Sam's eye appeared at the other end of a blackened crated.
She cursed something that made a nearby Electrix put a mechanical hand to his stereos.
"Hela," Sam bellowed. "Towline."
"You can't be serious." Hela's voice came from further away.
"I am. Towline."
"For God's sake," The woman was muttering, haunting her way up the street like a raging storm of green overalls.
Sam leaned against her jeep, working her hand against the handle of her crutch.
"What now?" Hela fumed just a few moments later. Then she saw the crater straight through the car's front.
"Come back for it in the morning." She said, waving a dismissive hand.
"Won't do," Sam said. "And we also need to get that Electrix to the Botties Pit."
"No." Hella whispered. "You, won't be stepping foot in my workshop tonight."
"Fine. I'll get the jeep towed just across from it. You!" She whistled until an Electrix turned, "Got a towline?"
"Yes, miss. Of course."
"Great. Get it here." Sam said.
"One day, I swear I'll strangle you." Hela whispered.
Sam raised her eyebrows. "Will you do it with a towline?"
"When I strangle you. No one will blame me." Hela said. "They'll just ask me how I lasted this long."
"Might just come back as a ghost, whisper about towlines and some such finery."
"You're insane." Hela said.
"Nah," Sam whispered. "Just toeing the line."
They stared at each other for a very long moment, neither of them blinking.
"Tell me he was lying." Hella finally said.
Sam kept silent. And there, in Hela's eyes, she saw something dreadful. Apprehension. Fear. Of Sam.
"I'll get your stupid towline," Hela whispered, walking away.
"And send the rest of the crew home!" Sam called out after her.
Then she closed her eyes, feeling very tired. Jerome had known exactly where to stick the knife in.
An hour later, Sam sat on a throne made of three been bags, tinkering with a gravitor, an opened can of Red-Bull next to her.
Hela hadn't told her not to drink it, and that gnawed at her, but not nearly as much as what she was holding up. A vile of liquid mist that had been extracted from the EPU of the Electrix laying deactivated on the working table. The shimmering blue substance seemed to warp the air around it.
"Solex?" Hela asked.
Sam nodded.
"And my dad new about this?"
Sam sipped her Red-Bull. Then nodded again. The first thing she'd done after building her throne was take her brace off. Her leg was throbbing painfully on one of the bean bags, her blue jeans darkened by smoke with the pattern of the straps.
"He mentioned something like this in passing, but he said he'd never finally figured it out." Hela said.
She was right. And she was wrong.
"Not for the lack of trying." Sam said.
Hela frowned at her. "Well?" She demanded, "Cough up. Tell me what you know. I'm short on mercy tonight."
"In its raw form, like that," Sam pointed with her gravitor, "It's unstable. When crystallized however, Solex can run in phase with the EPU."
"That, at least, I've heard before. But I thought it was just a theory."
On that count, she was wrong.
"That's what caused the explosion, a year and a half ago. I didn't see for certain, but it's the only thing capable of causing something at that magnitude."
"You didn't see? Sam, you were on the same – "
Sam hissed as some sparks flew out of her gravitor. Hela didn't caution her, and Sam gave some serious thought to intentionally electrocuting herself on it, to see if she could produce a reaction.
"I wasn't it the damn room, Hela!" She snapped. "I wasn't. I'd actually prefer it if I had been, because then at least I'd have some sparking answers! And no, for the hundredth time, I don't know how I survived. It all went black and then I woke up levels below, covered in ash."
Hela's eyeglasses glinted in the lamplight.
"What about Dr. K.?" She asked.
"Three levels below the epicenter."
"And what does he know of this?"
"We never talked about Solex. I didn't know he knew. But his showing up was too weird with that first robot going bezerk, the Weld-n-Fix model, plus the hole in his side."
"And the robots with Solex in them? They're the ones who were in the storage below?"
"It was a possibility." Sam said. She put down her gravitor, then tapped on her mobile and pulled a security camera frame from that day. It showed a warehouse with booths. The glass doors on them showed robots waiting to be activated. "There are a lot of possibilities I thought about."
"Obviously, along with the Solex detector you nicked from my dad's stores. And fitted. In your jeep."
"Well, you know, I was always very confident in my pilfering." Sam said, trying hard to throw the gravitor at something as she picked it back up.
"For once in your life be serious with me!" Hela snapped.
Sam considered it. "Prof. did it." She said finally. "He crystalized it."
"What?"
"He crystallized Solex. And when it runs in phase with the EPU, it's not only a great power source. It's a near infinite one." Sparks from the poor gravitor flew as if in protest.
"Impossible." Hela whispered, frowning.
"True" Sam whispered. "Prof did it anyway."
"Then, wait – "
"He crystalized it. Then gave it away. To Cubix."
"What?" Hela said, "To Cubix?"
"Does the Bottie's Pit have an echo now?"
Hela scowled. Sam could see the onslaught of questions coming on again. Then, what exactly happened? What caused the explosion? Where exactly were you? What happened to the Solex?
"Why don't we have exoskeletons?" Sam asked instead. "Why isn't Tony Stark lounging about at Connor's dad's donut shop? And why does it take me five stupid days to charge one of these?" Sam leaned forward, shaking the gravitor about. "Then use it in thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds per hundred pounds?"
Hela frowned but finally decided to answer. "Energy storage efficiency. Eighty to eighty-five percent of a robot's weight is his just its power bank. Powering armor and exoskeletons of that size for a reasonable period of time would render them too heavy for any human."
Sam nodded. "We got this far, but never managed to figure that one out. That's the annoying thing about energy: it just doesn't have the damn decency to tell its own density to stick it. High-quality energy storage systems are exorbitantly expensive to build and maintain. They lose the capacity to hold charge over time. And most annoying of all, you can't simply make volume more efficient. It's like trying to create a one-liter water bottle that can hold two liters. It's impossible, unless you do away with all of physics."
Sam took a deep breath. "And that is exactly what Solex does. What you're holding in that simple glass vile, is infinitely dense and massless."
Hela's mouth had fallen open sometime through her monologue. Sam supposed that's what she must have looked like too, the first time she'd heard it.
"An inexhaustible source of power, capable of sustaining civilizations indefinitely." Sam continued "Prof theorized it could even make time flow differently around it, speeding up, slowing down, or even looping, though I don't have near enough the energy to consider the implications of that right now."
"But then," Hela said, almost reverend, "The implications of this… Boundless energy for cities, starships, and entire planets. This could revolutionize technology, we could make things that operate on principles beyond current scientific understanding!"
"Exactly" Sam agreed.
"That's incredible! It's –"
"Then Prof gave the only stable version of it to Cubix. And he didn't quite leave a post it on the fridge saying how to make more."
Hela froze.
Where will you take us, Samantha? What will your infinity bring?
The progress of a civilization, or the life of a friend?
"What will happen if the world finds out Cubix has infinite power?" Sam asked. "Do you think they'll care he has an EPU?"
Hela shook her head. "They'll pull him apart. Fiber by optic fiber."
She fell silent, staring off into nowhere with haunted eyes.
Sam let her. This was not a little to take in. And somewhere deep inside, Sam was glad she didn't have to carry it alone anymore.
"Is this the whole truth? Is everything you told me truthful, and is it the entirety of it?" Hela asked suddenly, voice hard like iron.
"Yes." Sam said, matching tone for tone.
Hela nodded. "So, what now?" She asked.
"Now we've got someone else who knows. Prof. Kenneth Kale. I don't know if he knows about the crystallized Solex Cubix has, but he's sure hunting its little cousin." Sam said, strapping the interface back to the body of the gravitor.
"What does he want with it?" Hela asked.
"I honestly have no idea. But considering everything, can you hope it's any good?"
Hela shook her head. "And?" She asked.
Sam stuck the gravitor to the can of Red-Bull.
What's more important, wonder or friendship?
"And I'm going to stop him." Sam said, eyes twinkling. She turned the open can on its head and shook it vigorously. Nothing spilled out. "Whatever it takes."
THE END OF PART 1