learn from his faults and what ultimately brought him down. He became too focused on his singular use of powers and did not know what to do when someone could finally counter his powers without a gas mask that could break during a fight.

Due to its look, I planned to lean into the look and accentuate some parts of the gas mask. Pretty much all heroes have a notable item on them, whether it be a weapon, a mask, or something on their suit that symbolizes them. It is all but an official requirement for all people and businesses for the sake of their brand. You need something for a billboard or T-shirt. I hoped that the overdesigned gas mask would be my symbol and notable item.

I brought out the materials I needed and as I had done before I started with the mesh layer. Above the mesh layer, a cushioning foam was added before a ceramic and metal layer to take the hits for my head. Depending on where on the mask the mesh and its pieces planned to go I had to place different materials and layers for the mask. This was because of considerations for weight, the ease of taking on and off the mask, and where I expected to be hit in the head among other things.

Just above the filtration pieces for the gas mask, I decided on a full-face visor similar to the one I picked out for Rachel. Once I powered it on and connected it to a receiver it would be able to connect to ARGO. This was what I expected to be the most vital part of my entire setup. Without the ARGO linked to a display, I would be half as effective in a fight. It is one thing to have kung-fu moves fed to you after a few hours of training. It is something entirely different from a heads-up display to highlight weak points and guide movements even more precisely using the display.

With the heads-up display, I expected my fighting skills to improve by eleven percent. Or that is at least what ARGO estimated after having me train against digital foes displayed on a prototype version of the visor I planned to put in. Regardless of the exact outcome, it would be a net gain for me to have the visor.

In between the second and third layers of material for the neckline of the mask, I placed the wiring and extra pieces of technology needed for the mask to work and connect to the rest of the suit. By connecting the visor to the rest of the suit it would be able to give me rudimentary information on the status of the rest of the suit and estimation on info about the gear and weapons I would eventually carry on me.

Thanks to my practice with the base of the suit the mask came together quickly. A few modifications were made to fit the flexibility I needed for my neck and eyes, but it was otherwise the same process.

One of the final pieces that I fitted into the mask was the filtration piece for the gas mask part of the mask. There was only a single one as I felt it looked best and would not impede performance for the size I was going for. To protect it and for the looks, metal pieces were welded on top. A few ‘V’ shape pieces mimicked a snout to a degree with one stabilizing piece going down the middle.

For the final touches, I airbrushed the mask so that it was an even gray and black that fit well with the rest of the suit. I thought about adding some accent colors but those would come in the future. For now, this was my stealth suit version one point 0. Perhaps if I became a hero in an official capacity I would update the colors of the suit, but I doubted that would happen anytime soon. And it wasn’t like I planned to be seen in broad daylight anyway so grays and blacks my suit would be.

After the mask’s coats of paint dried I held it in my hands. I spun it around like I did with all my creations and looked it over. It looked professional at least. None of it looked amateurish but maybe I should have done something to do so. Give me some plausible deniability and all that.

I powered on the small battery inside and slid the mask on. It was a tight fit but was quick enough to get on. I looked around within the mask as ARGO booted into the systems. My range of vision was good enough thanks to the full visor and the microphones next to my ears allowed me to hear even better than normal. The gas mask part did not impede me either and instead helped to circulate air into the mask so that the tight fit didn’t choke me to death.

Once ARGO booted up in the mask it began running diagnostic and systems checks to make sure that all the pieces had been connected and were running properly. Once that was done I did my practical tests; mostly just hitting my head with hard objects. Doing the tests at least had the added effect of scratching up the paint and making the mask not look quite as brand new because I hadn’t added the sealing coat of paint yet. The different items shook up my head, but I felt only the cushioning. I also felt the extra next protection kicking in each time I slammed my head against a wall or piece of metal.

One of the things I didn’t test however was the piercing durability of the mask and the base suit. Not only did I already know its approximate durability with that method, but I also didn’t need sharp objects coming at my face at the moment. It is also just a fact that even with the compromises of easier tearing to sharp projectiles I am less likely to see them come up in supers. The greater majority fight hand to hand, with energy projectiles, or a blunt weapon. It wasn’t like I was neglecting protection from sharp objects, but I hoped that with practice and ARGO’s help I could mitigate most of the problem and let the few metal pieces around my armor protect me. When I was thoroughly shaken up by the self-testing of the headgear I moved on to other things.

Finally, as a good test of the visor’s capabilities, I left the mask on as I started on the items and weapons I wanted to make. I needed the mask to stay comfortable for a good amount of time and for the display to work properly especially next to items that might explode violently if I assembled them a bit incorrectly.