Splash 1.2

Friday, 8:34pm, April 22nd, 2005

Thanks to the rush hour traffic coming in, the return trip to my workshop had been much slower than the journey out. It had been made all the more unbearable by the unscratchable itch to tinker, to boot, but the drive was thankfully almost over.

Seven years ago, when Sydney had flooded, the inner suburbs had been just.. washed away, taken by the tides, leaving no evidence humans had ever built there except for spotted ruins of half-unearthed underground utilities and the hardiest footings of skyscrapers. The rest had been simply inundated, but mostly repairable. The affectionately named 'Poverty Belt' marked a several-kilometre-wide dividing line between the two - not washed away, but by far the most heavily damaged of what remained.

Rather than start at the edges of the devastation and work inwards, reconstruction had purposefully begun in the areas Leviathan had completely wiped out - a deliberate effort to restore what we'd lost, rather than let the city naturally expand back into the ruined parts of the landscape. The restoration money had mostly run out - squandered, misused, reallocated - before reconstruction could get underway all the way out there, so it served as a ring of ghettos dividing the freshly built inner city from the merely repaired outer suburbs, attracting the poorest of Sydney's surviving residents. Then the better-off folk had moved into the newer, better Sydney en masse, and then the international refugees started flooding in, while the poorer survivors stayed out in the cold, and well… The resulting xenophobia and resentment was predictable.

My workshop was an industrial unit in northwest Sydney, just on the outside of that Poverty Belt. I actually thought it was a really smart play; capes probably looked for new tinkers all the time in the poverty belt itself and on the outskirts of the city, not to mention how sketchy the electricity services could be out there and how suspicious deliveries of materials could look. With a unit, as long as I was very careful, I figured I'd be effectively hiding in plain sight - and with a few other tradie businesses operating in the same block of units, I was able to keep my tinkering fairly inconspicuous. Loud noises late at night, high-power-draw tooling, and deliveries of machining equipment and building materials were the norm.

I let out a happy sigh as I pulled into the unit and began unloading my gear into the workshop space, my home away from home - literally, even, on the occasions I'd ended up on a creative spree and just not bothered to go back to my apartment after a long day of work. I was eternally grateful that I'd had the presence of mind to ensure my own financial stability before running away from home. My family was quite wealthy thanks to their business connections, wealthy enough to be just fine after I'd rendered their bank accounts a few million dollars lighter with the help of one particularly mutinous family accountant. I couldn't explain exactly what moved him to help me instead of turning me in when he caught me taking the money, but I owed him a lot; he'd hidden what he could, and continued to manage my funds in secret after I fled. Maybe he was sympathetic to my plight - he'd worked with my uncle for more than a decade, after all, and probably had better moral character than the goons my parents hired. While it bothered me to let him keep so much insight into my ongoing affairs, the other option was being broke and homeless, so I'd made the choice to accept that risk.

That afforded me the luxury of sitting here, now, with all the resources I needed to do my work. The first order of tinkering business was, as always, maintenance. I stripped my costume down to the fitted gym clothes beneath and then loaded the Lightreach, chest rig, and helmet onto their respective stands, plugging them into my computer so I could begin a diagnostics check.

As those scans got underway, I started stripping some of the smaller hard-light panel projectors off my chest rig and cracked them open. The short fall I'd suffered had merely bruised my dignity, but in a fight, an unplanned dismount could mean death. I sat down and started scribbling, glyphs and numbers and a few simple equations spilling forth as an idea crystalised in my head. I measured and made physical adjustments, altering the hard-light lensing components. I reassembled them, ready to operate in a new shape, with a new purpose: a prototype safe-descent system.

The diagnostic scan finished about an hour into my work and I was happy to find that everything was in the green. Experience had come to lend credence to what I'd read about tinkertech needing fairly consistent maintenance over time, but it was nice to know that the Lightreach wasn't already in need of adjustments so soon after the full teardown and rebuild I'd carried out earlier this week. I returned to my work designing the slow fall system, the end result of which would be something akin to a pair of rigid, hard-light wings that would project out above and behind my shoulders.

The other thing I wanted to work on was finalising my newest batch of specialty arrowheads. Snare arrows. I hadn't had time to finish them before I'd forced myself out for the field test, so they'd remained unfinished on my workbench until now. But if I was going out on patrol, I needed a non-lethal takedown option, so that was next - after I was done with the slow fall system. The two cheap dummies I had weren't good substitutes for people either. During the few tests I ran, their arms, heads and torsos fell off too easily, so it was difficult to tell if the bindings would stay tight enough once deployed.

Guess these will need a field test of their own.

The field test had helped, but ultimately it hadn't been enough to get my mind off of Elly and everything else. I had real practical proof that my tech was ready, now. It was time to take it out into the city and make use of it. If I didn't go soon, I worried I would worry myself into never going out at all.

No more excuses.

By the time I'd finished tinkering and was pulling out of my workshop again - costume on, Lightreach and Peregrine covered in the boot - it was a bit past midnight. I drove south along the border of the Poverty Belt until I found a suitably dark alleyway to pull into. As I was about to get out of the car, my personal phone buzzed with a text notification from my roommate Sam.

Turning in 4 the night. Spagbowl in fridge if u havnt eaten. Hope ur getting good $$$ for overtime.

Though I'd initially been happy with my newfound freedom, about eight weeks or so after moving into my new place, that happiness had started to falter. Beyond the annoyances of shopping, cleaning and cooking - skills I'd never had to master, and more importantly, kept me from my tinkering - I'd felt lonely. Evidently I was still burdened by the lack of real relationships my upbringing had left me with despite all the parties and charity galas my parents had forced me to attend. Two weeks of filtering applicants for my room for rent advertisement, and some mildly invasive background checks had given me Sam Bourkley, a 23-year-old mild mannered young man and aspiring artist. I didn't care for rent money, I could've lived there alone - and Sam was more than happy to accept the strange arrangement of performing all the household duties, cooking, and cleaning in lieu of payment. He'd protested a little, offering to pay at least a reduced rate, but I'd seen no need.

I fussed over a response for far too long before finally sending something short in reply.

Thx Sam. Goodnite!

With no-one else around at this hour, I was clear to take off. Uncovering the equipment in the boot and donning the rest of my costume quickly, I finished up with the cape again before taking the Peregrine and holding it up to my back, beneath the cape. With a dull 'thunk', it mag-locked to the back of my chest rig, blending into my silhouette underneath the maroon fabric. I grabbed the Lightreach, positioning it midair, hovering eerily still and unsupported near the car while I closed the boot.

I set the Lightreach to its board configuration and clambered up onto it, angling up towards the sky and launching out of the alley. I configured my HUD as I gained altitude, sorting all my readouts into place as the different systems came online and linked up. Picking up some speed, I angled around roughly towards the new Harbour Bridge, aiming for a few thousand feet of altitude.

The dull hum of the board picked up a little as I propelled myself skywards over the Poverty Belt. With so few tall buildings around this area, I quickly found myself alone in the night sky. After Leviathan had almost completely destroyed the city, Sydney had been fortunate enough to receive a great deal of international funding and support, which - thanks to the efforts of Australian construction and engineering giant Cardon Enterprises - had allowed the city to be almost completely rebuilt from the ground up. Not everyone had seen the benefits of that support, though. For the people who'd barely survived the city's ruination, there was no greater insult than seeing the city welcoming the displaced and needy into our safe harbour instead of putting its own poor first. From above, the Poverty Belt looked like a scar on the face of the city. An ugly and permanent reminder of everything we'd lost, that not even time would likely heal.

I crouched down into a speedboarder's stance as I picked up speed, the city coming clearly into view in just a few scant minutes. Shining towers of steel and concrete pierced their way up into the darkness, the glow of fluorescent lighting casting a yellow-white halo over the entire region. Even at this late hour, I could see the streaks of red and white denoting cars cruising the streets, tiny specks beneath me as I raced through the cold air.

Specific details began to come into view as I got closer. I recognised the headquarters of Cardon Enterprises standing at least 10 storeys proud of the other buildings. Its logo made it clear and obvious to all as it cast a blue neon glow out into the darkness from its prime position in the middle of the new central business district. Even higher still, floating above the skyline was the famous headquarters of the Atlas Alliance. A sleek, flying fortress, hovering above the waters of the harbour and casting a watchful eye over the city beneath it.

As I flew over the city wondering what the best course of action would be, my thoughts returned to the news broadcast I'd heard in the car earlier this afternoon. There was nothing to be done about the Medi-Evils now, and I wasn't planning to throw myself at the parahuman serial killer in the area just yet… At least, not alone. If they did strike again tonight, though, perhaps I could volunteer as overwatch? Pursue them from a distance until Atlas or APRA caught up to stop them, maybe provide some long range cover fire.

That said, fighting crime wasn't the only way to get noticed, and the serial killer wasn't the only thing in the news. The Atlas Alliance was building something on the island beneath their headquarters, and everyone wanted to know what that was. The no-fly zone around and beneath the flying fortress had prevented any news helicopters from getting decent pictures, but a small drone with a tinker-grade optics package?

Posting some sneaky pics to PHO would certainly be one way to start my cape career, and I probably won't even need to enter the no-fly zone.

I considered briefly, then opted for the best of both ideas. Darling Harbour had the highest concentration of nightclubs in the city, and it wasn't far from the Atlas HQ, so I pivoted around and sped off towards it. From my vantage point up high, I made use of the extensive magnification on my helmet optics and began surveying the roads. I screened my radios until I found the frequency for the Sydney police dispatch and tuned in.

With nothing immediately catching my attention, I reached behind my back beneath the cape and pulled out the Peregrine. With an almost haphazard toss, I released it into the air as its own engine and wings flickered to life, and it sailed off at low speed, loitering and waiting for orders. I instructed it to circle Atlas Island (formerly Goat Island), looking for angles it could capture footage with its own optics package - that was far superior to the one built into my helmet - and find out if there was anything interesting visible. I also made sure to tune into civilian aviation frequencies, just in case Atlas HQ started hailing the Peregrine.

The Peregrine chirped in response before peeling off in the direction of the island. In the short amount of time it took to travel the distance, a report about a bar fight on the dispatch radio stole my attention. I manoeuvred sharply downwards over Darling Harbour, running text searches against public business directories to try find the building in question. I came to a stop a few hundred feet in the air - high enough to still be a dark spot among the dark backdrop of the sky and nearly impossible to spot, but low enough that my optical zoom could provide a sharp look at what was going on at ground level.

Maybe I'll get a chance to field test the snare arrows after all. Fingers crossed for someone rowdy!

I found the bar's street address and swooped towards it, clearing the rooftops in the surrounding area and bringing myself to a stop at a vantage point that gave me a clear view of the sidewalk outside the bar. I could already hear sirens approaching, and less than a minute after I arrived, a patrol car rolled down the street and pulled up to the premises.

I descended down to the roof behind me, across the street from the entrance - it looked suitable to land on. Stopping a few metres above it as the mag-locks on my boots disengaged, I crouched down and grabbed the bow handle as I let myself fall forwards in a roll. As soon as I felt the weightlessness in my gut - the Lightreach swapping configuration and ceasing to hold me up - I activated the slow fall system.

Angled panels of pale blue light formed in succession, starting from my shoulder blades and proceeding outwards. They angled to catch air even as additional, larger panels appeared in concert, overlapping and splaying out like angelic wings; I could see the tips reaching around the sides and to the front, like a parachute, holding myself in the air by my chest rig for precious seconds of hangtime. My boots touched down on the bird-crap-ridden rooftop - roughly, but not injuriously so - and the panels began to flicker and fade.

Test One of Slow Fall System: Success. Now I just need to build more replacement armour panels.

Grinning widely, I took a few steps towards the ledge so I could see the street opening of the bar again. Two officers had stepped out of the car and gone inside before I set down, and nothing particularly wild seemed to be occurring at that moment.

Ears perked up and eyes scanning, I reached down to my thigh bandolier to grab a special arrowhead and fed it to the shelf of the bow. My HUD flashed briefly as it recognised the munition; Proximity-Fused, Air-Bursting, Target ARresting System. The snare round I'd just finished building, designed to wrap a human-sized target up in a bundle of wires. The ballistics computer flashed 'PFAB-TARS' and the Lightreach hummed, holding the munition in place, just waiting for me to draw the string and give it room to project the hard-light arrow shaft to mount it to and fire it with.

A handful of people exited the bar as a group, looking just a bit rattled and a moment later, one of the police officers stepped out, pushing a man in handcuffs along with him who was struggling to stay on his feet, no doubt due to heavy intoxication. Over the dispatch radio, I heard them advise that a single ambulance had been requested as well, with no sirens.

Seems like they've got it in hand. Unfortunate.

Was it messed up that I was disappointed the police were able to do their job safely and successfully?

I left my own question unanswered, stowing the snare tip back at my thigh and turning my attention to the Peregrine's camera feed in the corner of my HUD. Now rapidly circling the island at a fair distance, I blew up the feed to fill one half of my vision so I could take a better look. There was definitely something being built on the island, although it was difficult to make out in the darkness. Construction seemed to have ceased for the day, so there was nothing to light up what was down there. From the silhouettes, though, it looked like a collection of buildings, with a design that matched the sleek aesthetic of the Atlas HQ. It also seemed to have much more square footage than height, with the construction expanding out beyond the island's land mass in a few spots, requiring extra manufactured supports. If I had to guess, it looked kind of like a space-age university campus.

Alright, time to test out and dial up the light amplification.

I swapped the Peregrine's optics to night vision and momentarily lost track of what was going on, the feed going white as the cameras started absorbing all the light pollution from the surrounding area. Once I dialled in the right adjustments though, the buildings came as clearly into view as if I were viewing them in daylight. Construction seemed to be largely (if not completely) finished; there were no cranes or large vehicles on the grounds, and only a few traces of scaffolding here and there - though there were several large lorries parked out the front of the building in an open air carpark, along with a few other small construction vehicles.

If any construction was still underway, I could safely wager it was now taking place indoors. Even with my new daylight perspective, I wasn't granted any additional insight into what the building's purpose might be.

Maybe it's some kind of museum?

Whatever it was, I told the Peregrine to save a few full-resolution images to its drive that I could pull from it later. I felt a sense of devious satisfaction at my accomplishment, like a kid who'd managed to sneak a peek under the wrapping paper and see what their Christmas presents were. The little mischievous smile on my face promptly faltered though as the video feed suddenly began to crackle.

I expanded the feed to fill my view and brought up signal diagnostics to try and identify the cause. It wasn't a connection issue between the Peregrine and myself, but the crackling continued to get worse until the feed went completely static. The drone itself was apparently completely fine otherwise - GPS, altimeter, static pressure sensors, environmental sensors, etcetera all reading stable - but its cameras were blind.

What the-?

I pulled up the camera diagnostics and began cycling through its different vision modes. The light sensor was reporting null data. Low - even near-zero - data implied a physical obstruction, null data meant either damage or worse, hacking.

I turned my head up towards where the Peregrine was supposed to be, letting my HUD highlight a little ring around where the drone would be in the sky and activating my full 100x optical zoom to try and make out the faint lights of its wings as it zoomed around at high speed. No sign of any physical interference.

Someone's hacking my drone! Who's hacking my drone?

My fears were confirmed moments later when a crackle came over the aviation frequency.

"Ah, ah, ah!~ Sorry, but there's no sneak peaks," said a heavily-synthesised masculine voice "You'll have to wait until it's finished like everyone else. Run along now!"

I quickly inspected the Peregrine's storage to validate the pictures I'd taken were still saved, and was relieved to find that whoever was doing this, they only seemed interested in scrambling my cameras and didn't have control of any other systems.

"Last callsign, say identity?" I replied curtly, incensed.

"This is Olympus One. You are not currently violating the no fly area surrounding the Atlas Alliance headquarters, but I know what you're trying to do. I've scrambled your video feeds for now but if you don't break off your current flight pattern in the next 10 seconds, I will be forced to seize control of your drone remotely."

Olympus One was the callsign for the Atlas HQ. I was talking directly to someone up in the home of the Atlas Alliance.

Guess I've poked the hornet's nest.

"Acknowledged," I curtly answered once again… And immediately initiated downloads of the saved full-res images from the Peregrine's storage to my helmet.

Whoever this - I assumed guy - was, I did not like his attitude. Intending to both push the point and be obnoxious, as well as test the exact capabilities and the extent to which Atlas HQ was prepared to go, I let the 10 second warning lapse as I drafted up a series of timers and instructions for the Peregrine: first, to power off its own radio once the upload to my helmet was complete, cutting it off from any remote access; then, to wait in the current loiter pattern circling Atlas Island for 15 minutes before breaking west by five kilometres to loiter there; then finally to re-initialise the radio hardware and reconnect to my system.

With the course laid in, I plucked another special arrowhead from my thigh bandolier and loaded it onto the shelf. The HUD flashed 'ACE-X' - Anti-gravity Collapse Effect eXplosive. When I'd first started working on my anti-grav generators, I'd discovered the smaller, flimsier initial prototypes had a tendency to collapse in a violent, roiling gravity wave preceding a concussive explosion. A pain when it came to building the Lightreach, but quite useful for deliberately harnessing as arrowheads with a bit more kick to them. Essentially a small, fragless grenade on the tip of a hard-light arrow... Just in case I needed to scuttle my own tinkertech.

The voice came over the radio again. "Well that's a shame…"

An alert flashed on my HUD warning me that an override of the Peregrine's systems was being attempted.

Okay. FUCK this asshole!

Maybe I was flouting the spirit of the no-fly zone by taking the pictures, but I hadn't actually violated any restricted airspace. My conduct so far had been perfectly legal, and now this blowhard was overstepping his authority to try and steal my drone. I didn't know what kind of silly game Olympus One was playing, but they'd got me fired up, and I was going to pick up the gauntlet - I refused to walk away with nothing. With a particularly cold anger starting to settle in, I immediately set about making things as incredibly difficult as I possibly could for the other connection trying to jack my drone, delaying them while the images continued to upload.

I hadn't expected a hostile actor to be able to so easily get inside my systems, not even with downgraded user privileges - so I hadn't bothered to put in any kind of internal security. Access control was supposed to be cryptographically secure - intruders were meant to be stopped at the door, not once they'd already gotten in. Bad clients were supposed to be banned after just a few attempts. How had they managed to even open a connection?

No time to find out now - I'd just have to investigate later, in the aftermath. I wasn't some AI with the mental bandwidth to do digital forensics under pressure at high speed; I was only human, entering commands in a terminal via haptic gloves, far from the optimal battlestation.

No, now was the time for drastic measures. I did have one clear advantage; I was already fully connected, secured and encrypted, and I had administrator privileges.

I went to the firewall first. In regular operation, the drone connected to a lot of external resources, over private and public network connections; the state table was huge. While the attacker continued to feed exploits to the system, I spent precious seconds finding and isolating the entries associated with the picture upload process and my own administrative backdoor… and then dropped the entire remainder of the table, cutting off every other link between the Peregrine and the outside world until they could all initiate new connections. An effective but temporary defence.

I knew it probably wouldn't stop the attacker for long - as soon as they realised their signals were being dropped, they would use whatever method they'd originally used to gain access again and just pick up where they left off. But it was a start, and sure enough, several core components stopped logging access attempts.

I used the time I'd bought to start working on the next radical obstacle. I tore through the instrument and flight control systems and scrambled every hardware driver present - drivers I'd personally written - effectively cutting the nerves from the Peregrine's brain to its own muscles and senses. The upload continued to tick along steadily - obviously, I couldn't just unplug the radio itself to kill Olympus One's connection, not until the images were secured.

The drone started to veer off course, no longer able to determine its own heading or orientation, nor commence any flight adjustments. I could see the attacker had reconnected and was trying to issue commands, but the drone couldn't even control itself right now, so the attacker had no hope.

That situation was untenable, though - the drone still had plenty of altitude, but if it went into an uncorrected dive and crashed, I'd lose. I cursed under my breath for lack of a regular keyboard as I painstakingly built primitive replacements for the drivers I'd just ripped through, slowly giving the machine its eyes, ears, and wings back. With the flight control system hastily adapted to drivers running under my own privileged access, only the Peregrine itself - or I, personally - could exercise what degraded control I'd managed to re-establish, which meant that there was one big obstacle left in the way of the attacker:

Access to my own personal privilege level. Root access to the entire system.

Olympus One has opted for the most efficient method, focusing on getting unprivileged access and then exploiting specific hardware directly instead of trying to hammer at universal privilege escalation, but it cost them; now their work was useless, and they had to take the hard route anyway.

I briefly considered taunting them, but they hadn't bothered talking to me on the aviation frequency since this whole affair began, so I figured smug silence was better.

Still, I watched the logs nervously as they tried to crack open my own user access. I'd put all my eggs in one basket, hoping that the hacker wouldn't be able to achieve full access before the upload completed. If they succeeded, though, they could backchannel through to all of my other hardware - my helmet, the Lightreach… I'd have to shut everything down. I'd either be completely compromised, or incredibly vulnerable, having to walk home dragging the Lightreach behind me. A kind of crystalline fear started to form as the logs flew by, so fast - inhumanly fast. It had to be some kind of automated exploit kit, or maybe some parahuman power. The attacker was trying things so quickly my eyes couldn't even track what it was doing at a given moment.

Then my feed disconnected. I felt that crystal form into a drop of pure terror and fall down into my stomach. For a few dark moments, I just gaped in shock, wondering if I'd failed. Then I watched with my own eyes as the Peregrine started lazily banking into the pre-programmed loitering pattern I'd given it earlier. Its indicator on my HUD was dark.

In a rush, I checked my helmet storage. The files were all there. I checked the file hashes; they matched from the drone. I opened one of them, and there it was; a crystal clear picture of the buildings beneath the Atlas HQ.

A feeling of overwhelming elation shot through my veins and burned away the terror, replacing it with the need to whoop and throw my fists in the air. The upload had finished, that's why I'd been disconnected. Then, just as I'd instructed it to, the Peregrine had powered off its radios and moved to carry out its programming in silence. Nothing could hack into it now, not without physically catching it, and it was much too fast for almost anything to catch.

I laughed, exhaling lungfuls of nervous energy as it gave way to sheer relief, relaxing muscles that I hadn't realised I was holding taut. I'd beat him, and now the drone was going to rub it in his face. What was he going to do now that he couldn't win?

The feeling of victory was short-lived.

A hatch opened on the underside of the flying fortress. An ovalescent object - about the size of an armchair, with sleek armour panelling in a blue and white colour scheme - dropped out and rocketed away on an intercept course with the Peregrine. From the design, I could instantly tell it was one of Sentinel's probes, although it was about half the size of the ones that usually accompanied him personally when he was out.

The realisation that I might have just made a fool of one of the most powerful tinkers in history came with a lot of mixed feelings I didn't have time to process now.

I drew back the Lightreach's bowstring. The weapon manifested a hard-light shaft for the explosive arrowhead I'd mounted earlier and began calculating a firing solution; not for Sentinel's probe, but for the Peregrine. Sentinel's specialisation wasn't public knowledge, but whatever made the armour for his suit and probes out of was nigh indestructible. Since his first appearance after Leviathan had destroyed Sydney, he'd only been beaten once, by the leader of the Odinsons. I was just being a realist when I accepted that there was simply no chance I was shooting down his probe.

As fast as the Peregrine was, to my dismay, the probe had insultingly little difficulty matching its speed and quickly closed in. A hatch on the probe opened up and a mechanical arm extended from it, reaching out for my drone as the gap between them got smaller and smaller. Since I'd disabled its radio to prevent the hack, I couldn't even tell it to evade; my drone was about to fly gently into the waiting arm of its captor. All that work keeping them from seizing control of the Peregrine and I was going to have to blow it up anyways.

At least it's going out on my terms.

I held out hope that this was all bluff until the very last second, when the probe's arm snatched the Peregrine out of the air. With a sigh, I loosed the explosive arrow and watched it briefly disappear into the night sky with a supersonic crack, detonating with a spectacular blast right in front of the probe. The Peregrine underwent rapid unscheduled disassembly, as expected, and I could only hope that Sentinel would have to deal with some gnarly scratches in his probe's paintwork for my trouble.

Barely shaken by the blast, the probe immediately closed its hatch and beat a hasty retreat back into the ventral hatch it had first appeared from.

Serves you right! Get out of here.

I watched through my magnified helmet optics as the weapons array beneath the fortress sprang to life and began scanning for targets. Seconds later, three of Sentinel's full size probes descended and began rapidly circling the area. I raised my eyebrows - were they planning to send them after me? They had maybe 40 square kilometres of city to cover if they wanted to find me - much more if they didn't know which direction that arrow came from.

I set the Lightreach down and leisurely clambered aboard, pulling up the photos the Peregrine died to get me while I watched with amusement at Atlas HQ's frantic reaction. A few more seconds passed, and then the circling probes suddenly came to a halt - before breaking off and flying towards Darling Harbour, rapidly closing on my approximate position.

Oh, shit.

AN: Here's chapter two up a whole day early! It's not a huge difference but I'm happy that it's not late. There's a bit of a cliffhanger on this one and I know these first two chapters have been very tinker-technobabble heavy but I promise there will be good old fashioned dialogue and character introductions and interactions in the next few chapters now we're past the tinker-y business.

The next chapter might be a few days late as I'm going away for a few days the week before it's due to go up but I'll do my best to stick to schedule. In other news, I'm looking for someone to help beta this fic on a regular basis (once a fortnight) so if you'd be interested in volunteering your services, please DM at Rhyzler#9795 on Discord.

Thank you once again to my lovely co-author Casey and our beta reader Juff!