I brought the box out of the garage and took the tools I had carried with my back down to my office area. I pushed everything aside and set the box on the center of the table. I lifted it and looked at all its sides to check if there was the best way to approach opening the box. The box had no clear seams showing where it had been closed from. By shifting its weight, I did feel a heavier side where I suspected the interior pieces were attached to the box. I didn’t want to damage those parts, so I began opening it up from the other side.

I started with the drill I had been carrying and tried to make some holes in it. The drill touched down on the box and hummed for a second before there was an ear-piercing screech. I stopped the drill immediately and saw smoke coming from the drill. Its drill bit had melted and broken after the pressure. The box was undamaged except for the missing paint in the corner of the box I had tried to open it from. The black paint was gone and was now replaced by a smooth light gray metal underneath.

I set the drill aside after its complete failure and tried another tool from my office. I put on my gloves and held up a handheld laser pen that could send out a powerful laser capable of heating up to four thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I plugged the thing in and held it steadily over the box. I slid on some protective goggles and pressed the button.

I could feel the heat coming off of the laser pen through the gloves. It warmed my hands up as I held it with a slight wobble over the box. The box did finally show signs of change. The paint that had tried to hide it under the car was now burning away creating some fumes. The metal underneath did not change color at all as I held the laser over it and instead reflected the heat off of itself and brought the temperature of the air up instead. This continued for almost five minutes until I had to shut off the pen. My hand was getting too uncomfortable both from holding it above the box and from the heat radiating off it. The metal seemed to dissipate the heat really well and as soon as I adjusted the pen over to a different spot then the old one would quickly cool down stopping whatever progress I had made.

‘Piece of shit,’ I thought as I unplugged the pen’s cord from the wall. ‘I’m gonna need to return to the warehouse to open this up properly. These tools are just not made for this level of work. Whatever it is made of won’t be opened tonight. Still, I need to do something about the box tonight. I don’t know what’s exactly inside, but it should be mostly electronics and I can do something about that.’

I took to the internet to research signal broadcasters and eventually found this world’s equivalent to faraday cages. As per the suggestion of some helpful websites I grabbed the aluminum foil from my kitchen and began wrapping the box quite generously in the material. Once that was done I also brought the wrapped box to the kitchen and set it in the microwave which is also a Faraday cage. With those steps taken, I was pretty confident that no signals could be sent or received to the black box device.

I checked the time and had been feeling hungry after the long day. I made up a quick dinner with stuff in my fridge. I had to avoid the microwave so some of the food took longer than usual to make. Once I was done I went to bed earlier. The sun had barely started to set. Regardless of that fact I fell asleep almost immediately.

<-0-0-0-0-0->

In the morning I went through my usual routine but now I carried with me an aluminum foil-wrapped metal box like my own personal Christmas or birthday present. I drove over to the warehouse as quickly as I could. After a night of rest and the hospital trip, my legs were feeling much better. After I went on a light jog using the treadmill the soreness in my legs had all but dissipated.

When I got into the warehouse I didn’t bother unwrapping the box and went straight for my factory-grade laser cutter along the wall. I checked its specifications written on the side and confirmed that it could go up to 10 thousand degrees Fahrenheit instead of a measly four thousand degrees. I opened up the side door and set the box inside the machine. Next, I manually lined up the laser and set it up to fire down on about the same spot I had put the hand-held laser. I started by setting the laser to five thousand degrees and then pressed the green button on the side. The laser was invisible to the naked eye, but I could see its results. The corner of the box immediately began to heat up. It began to bend and soften to the heat. I watched it for a minute longer, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything else. I stopped the laser for a short while. I activated some fans connected to the machine to cool everything down before I went to take a look. I brought the box out with some gloves and looked at the spot I had tried to melt. It had crystalized and the corner was no longer straight lines and the box no longer had smooth faces on the three sides that had been affected. I brought out a hammer at tried to tap the damaged side but neither the box nor hammer was given further damage.

With my most recent attempts at breaking open the box thwarted I put it back in the laser cutter. I followed the same steps as before and lined up the laser but this time I set the heat to go up to six thousand degrees Fahrenheit instead. I watched the box carefully as I held down the green button activating the laser. I didn’t want the electronics or other internal components to break if I melted the box too fast. If the inside of the box heated up too fast I would succeed in breaking the box, but I might also damage components and plastic wrappings required to identify the parts inside and where they came from.

After three seconds of the laser’s heat, the metal turned yellow around the sides and white in the middle. I activated a preprogrammed route I had set for the laser and had it begin running along the entire edge of the box instead of just the corner. This was not just to make it easier for me to open by damaging a larger portion of the box but would hopefully spread the heat out to prevent the internals from being damaged more.

I watched the box through the screen on the side. The edge was melting and warping successfully. After about thirty seconds I stopped the machine. I hurriedly grabbed the box from the machine and pulled at its sides with the hooked side of the hammer and then flipped to the other side of the hammer shortly after. The metal warped further under the hammer's effects. I hit the two melted corners several times as the box tried to cool down. Pieces broke off from my hammering and I was able to make an opening. I hurriedly worked on making it wider until it was an oval hole an inch wide at its widest part.

For the final steps of opening the metal box, I brought out a tool that had a powerful piston and manual crank as well on one end. I put one end of it into the new hole I had made and started it while also manually turning the gears as well. The piston extended its ends inside the box and began pushing against the instead of the box. Even though the box had cooled down significantly the warping and opening of the box so far had begun to affect its structural integrity. The box creaked and the opening widened a bit more. After another minute of the took doing its work the metal box came apart at its seams. Along the almost invisible cracks where the metal had been fused together and sealed shut the box fell apart. The cracks widened until they became visible and with a pop the top of the box shot up thanks to the force of the piston’s pressure.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

I stopped the piston immediately when I saw the metal top hit the concrete with a clang. Next, I hurriedly checked the box and found the battery in the box. I stuck a hand in with my pliers and snipped the wires connecting the battery to the rest of the device. Whatever it had been doing stopped then.

I picked up the metal top from the floor and set it on the table with the rest of the box. I moved everything else aside as I put on some telescopic glasses to look at the components. I could tell from the smell already that some of the parts were damaged. I had no idea how vital the damaged components were to the functions of the box and hoped that I hadn’t done anything too drastic. I used some tweezers to unplug a few more of the wires. I had no idea if the box was still functioning, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

After the top came off the rest of the box came apart rather easily. I set all of the metal sides away in a separate pile as I looked at the electronics left behind. First I tried comparing the components to some of the spare parts I had in my electronics bin. Some of them were the same as any other such as the capacitors and the battery pack. Though they didn’t tell me anything about who made the product and what exactly it was for. There was no brand name manufacturer and when I looked up the few components I recognized all I found were webpages for the specific electronics component manufacturers. None of which actually made any products. Only parts for other companies to buy, such as myself.

If I was going to find out where this thing came from I was going to need some help. I had been considering it since John’s arrival yesterday morning. I could not do this alone and not when my life was potentially in danger. I began taking pictures of the electronics and what was left of the box. I wished then that I had taken a picture of the box before I had completely warped it, but there was nothing I could do about it. I attached the pictures of everything in a file on my computer and then began drafting an email. I hadn’t spoken to many people over the past week, and I still wasn’t sure how much I wanted to entrust to them. Still, I decided to draft the email and send it to Nate. He had been nothing but great and helpful to me so far.

To: Nate Young; From Jason; Subject: Assistance Required;

It has come to my attention that this device was attached to my car sometime between Thursday night and yesterday. I can guess it is a tracking device and I have identified some of its components by comparing the materials to my own. I need assistance locating the manufacturer of this product and finding out who would want to keep track of me. I hope you can also keep this matter private until I can find out more information on this situation.

Thanks,

Your friendly neighborhood Armorer, Jason

I read over the email I had prepared once more before sending it.

I wasn’t expecting or needing a response right away, so I sent the message by email. I also knew he would be busy, so I didn’t want to keep bothering him about stuff. I would wait until tonight or tomorrow for his response. For now, I had a job to do due Sunday. I cleaned up the stuff from the metal box and set it aside in my storage before bringing out the stuff I would need for Tabitha’s suit.

I started by tearing up some of the stitching in the places where the armor inserts had been placed. I slid out the metal plates that Tabitha had noted for me, and I looked them over. Most of them were cracked in places or were bent or easily bent with my hands. I gathered them together and began to cut them up with one of my machines. They weren’t so far gone as to need to be thrown out, so I began processing them with the furnace to be reforged. Once they were cut up into smaller strips I was able to easily throw them into the furnace and have them heated up and melted down. Once they liquified I had them poured out into the molds I required. While the metal was busily liquifying I had prepared these molds. I tilted the furnace opening and let the liquid metal fill the molds. It took a while for the metals to cool down and form properly, so I just took my time waiting for them.

Once the metal insert pieces had been successfully reforged I took them out of their molds and began placing them into their perspective spots. Once the five pieces were in place I started restitching the armor back together while taking off the exterior pieces of the armor I needed for the next steps. Once the armor of the suit was stitched place I moved the exterior pieces over to my paint station. This time I had covered the table in a tarp that could collect the paint that would inevitably collect outside of the pieces.

I switched over to a painter's mask and got to work painting the black exterior pieces yellow. I decided to follow a similar pattern to Rachel’s old Legacy suit. I knew Tabitha would probably want something else soon, but she wanted to be out in the field as the hero Legacy as soon as possible. When she ultimately came back to me requesting changes I would grant them to her as soon as I could.

The painting took the rest of the day and would likely take up some more of the next as well. During the day I had successfully painted Tabitha’s helmet, upper body of her armor, and arm pieces. The gloves would require me to take apart the rubber-like material they were made of and replace them with a yellow variant completely. It was not something that I could paint with anything that would stick. Luckily, I had a bunch of the right, yellow-colored material because of my previous work on the Legacy costumes in the past.

Before I left I cleaned up what I could in the workshop and left out the painting stuff and tools required to remake the boots and gloves. I also did one final check of my email and messages. I had not gotten anything from Nate. I turned off the lights in the warehouse and went home for the day.

The next morning, I checked my messages again to the same nothing. When I returned to the warehouse I went back to my work on the super suit. I had brought my lunch with me as well so that I didn’t have to leave at all today. After finding out that someone was tracking me or doing something similar I wanted to reduce the number of places I was going to and avoid travel. Though reducing the places, I was possibly at was likely a bad move there wasn’t much I could do at the moment until I could figure out how much of a threat that the appearance of the metal box could and had caused.

I returned to my painting with focus. I had the computer play some music while I worked. It was interesting to hear music, especially classical music made not by Beethoven or Bach but by people not influenced by them at all. This world’s music did have some similarities to classical music’s structure and tones, but it became entirely different songs.

Once the painting was done I cleaned it up and washed up the excess paint that had ended up on me. When the parts were done I checked my messages and email again. This time I got a response.

NY: I saw your email. I don’t have any contacts with detectives or informants because I have worked within the construction industry for most of my hero career when I’m not fighting supervillains. I do know that Rachel is more familiar with that though. In her first two years as a hero before becoming Legacy, she worked with the investigations and detective section of the police work. Forward the email to her and she can likely help more than anyone else. Be careful out there and stay safe.

The message was somewhere to start at least. If Rachel could get me in contact with some people she knew then I could have people search out information for me. I brought up the email I had sent to Nate on my computer and forwarded it to Rachel as he had requested. As I waited for a response I returned to working on the suit. Tearing apart the gloves and boots as I did so. I stayed up late that Saturday night until I had stitched the last of the armored super suit back together. I looked it over and compared it to the older model of the Legacy suit in the glass case nearby. Tabitha’s armor with its full helmet looked more menacing and I had subconsciously painted with fiercer lines of yellow and gray during the process. I brought the entire costume over to a spare display rack I had assembled from pieces in my storage area and set it up. When I got back home late that evening I received my response from Rachel.