My head jerked up from the metal tabletop where I'd apparently glued my face with drool. I blinked against the harsh workshop lights, my brain lagging a few steps behind the rest of me. After a moment, the important details, my name, where I was, why my neck hurt, finally slotted back into place. The diagnostic screen in front of me blinked cheerfully, the same one I'd started before dozing off. Too many nights spent staring at code and trying to get the Mark One ready.
But as my eyes finally focused on the results, I was wide awake now.
On the screen was a simple green check mark and 0 issues found.
It was done. A thrill washed over me.
I looked up at the suit hanging in the rig I'd built specifically to hold it, wires running into a couple of ports.
"It's finally done," I said aloud.
My voice sounded too loud in a space so used to silence.
The suit had been structurally finished for weeks, but I kept running into bugs in the coding. I'd never built an operating system before, and it proved to be a steep learning curve.
But here it was.
Ready.
Finally.
I decided to run the first walking test right then. Patience had officially left the building; excitement was bubbling up in my gut.
I headed for the power unit, a heavy, reinforced box bolted into the wall beside the building's breaker room. I'd built it to hold both power cores, part safe, part power supply, part desperate attempt to keep my electricity bill from screaming accusations at the utility company.
One of the cores sat in its cradle, humming faintly. I lifted it out with both hands, surprised as always by how deceptively dense it was. Then I carried the slightly glowing device back to the Mark 1.
Opening the suit's back panel took a minute. The mechanism was still stiff, still new, still in need of refinement. With a final tug, it popped open, and I lined up the core with the housing. It slid in smoothly, locking into place with a clean, satisfying click that sent a shiver up my spine.
I closed the pack and I stepped back, heart thudding, and took in the sight of the suit powered, ready. It was finally ready.
Unlike the prototype, this suit was entirely my creation, no stolen exoskeletons with plates slapped on top. Its interior was a titanium mesh, a final line of defense that also separated my body from the suit's inner workings. This backbone allowed the suit to deliver the strength I needed without overstraining my soft, fragile human frame. The outer layer was a black carbon-fiber alloy, designed to stop almost anything short of the heaviest hits, with grey tool-steel plates covering the most critical, most likely-to-be-hit areas. Heavy, yes but effective.
It had cost far more than I wanted to think about to build. Sure, there were better materials I could have used, if only I could afford them or had the tools to work with them. Some materials weren't even available to buy; I'd have to manufacture them myself or… steal enough. Both options were well beyond my current ability and resources.
Getting the suit on was a challenge. In a perfect world, I'd have had help but if this were a perfect world, I wouldn't be here at all. I'd built the rig to hold the suit so I could get in and out on my own. Even so, it took effort to get fully inside. I had to unhook the arms while they were still unpowered, which was tricky. The suit wasn't so heavy that I couldn't stand, but it was definitely a lot of metal. I lifted my arm and tapped the control screen on the underside of my right forearm.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, all at once, the suit hummed to life. It felt almost weightless, and my movements were smoother than ever. I reached for the helmet or tried to. The suit boosted my motion so much that I knocked over the entire table instead, sending tools and the helmet scattering across the floor.
"Damn it," I muttered as I carefully bent down, picked up the helmet, and slowly put it on.
With the helmet in place, the HUD linked to the suit and sprang to life. Far more advanced than my old basic display, it showed the suit's status and limited integrity monitoring. I could check the servos that powered the limbs, and the current power output, though with a sun core, a percentage was mostly unnecessary. What I did discover was that I could overtax the power system not the core itself, but the capacitors that regulated the flow into the suit. The HUD let me monitor their load and heat levels. It could also display the blaster's status, of course only when it was attached.
I eased into the open space of the workshop, flexing my fingers as the suit's servos hummed in quiet readiness. Passing the workbench, my eyes flicked to the new blaster. It looked almost identical to the last one, right up until the moment it exploded into scrap. but now a little toggle switch sat near the emitter housing, letting me flip between remaining power and remaining shots. A tiny quality-of-life upgrade born out of necessity.
Weapon limitations were still one of the biggest problems with this suit. The blaster worked. I have added a long knife. But nothing else had made it past the testing phase. The wrist-mounted blade idea had potential, right until it snapped under any real stress. No amount of redesigning made it survive long enough to be worth keeping. The breakthrough, if it even qualified as one, came by accident: I found out I could overstrain the servos, push a jolt of power through them, and get a momentary spike of force. More of a violent lurch than a controlled technique. But it could put the hurt on something if I got desperate.
Crude, imperfect, improvised. Still better than nothing.
I did some basic stretching and a bit of shadowboxing to feel the movement. I definitely needed to play with the system more, but I was moving more fluidly now—though it could still be better. I took a deep breath. This was dangerous, but better to find out now than later.
I tried to overextend my left arm. I raised it above my head and swung downward. I'd built restrictions into the suit to prevent me from dislocating a limb or accidentally twisting myself in half. The arm came to a halt exactly at the natural limit of movement had the arm still been real.
I let out a quiet sigh of relief and moved on to more aggressive tests, pushing and twisting, making sure the servos reacted exactly the way they should. Once I was satisfied the suit moved the way I intended, I returned it to its rig, shut it down, and climbed out. Getting out was actually harder than getting in, but I managed.
"Okay, future me, figure out a better way to get in and out," I grumbled, resetting the table I'd flipped like a drunk and hooking the suit back up to the diagnostics.
A few days of tweaking later, the Mark One was officially ready to roll.
And that's when I realized something important.
I had absolutely no idea where to go.