Cycling.

  The answer was cycling. Moving Charge between forms, and between different parts of the Voltsmith’s Grasp in its different forms. And the solution was to modify the Heart.

  I’d all but figured it out days ago, when I’d asked Carol and Calvin about the Heart’s design. A closed system, with the tiny Heart at its core, was the solution. I’d built that, but I hadn’t built the correct system.

  Now, with Tori helping to hold tools and move all the parts precisely, the expanded, second-model Heart was almost finished. A whopping eight chambers, each smaller than the original’s four, to fit inside the Voltsmith’s Grasp’s limited internal space. Seven of them connected to wires, and each of those wires connected to a refined, hypercondensed Charge Conductor/Refiner combo, spaced evenly up what would connect to my shoulder and upper arm.

  The last of the Heart’s chambers was the only one even close to its original size. It acted as the atrium and ventricle pushing used blood to the lungs—but in this case, it pushed fluid Charge into the Heart, and then, after electrifying it, pushed that back into me. It was a complicated mess of wires, conduit, and loops. Every point of Charge flowed through parts of the Heart at least three times, changing from electric to fluid Charge, and then back, and then sometimes back again a third time.

  The Voltsmith’s Grasp flew in the face of Rube’s Principle. It was, on its surface, needlessly complex.

  But the only thing that mattered was…

  “Test number forty-five, success. Seventy-two percent flexibility,” I said. “Fingers move semi-independently. It works.”

  Tori yawned from her spot by the workbench. “Great. Can I go?”

  I nodded. “You could go any time. You’re not stuck here, Tori.”

  “I know, but Hal, you think I’d leave you like this?” Tori paused as she stood up. “I mean, Zane’s kind of like this right now, but…he’s got Carol. You don’t have anyone.”

  “That’s not true. I have a lot of people,” I shot back. I flexed the gauntlet again. “I have…”

  “Who? Jessica and Calvin? They’re trying to rally what’s left of Museumtown’s morale. Carol’s busy trying to get through to Zane, but that’s not going well. Bobby Richards? I don’t think so. He’s off doing whatever he’s doing—probably making a deal with the Fireborn Crusade. You’re the person a lot of people go to when they need help solving a problem, but you don’t ask other people for help with your own, and they’re not just going to help you if they don’t know you need it.”

  I stared at Tori. “My parents and—“

  “Beth isn’t here.” Tori touched my shoulder. I flinched, and she kept talking. “Mom and Dad aren’t here. I have Jessica-Mom, and she’s great. So are you, and Carol is…Carol is the coolest. But they’re not Mom and Dad. Not really. Some problems, you can’t fix. Not with the tools you have.”

  She took a breath and waited. I didn’t say anything for a while. “Thanks for asking for help. I’ll do what I can for you, Hal,” she said, and then she left.

  And I stared at the gauntlet, and at the System message that popped up as I tightened the last screws into place.

  Voltsmith’s Grasp (Created Item, Charge 30/45, Upgrade Level 2)

  The Voltsmith’s Grasp is a Charge-assistance device. In its prototype form, it can temporarily transfer Charge to a consumable device created by the wearer. It can also use five Charge to create a powerful burst of electricity in melee range. Expended Charge regenerates over time.

  The first Upgrade doubles the Voltsmith’s Grasp’s storage and allows up to two consumable devices or weapons to receive Charge.

  The second Upgrade increased the Voltsmith’s Grasp’s responsiveness, and increases the speed at which it drains Charge from both creations and magical items.

  It wasn’t done yet. I still needed to armor it from the shoulder to the fingertips, and to install some on-board weapons. But it was functional. It’d work as an arm until I could replace my real one. And the Charge-cycling technique…that’d take some getting used to, but it was viable.

  And viable was good enough. The second upgrade was powerful. Responsiveness meant next to nothing in the face of my injury; even with that phrasing, it was still much more clumsy than my real hand had been. But the Charge-drain? That would turn it from a good weapon in specific circumstances into something I could rely on—and that was useful. I’d have to make a point of the faster speed the next time I ran into Taven Liu.

  I pulled up my status.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 72, Rank One]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 40 (+5)

  ?Awareness - 47

  ?Charge - 4/106 (+15) (73 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  Stolen story; please report.

  [Class Skill - Remote Voltsmithing - Use your Voltsmithing to empower Creations even when others are using them—or when no one is.

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Fabrication Engine (Epic): 1 Taser Rover, 1 Rail Gun Rover

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp Upgrade Two (30/45 Charge) - Rail Gun Module, Taser Launcher

  ?Siege Hammer (Charge 0)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Empty)

  Remote Voltsmithing

  ?Scorpion Technicals (30 Charge)

  ?The Explorer (5 Charge)

  With my current layout, I had a lot of potential Charge to spend. Thirty-three of it, to be precise. And I also had another slot to use. Fifteen of that Charge went into the Voltsmith’s Grasp, getting it up to 45 total Charge—although a ton of that flowed in and out of my body through the Conductors. I’d still have eighteen left, though.

  The next twenty minutes were spent on clean-up, though. I had plenty of creations to slot into that final space, and I also had Remote Voltsmithing to think about. But more importantly than that, I had to confront Jessica, Calvin…and Carol.

  I sucked it up and found Tori first, and she brought me to Carol.

  They were, as Tori had said, in the tower that guarded the Reliquary of Bones, just above the Field Museum’s steps. In fact, they were in my old room.

  “It’s open,” Carol said as I knocked. Then I opened the door, and her eyes narrowed. Her spear was in her hand all of a sudden, and it was pointed at me. “Get out.”

  The fury pouring off of her was all but overwhelming. For a split second, I thought about arguing. The Voltsmith’s Grasp flexed as I pushed Charge through it, loosening its two fingers and thumb. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t care. Leave.”

  I left. But as I did, Zane’s eyes met mine, and something blazed in them. Recognition. And purpose. I shut the door before he could say anything, then turned to Tori. “I think I messed that up.”

  “You did. You did almost three hours ago, when you didn’t find Carol right away.” Tori headed for the stairs, then pointed down. “At this point, she’s not going to forgive you for getting Zane hurt. The only thing you can do to make it better is fix it.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured.” I shut up and followed her down the stairs. I’d expected the conversation with Carol to be difficult, but not that difficult. And the worst part was, it was my fault. I didn’t think Zane would have done anything differently if I hadn’t been there, but at the same time…if we’d gotten to Carol or Tori first…

  “Luckily,” Tori continued, “You’re not on your own. We can still fix this. Get us to the next Phase, and leave Taven Liu behind, and all of this might go away, right?”

  “Right,” I said. We stepped into the Captain’s old throne room, and I found a spot on the stairs, near Jessica and Calvin.

  Jessica was still covered in dried blood. It almost looked horrific, but the paleoanthropologist hardly seemed to care. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t open them as I sat. She didn’t say anything, either.

  Calvin did. He looked haggard, like he’d aged twenty years over the evening and night. “Well, we fucked that up.”

  I nodded slowly. “We’ve still got six days. I think I can make some improvements to the technicals, and we can get out there in a day or two. This beacon’s gone, but there have to be more out there. If we spread out and search, maybe we can find another one.”

  “And then what?” Jessica asked.

  “Bring it back to Museumtown and survive the second phase.”

  She stared at me. Then she shook her head. “You think there’s a chance that there’ll be an unclaimed beacon anywhere near here? And if there is, you think Taven Liu won’t come after it? He needs it as much as we do, and we didn’t win that battle.”

  I turned to Calvin. He shook his head. “We gave it a good fight, but Museumtown can’t afford another pitched battle. Too many wounded, too many dead.”

  And there it was. Reality—the reality that we’d taken our shot and lost. If Museumtown was going to make it to Phase Three, it wasn’t going to do it on the battlefield. The solution wasn’t military.

  I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that much.

  Objective: Secure and power a Waypoint (437 Remaining) (0/1)

  Time Limit: 5 Days, 23 Hours

  Voril’s System interface glowed in her meditation tank, high above Chicago. She stared at it. So far, over one hundred Waypoint Beacons had been claimed or destroyed in the first day. They were on pace for precisely the kind of Phase Two the Consortium expected from a Death World; the kind where everyone died.

  She’d been a part of three hundred thirty-seven Integrations following her own. And Death World Integrations always started coming off the rails in Phase Two. But this one felt different, and she was struggling to pinpoint exactly why.

  The meditation tank’s walls went clear, and she looked down at the battlefield and the burned-out dungeon she’d placed a Beacon in. The number of dead was lopsided. Hal Riley’s side had taken almost all the casualties on that front, while somehow managing to capture four times as many people as the other side. The town of Whiting was on fire, and it’d keep burning for the duration of Phase Two unless someone stepped in. Voril was one being who could step in.

  But it wouldn’t matter.

  With the Fireborn Crusade and Chicago Beaconless, her region of Earth was almost certainly out for Phase Three. Red-beam. She’d either get reassigned to a different region to help out one of the blinking-blue areas on the map, or she’d get put on leave. She was massively powerful—Worldcasters, especially ones this close to Rank Eight, were rare—but she wasn’t unique.

  The Voltsmith, though. Hal Riley. He was unique. Voril had been watching him intently, and he wasn’t operating quite the way a Voltsmith typically did.

  Most Voltsmiths, sometime after hitting Rank One, stopped fighting altogether and focused on building creations. Remote Voltsmithing was the most common choice for them, and they’d focus almost all of their Charge into creations for other people. The class almost never got used to its full potential, though, for the simple reason that a Voltsmith rarely got exposed to the resonant nature of Charge.

  Voril only knew about Charge on a theoretical level. Worldcasters operated on mana, after all. But she knew enough to know that Charge was, in reality, the basis for mana. It was the basis for everything she did.

  And Hal Riley, like only a handful of Voltsmiths Voril had seen before, was exploring the nature of Charge.

  That left Voril in a precarious position. She had a choice to make, and neither of the choices would position her well with the rest of the Consortium. If she let the Voltsmith fail here, her superiors wouldn’t be able to find any real flaw in her decision-making, but the Consortium and Universal Order would lose access to a rare class operating in an even more uncommon way. That’d be a serious problem for Voril’s future.

  On the other hand, she could tip the scales in Hal’s favor. Not cheat for him. The Consortium didn’t cheat. Her superiors would either commend her for her initiative or, more likely, attempt to get her removed from her region of Earth. Blue-beamed. That was the penalty for tipping the scales too much. And there was a second consequence: Hal’s question the last time they’d met.

  “Did you build the Tutorials? The dungeons?”

  If she helped him, would it only speed up his quest for revenge? And was that worth the risk?

  Voril had a lot of questions, and she had very few answers.