The next morning Victor woke up at the crack of dawn in the hopes of beating the canal traffic sure to arise on a Monday morning in the Stilts. Grabbing a cup of coffee so black it gave the void of space a run for its money Victor charged down the stairs and out the door towards his barge, the Santiana. Briefly checking the charge on the batteries, Victor hit the ignition and sped off to the docks surrounding the city’s outer sea wall.

As Victor sped through the flooded streets, he couldn’t help but marvel at the way people had managed to reclaim structures that had been written off as total losses after the original sea walls had been melted into slag by Solaris. Houseboats were moored to the collapsed remains of buildings, the upper floors of flooded apartment complexes, and in one case an entire grocery store built inside of a flooded car park.

Victor wasn’t deluding himself into thinking it was all sunshine and rainbows out in the Stilts though. The flooding meant basically no social services were provided. No cops, no EMTs, no fire department, and no water that you couldn’t provide for yourself. Part of the reason so many people put up with the gangs was that they were the only sort of organized authority left in the area that people could turn to. The capes showed slightly more interest in the Stilts than other groups, but Victor chalked that up to a large number of Villains using the stilts as a convenient hideout rather than any kind of altruism.

As Victor navigated his way out of the Stilts and across the bay to downtown Columbia his thoughts drifted back to his current predicament. Making the weapons for Junkies crew gave him a way out of immediate consequences sure, but what happened next? Victor didn’t want to end up in pseudo-slavery to a bunch of assholes because Junkie wanted his crew to be the only ones with the shiny new toys. The logical thing to do if he doesn’t want to be captured is to make it harder to capture him, but Victor can’t exactly run and hid without sacrificing the T&R.

Victor briefly considered reaching out to his sister, but almost immediately threw that idea in the trash where it belonged. If she found out where he was it wouldn’t be long before he was getting hassled by the rest of his family again, and that would be almost as bad as getting enslaved by gangsters. Maybe. Okay, probably not but Victor still decided reaching out to Andra for help should be a last resort.

Well, if he can’t run and hide from the problem and he can’t call for help with the problem, he might as well try and plow straight through it. He’d been looking for a good reason to finish up the power armor in his workshop anyway, although between that and getting the railguns ready he definitely wasn’t going to be getting very much rest over the next few days.

Victor managed to get his hands on a few old Russian SKS marksmen rifles at one of the military surplus stores that had sprung up on Staten Island back when metas were still an unknown quantity. Nothing quite makes people want to buy a gun with some stopping power like learning your old high school bully found a magic belt in a pawn shop and is suddenly strong enough to throw a truck.

After Victor docked the Santina behind the T&R he was surprised to find someone waiting right outside the door. Bolstered by the prospect of a new customer so early in the day Victor hurried to unlock the door and crack open the security shutters covering the front windows.

“Apologies for the wait, I had to run a few errands this morning and was slow getting back.” That was mostly the truth, Victor had gotten into an argument with the clerk from the surplus store over the pricing on some of the surplus rifles in the hopes of getting a discount. “So are you looking to get anything repaired, or are you by chance in the market for some new meta tech?” Victor said in a sickly-sweet tone any seasoned retail worker would recognize immediately.

The customer in question couldn’t have been older than seventeen. He was a bit taller than Victor's 6’ with a build that bordered on gaunt topped off by a shock of messy blond hair and piercing green eyes. Absorbed in his haggard appearance Victor almost missed when the young man spoke.

“Sorry to burst your bubble Chief, but I’m not a customer.” The teen spoke in a jovial tone that clashed fiercely with his appearance. “Elliot sent me by to make sure you’re able to get those future guns done in time for Saturday”

Before his brain could catch up to his mouth Victor blurted out the first question that sprung to mind “Who the hell is Elliot, and who the hell are you?”

Rather than fly off the handle like Victor would expect from a young gang member, the kid seemed to freak out a little bit. “Shit I keep fucking up these dumb code names, Shiv is Elliot’s street name. I’m Lucas, Shiv brought me on a few weeks ago.”

That answered the question, though it didn’t do much to calm Victor’s nerves. “Alright, well I was already on track to finish on time, but I won’t turn down the help.” Victor took another look at the kids emaciated frame and sighed “Why don’t we grab some lunch, then you can give me a hand bringing the components up from the boat.”

“Good God kid, where the hell are you putting all that food?” Victor asked in horror as he watched Lucas dive into his second frozen pizza with no signs of slowing down.

“Sorry Chief, my ability requires a ton of energy to work right, and food money has been real tight these last few months. Signing on with Junkies crew helps cover some of the bills, but food isn’t exactly easy to come by all the way out here.” Lucas mumbled through a slice of pizza

Victor raised an eyebrow at that. If they had sent a meta to keep an eye on him then Shiv must have been more worried than he seemed that Victor would try and cut and run.

“So, you’ve got an ability then?” Victor asked as Lucas as the ravenous teen took a moment to swallow before answering.

“Yeah, I think the best way to describe it is that I’ve got really good reflexes and balance. Not the coolest power, but it comes in pretty handy in a fight.”

“Alright, well if you’re done eating lets go get the rest of the stuff off my boat so I can finish up these rail rifles.”

After a few minutes of marching old marksman rifles and surplus ammunition up the stairs from the dock Victor was ready to swap the barrels with the new ones he’d fabricated the night before. The result of Victor's hard work was a gun that front heavy, awkward to aim, and could punch through a four-inch-thick steel plate like it wasn’t even there. Victor was just glad he was able to get the things to accept standard ammunition, because he didn’t have the time to design an entirely new cartridge for his bootleg railguns.

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With his primary task completed Victor decided it was time to shift focus to projects more beneficial to his personal survival. Walking into the corner of his workshop Victor pulled down the tarp covering his half finished power armor project. The armor was almost nine feet tall with a form that screamed utilitarian. It was currently unpainted, with its left arm and helmet removed for easier access to their internal components. The helmet looked like a cross between a gas mask and a fighter pilots’ helmet that had been plated with enough armor to stop a sniper round.

The armor had been Victor’s pride and joy before he founded the T&R, and he had always felt a bit guilty for never getting around to finishing it. He lacked the necessary parts at the time, but after operating the T&R for the last five years and some light scavenging on the side he had managed to cobble together the needed components.

The biggest barrier to finishing the project had always been finding a suitable power source capable of running the armor, and last year Victor finally found one. You see, last year Technos was planning to terrorize New York City with an army of drones while he ran off to steal some fancy new tech. That plan fell apart when Technos ended up getting ratted out by a minion and was ambushed by the capes before he had a chance to enact the plan.

That left a huge number of functioning Technos drones up for grabs all over the city. It was like the most dangerous scavenger hunt in the world, and Victor had managed to track one down in an abandoned water treatment facility. He couldn’t salvage the entire thing, but Victor did manage to escape with the power core and some shielding units before the drone was hauled off by the military.

These two things alone could have made Victor fabulously wealthy, although he likely wouldn’t have been able to enjoy that wealth for very long. Selling scavenged Technos gear was a good way to get murdered by Technos. The Villain was known for his disdain of those reverse engineering his work, even being quoted as saying that “No talent hacks need to stay in their lane” after cutting the cape Dreadnaught in half for reverse engineering one of Technos’s gravity guns.

No one was totally sure who the first Technos was, but they were a scourge in the early days of the meta emergence. They would hop from city to city, selling meta tech weaponry to anyone who would buy it, gangs, cops, Villains, Capes, it didn’t matter so long as you had the cash. Then, once the city was in anarchy Technos would come out of the shadows to crush any remaining semblance of organized government or general order before stealing any technology of value not created by themself.

Technos was so proficient at this that they are essentially solely credited with the almost total collapse of centralized government in the midwestern United States and southern Canada. The first Technos was supposedly killed after a month-long standoff with the newly formed Northwatch Cape team. The official report claims the original Technos was shot in the chest by an energy beam from the cape Atomica and summarily thrown through a portal into deep space by her partner, Gateway.

Almost immediately after the reported death of the original Technos there was a rash of copycats trying to take up the mantel. The current Technos is Dr. Nolan Peirce, an erratic genius who took up the moniker after having a meta event after a disgruntled coworker attempted to murder him.

The current Technos, while less certainly dangerous than the original, is still someone whose radar Victor does not want to be on. This incarnation of Technos has proven to be quite a bit more unstable than the original, proving to be less of a terrifying arms-dealing mastermind and more of a ransom-the-moon type mad scientist.

Thankfully, the current Technos was not some sort of omniscient demigod, despite what he wanted people to believe. He wouldn’t have any way of knowing that Victor had managed to reverse engineer some of his tech so long as he didn’t go around telling people about it.

“Who’s the no talent hack now you dumb asshole?” Victor muttered as he fished out the power core from the wall safe in his workshop and began installing it within the armor. After that went the energy shields, which Victor managed to redesign from the ground up after dismantling the scavenged version to discover the principle behind their function. He also changed the color of the shield from Technos’ original sickly green to a less distinctive light orange.

With the easy parts done Victor hauled the suit's right arm over to his workbench to being installing weaponry. Thanks to the time constraints and the components available Victor chose to build a microwave laser, or maser, cannon directly into the right arm. He’d miss the flexibility of having both hands, but it was the easiest way to keep the cannon powered, protected, and properly cooled. With his goals for the next few days firmly set Victor buckled down and got to work.

Victor jerked up from his workbench and was greeted with a dull pain spreading out from his neck and back, yet another reason why falling asleep in the middle of projects is always a bad idea. Looking at his computer, Victor couldn’t help but smile. The joint calibration and targeting software for the armor had been the final pieces in its construction, and they had been completed late last night.

As Victor was reviewing the targeting software for issues, Lucas came into the workshop and seemed to be stunned by the sudden appearance of a suit of power armor within Victors workshop.

“Pick your jaw up off the floor Kid, I didn’t build the whole thing in a single night.” Outwardly Victor tried to brush off Lucas’s awe at his creation, but secretly he was pleased with the young man’s stunned reaction to his work.

Snapping out of his stupor Lucas responded, “Are you going to build one of these for everyone?”

“Sorry Lucas, I’ve only got the components for one of them. Ask me again once you’ve got two hundred grand to burn and then we can talk.” Lucas seemed to be mollified, if a bit crestfallen after hearing the price tag.

“Besides, I need to test this stuff before I take it to Junkie tomorrow to make sure it actually works. Help me load up the boat.”

With the railguns and their ammo loaded into the boat the only thing left to do was to boot up his armor and walk it down to the boat. On a professional level Victor was sure that his creation would function exactly as anticipated, but fear was rarely a rational thing. In the moments before activating the suit, HIS suit, he was overcome with an almost paralyzing sense of dread at his confinement. Then, before he had the opportunity to kill the startup sequence the black void of the suit's helmet came to life. All systems were functioning about as well as could be expected for the current mishmash of parts Victor was working with.

The fear in Victor’s chest became a sense of overwhelming triumph as he took the first tentative steps around the workshop. Victor suddenly understood how Capes and Villains must feel every day, like demigods treading the mortal world. Standing there encased in metal, his strength fortified by his creation, Victor began to feel safe in a way that he hadn’t for a long time. Wearing that suit, Victor felt as if he had insulated himself, if only slightly, from the strange and unknown dangers that plagued everyday life in humanity's now superhuman society.

Marching around the tiny workshop, Victor began to get a feel for the armor and its eccentricities. The arm bearing the Maser cannon struck him as a bit stiff, but it was still well within his tolerances. The servos in the legs also needed tuning, although Victor doubted the suit would ever be exceptionally spry.

Excited to run some more exhaustive tests of the armor, Victor hurried down after Lucas to the Santiana and set a course for the abandoned department store on the edge of the stilts. It was time to see if his creations lived up to the hype.