Reconstructing the Fragments

Sera lingered for a moment after Lucius had left, tablet in hand, staring at the sleek, high-tech workspace around her. It was strange, the way the atmosphere in this room felt so different from the hallways she had just walked through—like stepping into another life entirely. The clean, minimalist lab, the organized workstations, the hum of machines waiting to be used—it was everything she had lost, handed back to her without a fight.

She let out a slow breath, rolling her shoulders as she moved further into the space. She was grateful. More than that—she was touched. Lucius Fox didn’t owe her anything. He could have just as easily shut her out, left her to figure things out on her own, and yet here she was, standing in a lab built on trust she hadn’t even asked for.

She had to make the most of it.

Setting the tablet down, she reached into her bag—an old, battered thing that had survived far longer than it should have—and pulled out a stack of worn, handwritten notes. The pages were creased, some slightly smudged from rainwater and time, but the content was still sharp—carefully plotted equations, sketches of theoretical phase fields, energy stabilization models that had never made it past STAR Labs’ red tape. She ran her fingers over the top page before setting it down at the nearest scanner.

The machine whirred to life, the light flickering across the handwritten ink, translating months of work into something digitized, something more permanent. While it worked, she reached into the inner pocket of her blazer, pulling free two slim, metallic data drives—her only remaining access to STAR Labs’ raw computational models. They weren’t complete, and she had spent countless nights wondering if they were even enough to be useful, but now, she finally had the means to find out.

One by one, she slid the drives into the terminal, watching as the system recognized them, files unfolding in neat rows of archived research. For the first time in months, she wasn’t just surviving. She was working.

Sera inhaled deeply, exhaling as she tapped the screen, sorting through the initial data. It was an overwhelming amount to process, but she didn’t mind—not this time. Because here, in this lab, for however long it lasted, she had the one thing she hadn’t had since the accident.

A chance to fix what was broken.