With CD’s hologram flickering out of sight, Elli, Techlock, and I were left in a quiet and awkward anticipation. I stared at him, eyes following his gnarled beard down to his ripped and torn robes.

“Well, Techlock, it seems we’re partners now,” I said, watching him shift uneasily in his chair. “There are a few things I think we should share with you.”

“Get him dressed first,” Elli cut in. “Something normal and not so creepy.”

“Nothing creepy about my clothes,” Techlock said, but his voice didn’t have much energy.

Elli shook her head and tsked.

“Listen, I get it. In the market, you’ve got to be all mysterious. Robe, mask, and even that beard are there for reputation and show. Right now, though, all you need is something that’ll keep you warm and your naughty bits hidden. We aren’t rubes, Tech, and we don’t need to be wowed.”

He pursed his lips.

“Yeah. Alright. Gonna need to see too, though. Whatever secret birthday meal you’re hiding for me, I’m gonna have to see, cuz I can’t spend the next however long walking into benches and falling over tables.”

My eyes widened.

“It’s your birthday?!” I asked.

He nodded and his lips rose in a bitter smile.

“Yay. Happy birthday to me.”

Elli shook her head, her eyes glaring.

“I wonder if that Geoffrey guy had his goons wait til today to smash up the place as some sick joke.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Geoffrey said.

I looked over at the mech, sitting in its place all freshly made and just a paint job short of operational. A big part of me was screaming that we should show it off; that we couldn’t possibly tell him everything. While another, crazier part of me wanted to simply gush and come clean.

Elli walked over to me and grabbed my shoulder.

“We made it all, including CD. Got it,” she whispered, her hot breath tickling the inside of my ear.

She turned her head and I answered in kind.

“As you wish,” I said and winked.

I reorganized the cups while she went and got her teapot, filling them back up for a new round of conversation. I took a long and hard whiff of the peppermint fragrance, letting it tingle in my lungs.

It was a brilliant strategy, peppermint tea. Hard to feel bad when it was in the air, on the table, or rolling down your throat in a caffeinated stream.

Techlock’s hands still shook as he took his cup, dripping some to dampen his beard. He still wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, I supposed.

I shared a look with Elli and nodded.

“We’re about to have a quick and important conversation, Techlock. One about trust,” Elli said, her voice calm but carrying an undercurrent of steel. “What you’re about to see here . . . it changes things. We’ve been doing things that laws say we shouldn’t be doing, using that QRC you got us from Geoffrey. You’re an accomplice. Understand?”

He nodded, the fabric of the blindfold dipping with his movement.

“I get it. I do. No word stronger than a Techlock promise.”

Elli cocked her head at that, and I rolled through my mind, trying to think of some time that Techlock had rolled over on someone and sold them out to the Guard or the lords. I was impressed when I realized I couldn’t.

“He’s good for it, Elli.”

I stood and walked behind him. Sensing my presence he tensed, but with a careful motion, I reached out and untied the knot at the back of his head, peeling away his blindfold. Techlock’s eyes blinked and widened as they adjusted to the light, then fixed on the silhouette of the Ultra-Light Nexus Scout. Awe and disbelief warred on his face as he took in the mech’s sleek design.

“What demonic imp did you blow to get that?” he asked.

I choked on my tea, coughing and spitting it into the bay floor while Elli looked on in frowning disapproval. Sure, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. The man wasn’t right, but he’d nearly hit the bullseye with his question.

“We’ve been working together on a lot of new innovative designs,” Elli said. “It started with some mech gauntlets that Al was making for one of the farm hands. New and improved design, selling for quite the coins. We decided it might be a good idea to go bigger.”

He cocked his head, admiring the deadly curves of the mech. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. So small, too! What’s it for?”

“The design is for scouting. It's not really a battler, but I suspect it can hold its own with core-bound guards and soldiers. Maybe with the right cores it’ll be good for a fight against regular mechs, but we won’t know til the situation arises,” I said.

“Until the situation arises,” Techlock mumbled, his voice incredulous. “Listen to this guy. How long you been a mech tech?”

Elli laughed.

“We all know the brains just steal the work of good engineers and their scavenger friends. Come now, we’re the real source. We made a good thing.”

He grunted, his bruised face managing a grotesque and amazed smile as he continued to stare at the Nexus.

“Can I . . .?” he began, gesturing toward the mech. His voice trailed off with the weight of his curiosity.

“Go ahead,” I encouraged. A part of me swelled with pride at his reaction.

As Techlock approached the mech, his earlier tension seemed to fall away, only to be replaced by a childlike wonder. His questions flew at us, rapid and technical, touching on everything from the integration of the QRC to the mech’s armor composition.

“Is this alloy resistant to plasti-alloy specials?” he asked, knocking on one arm.

“How fast can it go?” was his next question, eyes alight with the implications of such mobility.

Elli answered when she could, her expertise shining through, but even she was occasionally stumped by the depth of Techlock’s inquiries.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

After his tenth question, Techlock stepped back, his gaze lingering on the mech as if committing every detail to memory.

“I’m impressed,” he admitted, sincerity lacing his voice. “This . . . this is magnificent. I'd say it looks like old tech if it weren't so…different.”

I found myself nodding and grinning for ear to ear. The weight of his approval was unexpected, but welcome.

“Thanks,” I found myself saying, feeling oddly validated. I almost added a polite attribution to CD, but caught my tongue at the last second, feigning a belch.

Elli laughed.

“Gross,” she said.

Techlock chuckled slightly, bending over to examine the mech’s feet. His gaze shifted from the mech to us.

“Do you think it can take out Geoffrey? Dude’s got so many goons, all of them heavy-cored like the soldiers.” He paused, looking up in thought. “Actually, some of them are still active soldiers. It’s not an easy tumble.”

Elli and I shared a look. I thought about everything that had happened and parsed through my thoughts.

“I piloted a mech recently,” I started, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “My attunement was . . . extreme. We have high expectations.”

“And the weaponry we chose,” Elli added, “It’s not what anyone would expect. If Al can pilot this to even half of its potential, we’ll have the advantage.”

Techlock nodded, not examining its backside.

“If you get high attunement on something like this, I bet you’ll be moving fast, reacting fast, jumping high. This is amazing! Maybe it isn't a battler, like you said. But it's almost certainly got sneak and acrobatics. Like something from the Church’s Book of the Devil Wars.”

I nearly choked again. Techlock was bright, and his observations were right on the money, though he was obviously saying it all in impressed humor as jokes.

“I’ve got one big concern, though. Geoffrey is a powerful guy, a king of the underworld. What if Geoffrey has his own mech? You think this thing can fight that?”

Elli’s dismissal was immediate, her confidence solid.

“Not possible. Something like that would’ve been discovered and confiscated by the city's authorities. Geoffrey’s reach is long, but not that long.”

Techlock cocked his head, put up a finger like he was going to argue, then let it drop.

“Alright, how about I try out those new clothes you were talking about? Maybe get started on helping out however I can. Always wanted to be a mech tech. I can help you with some designs. Say, who is that guy who said he was off to shadow the gangster?”

“That’s CD,” I said.

Elli shot me a glare.

“He’s, uh, he’s something we’ve been working on. An old tech hologram assistant that we fixed up.”

Techlock’s eyes met my own.

“No way! A predictive text, voice-capable hologram assistant from the time of the apocalypse? That’s amazing! Super illegal, but amazing! It sounded intelligent even. I can’t wait to see it in action. I think about all of those billions of lines of code that the ancestors put into their compu-tech and I’m just like whoa, mind blown, you know what I’m saying. Wow, you’ve all gotten some good luck lately. No wonder your brains have been working overtime.”

“Haha, yeah,” Elli said. “Listen, come over with me, and let’s get some clothes on you. You’re taller than both of us, but we’ve got fabrication gear for patching and mending, so I think we can get you set up in no time.”

Techlock took his cue and walked to her side, away from the mech, letting her guide him to the wardrobe of her ‘home’. Meanwhile, I eyed the mech, sidling up behind it and examining the space I would occupy. CD was off making his scans and plans. Elli and Techlock were fixing him some decent clothes. I was about to drag my feet and delay things.

It was time to get inside and see how the Nexus would pilot. My pulse quickened with a mix of anticipation and anxiety, all of my senses suddenly on high alert. The air felt heavy, the smell of the inner mech invading my nostrils with a tinge of ozone, oil, and lubricants, as well as an unfamiliar meaty aroma that I assumed was left over from the transformations done by the QRC.

I stepped in and felt the mech close around me. It was completely different than going into a cockpit. The sensation was like donning a second skin, the confines of the suit adhering almost exactly to my own dimensions.

Enclosed, the interior felt cold and slightly damp and a small spike of panic rose inside of me. What if it didn’t move and I remained trapped inside, with no one to let me out?

A pang of regret hit me harder than a mallet to the face could, wishing I’d done this while everyone else was here. I panicked that I’d suffocate, trapped inside, or even worse, have CD laugh at how much of an ape I was.

I’m such a dumb serf, I thought, gasping harder. Stupid. Stupid!

An array of lights flashed in my eyes then, a hypnotic sparkling of blues, reds, and yellows that calmed my rising panic. I felt my mind focusing on them, then falling into them, a spinning sensation that overwhelmed my mental defenses and suddenly had me standing in the bay, one with the mini-mech.

“Battle saints above, I’m doing it!” I exclaimed.

My voice echoed out of the mech, booming through the chamber. I heard the wardrobe door slap open, a crackling boom that hurt my ears before adjusting to a reasonable level of hearing. I tried to turn, to see the almost certainly astonished faces of Techlock and Elli, but it was as if I was paralyzed.

Words flashed before my sight.

ATTUNEMENT LEVEL: 10%

Ten percent. I reached out with my mind, focusing on my limbs, trying to send images of what they were and what I wanted them to do. My clawed fingers flexed and my toes wiggled. There was a brief sense of mental pushback, and suddenly something gave and I could feel my legs come to being.

ATTUNEMENT LEVEL: 20%

My first step was sluggish and clumsy as if every command from my brain to the mech required a herculean effort. My vision trembled as the suit was overcome with a palsied shake. I reached out my mind to steady myself, feeling the tenuous connection between myself and the organic frame around me.

Asserting control, I stepped again, feeling my arms come to be, then my neck and head.

Turning, I saw Elli and Techlock starting and gaping, the latter already clad in a Frankensteinian stitched-together patchwork set of overalls, the likes of which would net very little on sale at the market.

ATTUNEMENT LEVEL: 30%

I stomped around more comfortably, the mech and I having found a steadier rhythm. My movements were still jerky and uncertain but much more responsive than they had been. It was as if the mech was testing me, learning the nuances of my thoughts and translating them into action. A sense of warmth began to replace the initial chill, the interface between my body and the mech warming as our connection strengthened.

ATTUNEMENT LEVEL: 40%

The lag in response time diminished significantly. I raised an arm and waved at Elli, then gave a clawed middle finger to Techlock as I raised my speed to a lope, jogging laps around the bay. Once I stumbled, but I was able to catch myself, slowing down and stopping to avoid the fall.

“Al! This is amazing! That level of motion – that’s knight level!” Elli exclaimed. Techlock nodded giddily beside her.

But I could feel the being inside the suit reaching out and embracing me. This wasn’t at all like any sort of attunement I heard of before. The initial resistance was gone, and the frame wanted more.

I pushed my mind out, grasping it, feeling the beating heart of its core, the fluids pushing through it in sluicing, juicy, spurts of bloody oil and lubricant.

ATTUNEMENT LEVEL: 50%

The mech's sensors extended my senses beyond human capabilities; I could 'feel' the space around me in a way that was utterly foreign yet exhilarating. I started to jog again, then moved up to a sprint, my mech body moving faster than my own natural body ever could hope to do.

“Hey everybody, watch this!” I laughed, joy pouring through me as I took a running leap into the air, sailing thirty feet and almost catching hold of one of the bay railings before slapping my face and torso against the wall. I fell to the next set of railing, dizzied and in awe of the fact that I could feel a light sense of pain where I’d struck.

Underneath me, I could hear the metallic echo of Elli’s hurried steps as she sprinted to my side. I laughed, the sound thundering out of my loudspeaker, and I heard her stop.

“You okay, Al?”

“Yeah,” I answered, still laughing. “I’m at 50% attunement Elli. I’m more than okay. This is amazing.”

“50%? Techlock asked, but the question was spoken in awe-inspired rhetoric. “The squires take a decade to reach 30!”

“I guess I’m just special,” I said, getting back up off the walkway and making my way back down. Seeing me on the move, Elli headed back down as well, and soon the three of us were back in the center of the bay where I’d begun.

“Should I try for more?” I asked, winking. The mech body felt confused, unable to translate my eye motion, and I felt it shake a little, my attunement dipping 5% before rising back to its current level.

“No, you dumb weird idiot,” Elli chided, though her eyes were still wide open and amazed at what had just been accomplished. “Think yourself out of there and wait for CD to get back. You could have been killed in there!”

I dove back into the mech’s thoughts, something I was quickly thinking of as its dream sphere, and I imagined it powering down to its lowest livable levels, drawing up memories and comparing it to my own sleep. The frame understood and I was awarded with a final 55% attunement message before the light closed down and the back of the suit opened.

“So, what do you think about my chances now, Tech?” I asked as I stepped into the light. I felt a little woozy, sweaty, and weak, but all of it was worth the look on his face as, lacking words, he gave me two thumbs up.