Ryan's voice came through the speaker again, cutting through the applause.
"Move all cameras to the sides. I'm walking Scrapper toward the main door. Stay clear of the path."
The cheering stopped. Reporters looked at each other, then at the forty-foot mech standing six feet from them, then scrambled.
Camera crews grabbed tripods and hauled them sideways, staking out new angles along the workshop walls. Chloe repositioned her main rig to catch the walk in profile. The TV crews fought over the spot nearest the door — the best angle for capturing Scrapper's full stride head-on as it approached.
The mood had shifted. Five minutes ago, these people had been content creators chasing a trending topic. Now they moved with the hurried reverence of witnesses who'd realized they were standing inside a moment that would be talked about for decades.
Every camera in the room locked on.
Ryan took the first step.
BOOM.
The sound was different when you were standing next to it. On video, it was a crack — sharp, percussive, over fast. In person, it was a detonation that started in the floor and traveled up through the soles of your shoes, through your knees, into your gut. The sheet metal walls flexed inward and snapped back. Dust rained from the ceiling joists.
Ward pressed his hand to his chest. The vibration was deep enough to feel in his ribs, and at his age, that wasn't a comfortable sensation. But his eyes never left the mech.
Because this was the answer.
The arm movement had been convincing. Impressive, even. But a sufficiently clever mechanism — hydraulics, pneumatics, some kind of hidden actuator system — could theoretically replicate arm movements from a fixed position. Ward had been willing to entertain that possibility.
Walking killed it.
You could not fake bipedal locomotion at this scale. The balance calculations alone — the real-time center-of-gravity adjustments needed to keep thirty tons upright on two legs while shifting weight from one foot to the other — required a control system of extraordinary sophistication. No puppet rig, no hidden cable system, no mechanical trick could produce what he was watching. The physics were too demanding.
Scrapper was walking. And Ryan Mercer was making it walk with his mind.
BOOM.
Second step. Another crater punched into the concrete. Cracks spidering outward, joining the first set.
Hartley grabbed Ward's arm, not for support but to make sure Ward was processing what he was processing.
"Doug. The neural link."
"I know."
"It's real."
"I know."
"We need to bring him back to MIT. Today."
"After the demo. Let him finish."
BOOM. BOOM.
Third step. Fourth step.
Wall.
Same as the video. Four strides and the workshop ran out of room. The power cable reached its limit, swaying behind Scrapper's ankle like a leash.
Ryan reversed the walk. Four steps back. Each one shaking the floor, punching new holes in concrete that was already more rubble than surface. He guided Scrapper to its starting position — the original footprint, marked by the deepest pair of craters — and brought it to a halt.
The neural pressure was hitting him hard. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his hands inside the gloves had the fine tremor he recognized from the first test. The stripped-down neural link lacked the stress-dampening subsystems that the movie version of Scrapper had. In the film, Amara could sprint and jump without breaking a sweat because her scavenged neural relay included pressure-reduction buffers from a Mark III Jaeger. Ryan's version had none of that. He'd cut every non-essential system to get the link working at all, and the cost was that eight steps felt like running a marathon in his skull.
He killed the link. The cockpit went dark. The pressure vanished, and the relief was so sudden it felt physical — like surfacing after a deep dive, lungs burning, sky wide open above him.
Ryan wiped his forehead, unbuckled, and climbed down.
The reporters were waiting at the bottom.
They swarmed. Every microphone in the building converged on him at once, voices overlapping in a wall of sound:
"Ryan, can you walk us through—"
"How does the control system—"
"Will you be accepting offers from—"
"Can we get an exclusive—"
Ryan opened his mouth to respond, but Ward got there first.
The professor stepped forward — not between Ryan and the reporters, but slightly ahead of him, angling his body to create a barrier. His voice was calm, even, and carried the particular authority of a man who'd spent thirty years running graduate seminars and wasn't about to be talked over by a blogger with a ring light.
"Thank you, everyone. Today's demonstration is concluded. Ryan has nothing further to share at this time." He paused, letting the words settle. "I'd also like to note that the technology demonstrated here today may be subject to classification review. I'd encourage everyone to exercise discretion with their coverage."
The room went very quiet.
Then a reporter near the back — one of the TV crew — squinted at Ward and said, loud enough for every mic in the room to pick up:
"Wait — you're Douglas Ward. From MIT."
Silence. Then chaos.
"MIT is already here?"
"Is this a recruitment visit? Has MIT made an offer?"
"Professor, can you confirm—"
"Are there military applications—"
Ward's expression didn't change, but his voice dropped half a register. "I've said what I came to say. The demonstration is over. Please clear the workshop."
The reporters recognized the tone. It was the voice of a man who was no longer making suggestions. A few of them kept shooting — you couldn't fault a journalist for that — but they backed toward the door, collecting equipment, exchanging looks that said did you get that? tell me you got that.
Ryan stepped up beside Ward. "That's it for today. Thanks for coming."
They filed out. Reluctantly, hungrily, already composing their pieces. The last one through the door turned back to snap a photo of Scrapper standing in the dim workshop, indicator lights fading, and then they were gone.
Ward turned to Ryan the instant the door closed.
"Alright," he said. "Now tell me everything. What technology did you actually use?"