The technicals showed up at Cindy’s Garage early in the morning.

  There were three left. Not a single one of them was in decent shape, and I mentally assigned two of them to the scrap pile before they even stopped outside of the Voltsmith’s Lab doors. Charred and pitted armor, gutted benches, and absolutely trashed controls—not to mention heavy damage to the self-drawing Scorpions. I winced at that; I’d put a ton of effort into figuring out the weapon system on extremely short notice.

  But, at the end of the day, the original design for the technicals was flawed—and it was especially flawed for our Hail Mary attempt at surviving Phase Two. Museumtown didn’t need troop transports. It needed skirmishing vehicles that could cover lots of ground, move faster than a Rank One delver, and keep at it all day.

  I pulled the final technical into the Laboratory and got to work.

  Working at the small engine shop had been miserable. I’d quit that boss the moment I could. He’d been an ass in every possible way, but I’d learned a lot from him—and one of the things I’d learned had nothing to do with the machines he’d pretended to fix while offloading all the work onto his employees.

  It came from airplanes—bombers over Germany in World War II, to be specific.

  The ‘keeper’ technical's armor was covered in damage. Its steel frame was twisted; according to the driver, they’d gotten hit by a rock mage. The impact had torn the Scorpion off its turret and caved in the roof, shredded the passenger-side door, and broken the bench in the back. I carefully went over the entire machine, then the two outside, looking at the damage they’d suffered.

  Then, when I was satisfied that I understood, I nodded and started tearing armor off the keeper. The crushed bench came off, too—and so did the Scorpion’s mount. But the chassis and Heart stayed. The vehicle, at its core, was good enough. It didn’t need more power.

  I was going to give it more power, though, because just like the monstrous, complex thing on my arm, the time for Rube’s Principle and keeping it simple was over. I only wanted three, but I wanted them to be what they were meant to be. This first one was the prototype, and unlike the original model, I wanted to go all-out and then cut until it could support all of my ideas. Each Technical could get eleven Charge if I spent everything I could afford. That’d be a massive increase in power, and I wanted to spend it all.

  Three major upgrades, then.

  First, weapon systems. The Scorpion crossbow was good, but it hadn’t been the battlefield-changing weapon I’d hoped for. One of the ‘gunners’ had explained the issue as ‘plenty of penetration, but no stopping power, and anyone with enough Body just ignores the bolt until they’re done with their own attack.’ More was needed—a lot more.

  Second, the armor issue. Every one of the three technicals was spotless up front. The hoods and engine armor were undamaged, and the driver’s side armor was either lightly dinged up or untouched. The rest of their armor, though, was a mess. I marked out the places I wanted more with chalk, then moved on.

  And finally, the passenger layout. For this next mission, I wouldn’t need the technicals to move a half-dozen people and drop them off. Instead, I wanted to operate in squads of three—a driver, a passenger with a weapon of some kind, and a gunner in the back. That’d take a complete overhaul of the seating arrangement and cab armor.

  When I’d finally marked up the surviving technical and added my weapon designs to the work table, it was time to start actually making my changes. I cracked my knuckles and got to it.

  Patrol Runner, by Hal Riley (Created Item, Charge 11)

  The Patrol Runner uses a combination of fluid and electrical Charge to power its Charge-Heart engine and onboard weapons systems. This four-person vehicle can navigate various terrain, hold its own in a fight against most mid-Rank One monsters, and move more quickly than foot traffic—and for longer.

  First created by Hal Riley of Earth.

  The first Patrol Runner was finished. I had a fire mage welding together the body for the second and third, and its Charge-wire harness and tubing systems had already been installed. I even had a pair of Charge batteries set aside with eleven Charge each, ready to jumpstart the two machines when they were done.

  It was hideous, but not in the same way that the original technicals had been. This was Mad Max taken to the extreme. The chassis was the same, but I’d salvaged heavy-duty, oversized tires from a semi truck. They almost wouldn’t fit in the wheel wells, until I cut them bigger. Then I armored over the tires with removable panels; not a single one of the surviving technicals had taken damage to their wheels, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  From there, I’d bubbled out the back of the car, focusing on a heavily-armored hatch and turret. A pair of old two-door pickup truck back seats—the kind that faced inward from the sides instead of forward—gave two people in the back a place to sit, but in a fight, one of them would be in the turret, and the other would load for them. I could have rigged up an autoloader, but after some thought, I decided the Runner would be better with a fourth person. Not that I intended to bring four with me, but the other groups might want the flexibility.

  I had a design for an autoloader set aside for my own Runner.

  The weapon itself was something special. I’d taken the Scorpion’s design, twisted and bent it, and added split, three-inch tubing in place of the bolt-slots. It was down from five shots to three, but in exchange, it threw the Charge-based grenades I’d built during Phase One. Calvin had taken one look at the three-shot grenade thrower and shaken his head. “What the hell, Hal?”

  I didn’t have a good response. The gunner I’d talked to had asked for more firepower, after all.

  Not that I’d abandoned the Scorpion completely. A smaller version hung from the front passenger side window, three shots ready to go. And the entire cab was covered in armor. So was the engine block, with the exception of a small tower for air-injection. I didn’t know if the Runner needed oxygen, since Charge wasn’t combustion, but I didn’t want to take any chances. If the Heart overloaded, we’d be in serious trouble, and we were playing with fluid Charge, after all.

  It looked like a cross between a World War II armored car, the Road Warrior’s ride, and a stock Four-Runner.

  And, as far as I could tell, it was perfect—or as close as I could get with what I had.

  6 Charge for the engine, 3 for the grenade-thrower, and 2 for the Scorpion—eleven in total. Max speed of about forty miles an hour, sustained as long as I felt like testing it. Capable of taking a railgun shot to the engine block—I knew, because I’d tested it. Bullet-proofed in the medieval sense of the word, according to Tori.

  The next two would be up and running in a few hours, but I didn’t want to waste any time. Tori and I were ready. Any Waypoint Beacons that might be out there wouldn’t be for long. We needed to get moving.

  But first, we needed a crew.

  I didn’t bother asking Carol.

  She wasn’t going to say yes, and I didn’t blame her. The last thing she wanted was to leave her brother behind and go on a crazy, last-ditch effort mission with the guy who’d gotten Zane’s mind hijacked. Whether I was responsible or not didn’t matter. The best thing I could do was let sleeping dogs lie on this one.

  But Tori didn’t see it that way. She insisted on asking, no matter what I said. So, instead of looking for people from the uninjured, ready-to-go delvers in Museumtown, I ended up waiting outside the Field Museum while Tori chatted Carol up.

  Luckily, Calvin was around, and I was giving him and a few other folks a tour of the Patrol Runner.

  “Hal, this is the kind of thing I was talking about,” Calvin said. “Boys in the back always do crap like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like listen to the boys up front about what they want, instead of thinking about what they need.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Calvin, I promise that’s not what happened.”

  “It ain’t? Coulda fooled me.” He wiggled the side-mounted Scorpion back and forth, finger carefully off the trigger.

  “Look, I talked to the teams that drove these things, okay? But I didn’t listen to them mindlessly. They had problems with—“

  “Firepower, armor, speed?” Calvin snorted. “That’s what people always ask for. This is better than the original, though. Good job on that. We’ll see if it’s better enough.”

  “We’ll?” I asked. “You coming with us?”

  The old vet paused. He rubbed at his beard, then raised an eyebrow at the Patrol Runner. Then, to my surprise, he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I will.”

  “You’re not worried about—“

  “I didn’t say I’d be fighting. I said I’d come with,” Calvin said. “And I’m worried as hell for Museumtown, but Tori ain’t going to get Carol to come. You need someone driving if the two of you want to make these weapons work, and I used to drive Jeeps in the jungle. I can handle the bramble patches out there just fine. Less chance of ambushes, too.”

  “Calvin, that was fifty years ago.”

  “Nonsense,” he shot back. “It’s like riding a bike—you don’t forget how to drive.”

  Tori took her time on the way down from Zane’s prison cell/room. She had a lot to think about.

  For one thing, Carol.

  And for another, Carol.

  Mostly, she was trying to work through how exactly to tell Hal that Carol hadn’t forgiven him, and that she was only growing more and more angry the longer she spent up in that tower with her twin. The big problem was that Tori didn’t blame Carol at all—but she also didn’t think Hal was actually responsible for this. It was a simple botched attempt at a boss. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong, and the raid team had to learn from it, or they wouldn’t win this time, either.

  It really sucked, too. Carol was so cool—and, if Tori was being honest with herself, incredibly pretty. That was the other thing on her mind: Carol was super-pretty, and she’d done a lot of crying on Tori’s shoulder. She’d let the older girl, of course. Now wasn’t the time to, uh, make a move. But Tori really wanted to.

  She shook her head, trying to clear it and focus on the mission. They had a city to save, and they didn’t have time for distractions. Not even Carol’s faint smile at the end of her visit.

  “Dammit, Tori,” she mumbled to herself and headed down the stairs. When she got there, she cleared her throat, then kept mumbling. “You were right…”

  “What was that?” Hal asked.

  Tori wanted to punch him. Instead, she gritted her teeth, crossed her arms, and glared. “You were right, okay? So now what do we do? We’re down two people, and neither of them is gonna—“

  “It’s fine. I’ve got a driver. We can get going as soon as we talk to Jessica and make sure she’s good here,” Hal said.

  “Oh, good,” Tori said. “Who?”

  “Let’s go talk to Jessica,” Calvin said. “The sooner we get this going, the sooner it’ll be over.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Hal started walking.

  Tori followed, eyes narrowing even more. “Hal, answer me! Who’s driving?”