By the time I finished designing the advanced fake borg model, the one intended to be one of our new AI member, Riggs' body was repaired enough to put his core back into place. Some of his armor plating wasn't finished, but his primary ALEO build was at a hundred percent, so he was all set. Kaytlyn hung around as I inserted the powerful AI core back into place, watching his systems boot back up with a monitoring tablet.

"Welcome back," I said with a smile, patting his shoulder. "Listen, do you mind just hanging out without your armor for a bit? You can stick around, but with most of the molly makers working on the defenses, it's gonna take another hour or so."

"That is fine," Riggs responded, working his way through a series of "stretches" to test his range of motion. "I will wait."

"We can go find somewhere more comfortable to wait," Kaytlyn suggested. "These crates make my butt hurt."

"... Alright."

Both of them left, but not before Riggs strapped a normal pistol around his waist. The ALEO unit was just about the most advanced robotic form I could make, but even it would struggle to accurately use the massive pistols I specially designed for his fully armored form.

With the workshop now empty save Samwise and myself, I leaned back in my chair. This attack had really thrown me for a loop, and while I wasn't exactly happy to admit it, it also put a severe hole in my mental armor.

Until now, I had been leaning pretty heavily on the "my techs is better, so I would win in a fight" mentality. Previously, the idea that a group of twenty-five Wraiths could plow through all my specters and threaten me and my friends directly would have been laughable. And yet, I had walked through through town, counting the bullet holes and corpses. Riggs had almost died, sacrificing himself to save Kaytlyn.

What little illusion of safety that I had built up was well and truly shattered. Even now, as I worked to repair and improve our security, I could feel the instinct to run and abandon the town, since it clearly brought much attention. Maybe we could try the whole Nomad thing, disappearing into the wastes of Central US. We could set up a town, somewhere nobody could find us, hidden underground or in a valley. We could-

I slammed my hand down on my desk, focusing on the pain in my hand, forcing the rising panic down. Slowly, I regained control of myself, taking long, deep breaths to slowly release the panic back into the air. When I felt I was calm enough, I leaned back in my chair again.

I needed to focus on the here and now. My choice to set up at the Rocky Ridge had been a calculated risk, and now I needed to deal with the fallout of some of that risk coming back to bite me. I had more important things to do than panic and flail about what may or may not have been a better choice.

I took another long breath before turning my mind back and focusing on my current list of things to do. For a while, I considered my current project before finally speaking.

"I have two options," I said, idly tabbing through older designs as Samwise half listened to my ramblings. "I could try to redesign the specter now, do my best, and hope it's sufficient. Or I hold on for a few days and cross my fingers that I get a tech tree that has plenty of new ways to improve them."

If I didn't wait and upgraded them now, there was a very good chance this redesign would be a waste of time. I would feel pretty stupid spending time updating the specters only to roll a tech tree from Destiny or Terminator.

On the other hand, if I did wait, then designing them would definitely have to take place during my next tech rush. I needed a defense force, one I could rely on to not crumble just because the enemy had a vehicular advantage. Even worse, the tech tree might not have anything to contribute, meaning not only would I have to sacrifice time, I might not actually be rewarded for waiting with better tech.

I was weighing my options for a full minute before Samwise spoke up, cutting through my dilemma.

"You should redesign them now, Sir," My AI assistant suggested. "I can personally integrate any upgrades we uncover for the next tech tree if we discover anything worthwhile. Leave keeping things up to date for my team and me and just focus on designing new concepts and solutions, as well as the new tech trees, Jackson."

"Okay, fair enough," I agreed with a nod. "So one specter redesign, coming up."

After a few minutes of pouring over designs, I decided that rather than use the designs that I already had, I would start from scratch. While I had called this a redesign, I had no real attachment to the base model.

First up was the skeleton. Rather than design something all new and creative, I decided to go with a system I knew worked, or at least one based on a design I knew worked. The internal skeleton was heavily based on the human skeleton, with modifications and tweaks to maximize its inherent strength.

Over that, I plastered on artificial muscle, the best I had access to, in a dense layer around the body, anchoring it to the durable alloy frame. Rather than stick with the human look, I immediately deviated as I worked through the design, adding servos and extra add-ons to the movement system, making sure they worked with the artificial muscles. This would, hopefully, give them the grace granted by artificial muscles but the speed and strength for repetitive motions that servos and hydraulics allowed.

The process of adding these servos and hydraulics gave them a terminator-esque twist, layered on top of the artificial musculature, as many of those servos and hydraulics required mounting plates that further fleshed out their form.

The final step was the armor plating that protected them. Specters were largely only lightly armored, including the ones we were producing. I wanted my new design to have much more protection than that. So, using a ceramic polymer armor that I got from Titanfall tech tree, I designed a plating system that was meant to absorb impacts and slowly break apart. They were easily replaceable and were essential disposable armor, though that made it sound like they were less effective than they were. Each piece was incredibly durable, it was just designed to break and absorb energy before it could transfer and damage internal parts.

The idea was that when the new units were under fire from larger weapons, the armor would fail but stop incoming projectiles in the process. While it wasn't better than, say, a half-inch of Alien Alloy, it was significantly better than what the original design had access to. Of course, underneath the ceramic plater was a weave of fibers from the Titanfall universe, patched and plated to reinforce the robot even further.

The actual armor design was basic and bulky, designed to specifically invoke images of clunky robots rather than smooth, crisp human armor. The helmet, in particular, was designed to be angular and inhuman. I didn't want people to doubt these were robots for a second.

In fact, as I programmed their software, I specifically added an extra bit of robotic movement, sort of like how Duke had an incognito mode. It didn't harm their effectiveness or efficiency, but it did make them a lot less impressive-looking. However, the system could be switched off with a simple command, or set to automatically turn off if the situation required it.

When I was done with design and programming, I told Samwise that any specter that they could get up and running with minimum repair should be fixed, but everything else should be scrapped. I also ordered Noah to give Samwise some printer space from the back, so that he could make more of the new units. I wanted them to replace the specters entirely within the next few days.

After Samwise assured me that he would stick to the project, Duke and I headed home. The canine robot had been following me around all day, and other than getting the damaged parts of his eye stripped out to keep them from shorting and causing further damage, he hadn't been repaired at all.

"I'm sorry, buddy," I apologized, rubbing his head as I examined the empty socket, which was more than just his eye, but rather a chunk of the armor around it as well. "I'll get you set up with a new one first thing tomorrow morning… though the rest of your armor might take a bit longer. We are in a bit of a crunch period."

If he was bothered by his injury, he certainly didn't show it, simply giving me an appreciative huff before making his way to his bed and lying down. I chuckled and shook my head, climbing into bed.

It took a while for me to fall asleep, and when I did, it was of poor quality, tossing and turning restlessly. I woke up more than once, hand reaching out for my pistol, pointing it at the door before I could even kick my brain into gear.

"A psychologist AI might be a good investment," I mumbled to myself, wiping the sweat off my face after the third time I woke up dramatically. It was just barely past five AM, but between my rapidly beating heart and my white knuckle death grip on my pistol, I could tell that I wasn't getting back to sleep. "That's gonna get old if I can't get a grip on it."

I quickly showered and cleaned myself, making myself a cup of coffee before leaving my trailer, Duke padding along beside me.

"Okay, buddy, the first thing is getting your eye started," I said, my hand on his head. "Then I want to see what they've gotten done for the defenses."

Duke barked softly, and we headed to the garage. As we did, we passed a pair of MRVNs pushing a metal cart through the streets, bearing parts to the outer perimeter of the town center, which was a good sign. I knew that Noah had been installing stuff since before I tried to get some sleep, and had been printing parts since almost immediately after the Wraiths attacked. I was eager to see the kind of progress he had made.

I quickly popped into the garage, spending a minute checking out Riggs' finished armor, which looked brand new and shiny. After that, I got Duke's replacement eye going on the workshop's smallest molly maker.

"I wonder where the big guy is," I asked Duke hypothetically, referring to Riggs. "I would have thought he would want right back in his armor the second it was ready…"

Once the replacement eye was slowly being printed, Duke and I walked back out of the garage and headed out, making our way along the road and heading to the main entrance into the town. Once we were past the security building, we got a better view of how far the defenses had gotten.

They started about thirty or so feet from the town buildings themselves and were broken up into two different forms. One was the cheap and easy form, simple Hesco barriers made from dirt, stone, and sand-filled cubes. Looking around, I realized that all of the dirt they had dug up to pour the foundations was gone, and I moved into the thick, wire-reinforced cloth boxes.

The Hesco barriers were tall enough to hide behind at a slight crouch, though many of them were built sunk into the ground, with a slight berm on the defending side, probably to make it easier to shoot over. While they were not the prettiest things in the world, they were big enough that I knew they would protect against a whole hell of a lot of firepower. Plus, the fact that they were cheap meant we could use them to fill in large portions of the town outskirts.

The second part of the town defenses were the hard points being built at intervals all around the perimeter. They were still under construction, but quite a few of them had fully completed anti-personnel turrets, several of them slowly moving around, scanning the horizon for any threats. The platforms and defensive points that these weapon emplacements were being built on ranged from multilevel bunkers that would probably take another few days to complete to smaller platforms, more frequent points.

MRVN units walked back and forth, filling more Hesco barriers and welding armored plated around a polymer inner filling. I could also see, as I continued to walk the perimeter, several spots along the walls were clearly intended for heavier weapons, most likely the high-powered cannons.

I continued to follow along the construction zone, nodding to the MRVNs I passed as they worked. I made my way down the southeast border of the town, walking until I reached the corner. There, I could see that Noah had torn down several trailers, solar panel farms, and other structures to create an open, coverless area around the main section of the town that we occupied.

We would have to change that eventually, if we managed to get the nomads to agree to my idea, since having enough firepower to vaporize them into a fine powder pointed at them would probably make them nervous. Until then, though, the cleared area would make approaching the defensive line much more difficult.

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It took another ten minutes for me to make my way all around the town, having stopped for a few minutes to chat with Noah, who was closely watching over the build's progress. He assured me that, eventually, they could get rid of the Hesco barriers, but for now, they were too effective and too easy to set up to not take advantage of.

When I finally made it back around and back to the garage, I was intercepted by Frank and Samwise. They both had something to show me. At first, I was confused, but then I realized that the only project that they were both assigned to was food production. I happily followed after them, excited to see what they had to show.

I entered the Shack, and Samwise guided me to the table. As I sat, I looked around, spotting the first signs of the top floor being converted into a lab space for Frank, the entire area being deconstructed and reinforced. The development was paused for the moment, as all available MRVN units were working on the defenses or repairs, but they had obviously started.

"Alright, guys. What's going on?" I asked, leaning forward. "I have an idea, and I'm really hoping I'm right."

"I believe you are," Samwise assured me, both of the AIs taking a seat across from me. After a moment, a pair of MRVNs, both marked as having a young AI inside them, entered the room from Franks's medical office.

Samwise had more or less adopted all of the AI MRVNs, and he understood to keep them safe. I was glad that he was keeping an eye on them, and I could hardly imagine a better mentor for them.

The two young AIs were carrying metal boxes, and as they approached, they gently put them down in front of me. I reached for the rightmost box and lifted it up, taking the cover off like a cloche.

Under the cover was a series of cubes, all in various colors. They were organized neatly in rows, with a small image and labels above each one. A quick scan showed that the labels were all food, and I couldn't help but smile. I leaned in over the plate, looking closely at the one labeled as chicken. The cube was a pale white, very similar to the color one would expect from chicken, but it lacked any striations or physical variations. It was just a pale white cube, an inch tall and wide. I poked it with my finger, and the cube shifted under pressure.

"Okay, so you guys have clearly been working on making reproduction food," I guess, getting a nod from both of them. "What have you discovered?"

"As I suspected, the current technology of this world is incapable of truly replicating food, either mechanically or any other method," Frank explained. "Any research I have done has revealed chemical substitutes, not replications, and even those are of poor and sometimes dangerous quality."

"Thankfully, we are not restricted to current technological levels," Samwise continued, excitement leaking into his robotic voice. "After some late-night conversations, as well as taking apart and analyzing the molly maker, we were able to create a version specifically designed to replicate the cells and structure of living food. Each food requires a specific, specially designed slurry, but the result is, from what we can tell, encouraging."

"We understand the replicas are far from one hundred percent," Franks said, gesturing to the food cubes arrayed on the metal plate. "But from what we can tell, the taste should be considerably closer to what you are familiar with than anything you can find in Night City."

I looked down at the array of colored cubes, spotting labels for fruit, vegetables, and meats. I checked under the second cloche to reveal another nearly identical plate.

"I assume you want me to try this?" I asked, looking at Samwise and Frank, both of whom nodded eagerly. "Alright. I trust you guys plenty to make sure that everything is safe and edible, but I do want to confirm how much this cost to make. Would be a pity to eat them without knowing."

"It varies from slurry to slurry, sir, but none of them are exorbitant. Nothing close to what you spent to purchase the samples. In total, the entire plate costs less than twenty dollars," Frank assured me. "As for safety and health, not only are these all perfectly safe to eat, but they also contain the same vitamins and nutrients that the originals would. Consuming a variety of these would be a complete and healthy diet."

"Huh… well, you guys clearly worked hard on this," I pointed out. "The least I could do is try them."

I reached down and grabbed the chicken cube, quickly popping it into my mouth before I lost my nerve. As I chewed the cube, two things were readily apparent. One was that it tasted incredibly close to chicken. It wasn't perfect, but holy hell, it was close. With the right seasonings and the right preparation process, I could see the taste being completely indistinguishable from the original. The second thing I noticed was that the texture left a lot to be desired. There was a bit of rubbery, fat-like texture to the chicken, like all the worst aspects of biting into a thick layer of fat on a cut of meat that has been overcooked.

The texture was strange, obviously, but the taste more than made up for it.

"Holy fuck, guys… that was incredible," I said after swallowing the mouthful. "The texture was off, yeah, but it tasted almost exactly like chicken."

I looked down at the other cubes, picking up a red one labeled as strawberries. I looked at it for a moment before tossing it into my mouth, crunching down on it with a hum of appreciation. Part of me had expected another rubbery chew, but instead, this one was much crunchier than the original source, almost like the texture of an onion. If I hadn't been bracing myself for a strange texture already, I might have spit it out in surprise.

I ate chunk after chunk, trying vegetables, fruits, and meats alike. By the end of it, I was wiping away tears of joy, as not a single one of them tasted bad. A few of them, like the green bean cube, were off, possibly because there were two separate structures in a green bean, but they still tasted good.

"You guys… you did it," I said, wiping my face and standing from my chair, rushing around the table to hug both of the AIs tightly. "This is incredible, beyond what I thought possible. I was expecting meal pastes with vague flavors, but this?"

"I am hopeful that as we get the printing and slurry mixtures down, we can start working on their textures," Samwise pointed out. "Correct me if I am wrong, but getting them to match isn't as important as making them more pleasant to eat."

"Yeah… I mean, all of them were edible, so that's a great place to start," I agreed with an eager nod. "But making them a bit more texturally palatable would make these fucking perfect."

We spent a while talking about the science and their methods, revealing that the molly maker had actually only been half of the equation. The slurry was made using the same tech as the Auto-Pharma, just scaled down to a much more limited task.

Several aspects of the molly maker had been modified as well, specifically its material delivery process. The system was radically changed to use the semi-organic slurry required, and the injection method was refined to compensate for the different materials.

Some of the conversation went over my head, unsurprising considering how little biology, biochemistry, or any of the wet sciences I had been exposed to through my tech trees. I was interested to see if I would get anything like that eventually, but part of me hoped I wouldn't, not for a while at least. I couldn't imagine I would be able to do much with Zerg tech without causing some issues.

I asked Frank to whip up another batch for Jackie and Kaytlyn to try, as I wanted them to experience it as well. They would be up eventually and when they were, we were going to blow their minds.

Frank agreed, and both of them promised they would continue to work on the systems to make the less palatable textures better. With a full stomach and a purified soul, I made my way back to the garage. Duke followed me closely as if understanding I was going to be fixing his eye. As I carefully took the printed parts and prepared to place them into his head, I looked over at the canine robot.

"I want to build an emergency kit for you as well," I explained, the canine turning his head. "Nothing special just yet, a submachine gun and some ammo, maybe a medkit…Just the basics for survival in case we get caught up again like yesterday. It was honestly a miracle I had my armor and stuff at my trailer."

After I finished installing his new eye, I quickly designed a storage system for a pistol, two mags, a submachine gun with three mags, some space set aside for medical stuff, and some grenades. Most of the space was left open to store extra armor or an extra pair of my undersuit. Unfortunately, there was only enough room for one, so I had to choose.

Since my undersuit was armored and the key to my greatly enhanced strength, I quickly realized it was kind of a no-brainer. With the simple packaging design complete, I basically put a work order into the MRVNs running the molly makers. Most of it would be done by the garage makers, but if some of the mass production rooms were free, they would use those.

By the time I finished with that side project, the sun was a bit higher in the sky, and people were starting to wake up. I waited impatiently for Jackie, who spotted me waiting by the Shack and made his way over to me.

"What's up, Genio?" He asked, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "I was thinking about making a coffee run. Do you want anything for breakfast?"

"I already ate," I said with a smirk. Before I could even open my mouth to mess with him more, he gave me a look.

"What the hell did you make?" He asked, looking around, even up into the sky, trying to spot whatever it was that was making me smirk. "No, let me guess, you made an invisible dinosaur? A spaceship? A new type of gun that shoots smiles and rainbows?"

"Nope, I didn't make anything," I assured him. "Sam and Frank did. C'mon, I'll show you, you're gonna love this."

Jackie followed me inside, sitting down at the table in my direction with a curious expression on his face. A few minutes later, Frank gently placed the same metal plate in front of him, revealing the cubes of food.

"Is… is this food?" Jackson asked, leaning down and poking the red cube. "They look like meal replacement cubes."

"What are those?" I asked, watching as he picked the red one up, the one I knew tasted like strawberries but chewed like onions.

"Bottom of the barrel food crap," He explained, shaking his head. "Absolutely disgusting and-"

He tossed the cube into his mouth and chewed, his words cutting off immediately as his eyes went wide. Then they closed, and he chewed slowly, enjoying every second of the mouthful. When he finally swallowed, he looked at me, clearly in a bit of a daze.

"I… what was that, Jay?" He asked, looking like he was at a loss for words. "That… that tasted like real food…"

"That was Sam and Franks's attempt to replicate the food I bought from your friend, using all the tech I've created so far," I explained. "A modified molly maker printed it out, and a few other bits of tech helped scan and make the materials. It's all edible and about as good for you as the original food. Its texture is a bit off, some more than others, but the taste is just about spot on."

Jackie nodded as he listened, picking up a yellow cube that I knew was corn. As he popped it into his mouth and chewed, he groaned in appreciation, quickly getting to work eating all of the cubes.

"How much did that cost?" he asked around the last cube, green beans.

"According to Frank, that was about twenty eddies of materials. Technically, the time and research would put that a bit higher, but to actually make that, it would be just a few bucks."

"I… Jay I…"

"I know, it made me speechless, too," I assured him. "We are going to pay that guy another visit so we can get them some more samples."

"Absolutely Amigo…"

When the big guy was finished eating, he polished off a large glass of water and leaned back in his chair. He looked satisfied but still frowned and shook his head.

"This is another miracle you can't share, isn't it?"

"Unfortunately," I admitted, sitting down at the table with him. "If I tried to sell the process, we would be dead within a week so Arasaka could make billions off of it. Plus, the molly makers are too advanced for me to feel comfortable spreading around."

"But once you change things?" He asked. "You plan on sharing stuff like this once you've changed things, right?"

"Jackie, once I'm done, this is what poor people will eat," I assured him. "It's cheap, easy, on-demand food. Everyone else will be eating real food or better."

He nodded and opened his mouth to speak, only for the door to open and for Kaytlyn and Riggs to step inside, the latter still without his armor.

"What's going on in here?" Kaytluyn asked, a hand on her hip. "You guys look like something serious is happening."

"You could say that," I responded with a smirk before gesturing to the table. "Now sit down, it's your turn."