In the last twelve hours, Tori had gotten good at identifying which overgrown, petrified cars might still have the parts Hal needed and which were busts.

  She, Carol, and Zane were working as a team. She picked a car, and between Zane’s welding torch-like fire magic and Carol’s strength, they pulled its body apart, busted the gas tank and transmission off, and salvaged what they could. At first, they’d just pulled whole cars into their inventory, but that had wasted too much time.

  Even though Tori was good at finding the right parts, Hal kept getting pickier about the ones she brought in.

  “How about these?” she asked, pulling two intact gas tanks from her inventory and setting them on the lab’s floor. As far as she could tell, there was nothing wrong with either, but Hal only took one of them. The other joined the pile of rusty steel outside of Cindy’s, where all his rejects went.

  The Explorer sat in the corner, a tarp over its hood. Erika hadn’t come back for it yet, but Hal was done working on it. His efforts looked to be split between six other frames—all from similarly-sized SUVs he’d stripped down to the chassis—and a single weapon he seemed to be nursing along.

  Tori didn’t have to be a Voltsmith to feel the energy in the air. Charge might be a mystery to her, but Hal was having a revelation—or two. Something had shifted, and that energy was contagious.

  It was also terrifying. Tori finished sorting the collection of gears into the correct storage bins and got out of Cindy’s Garage before the place gave her the shivers too badly. Whatever Hal was up to, it was going to change how Museumtown approached the rest of the second phase of Integration—and maybe Integration itself. She hoped Hal knew what he was doing.

  I had no idea what I was doing.

  But I desperately needed an assistant who had some idea of what was going on—someone to do the kind of work I’d done in the small engine shop or at home. Tori couldn’t do it. Neither could the twins. As far as I could tell, I was the only Charge-user in Museumtown. In fact, Erika was the only other person I’d heard of who’d even been offered a Charge class.

  So, it was all me. I had six trucks to get running, one personal weapon to perfect, and with the five Charge in the Explorer gone, a budget of ninety-seven total to use for my gear and the SUVs.

  They were a mish-mash of Fords, Toyotas, and even one electric BMW that had passed my test. Right now, though, they were just frames. Their engines sat on the reject pile, and I’d gotten rid of everything inside but the steering column, gas, brake pedal, and two seats. I wouldn’t need more. The goal with them wasn’t Mad Max. It was closer to reality than that.

  I was building technicals.

  The bad part was that, unless I got lucky, the weapons system wouldn’t need to be Charge-powered. I could put a mage in the passenger’s seat and use them as a turret in a pinch. That was bad because, while the upscaled Hearts were very good at keeping the machines themselves moving—and moving faster than I could run except for very short distances—they were not good at fire-on-demand energy. To make them do that, I’d need to triple the Charge in each machine. Six times fifteen was ninety. I had ninety-seven. That wasn’t workable.

  Rail guns and Taser launchers were out. So were other firearms. Right now, mages were looking like my best bet.

  But that only took mages off the battle lines and put them in armored vehicles. It didn’t act like a force multiplier. I needed something different. And I couldn’t think of what. So, instead of working on the would-be tanks that were going to even the odds against the Fireborn Crusade when Phase Two really kicked off, I was working on what was left of the Ironmonger’s weapon.

  After I’d stripped it down completely and absorbed its Charge to run five of the half-dozen upscaled Hearts that would slowly power the technicals, I’d spent three hours working the metal shaft into something that fit my hand perfectly. I’d added a trigger and run it to the existing wires inside of it. It didn’t feel as heavy as my axle-handled Trip-Hammer had, but it had enough heft to it.

  Then it was time to add the head. I’d pulled out the wreckage of my old weapon, but while its spinning heads were powerful, I wanted something different. I could go a lot bigger than I had been. And I had to. The Trip-Hammer was a good weapon, but as Tori’s build came together and Zane turned into a monster of a mage, I was starting to realize they’d outclass me soon.

  I didn’t want that. The Fabrication Engine and its rovers were one option to even the odds, but I only had one Grovetender’s Heart, and without a second miniaturized power source, they were limited by my total Charge. I needed to invest in a less limited tool.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  So, I’d come up with a simple—but radical—solution.

  Siege Hammer, by Hal Riley (Created Item, Charge 0)

  The Siege Hammer uses borrowed power from external sources to apply incredible destructive force to a wide area. It cannot operate on Charge of its own, but instead requires a Voltsmith’s Grasp to run.

  First created by Hal Riley of Earth.

  The power supply was, quite humbly, brilliant.

  I’d disconnected the Grovetender’s Heart from the components that turned its Charge into vines, then reconnected that in the back of the Voltsmith’s Grasp’s wrist. It pulsed against my skin, one beat per second most of the time. My own heart synced with it within a minute of putting the gauntlet back on; that made me nervous for a while, but it didn’t seem to affect my body at all, and as my heart rate increased, the Charge pulses on my wrist did, too. That didn’t affect the gauntlet at all, much to my relief.

  But when I picked up the Siege Hammer and pulled the trigger, the Voltsmith’s Grasp—and the Heart—went from an easy pulse to that of a man finishing a marathon. And the Siege Hammer responded.

  There was only one head. And it didn’t spin. It slammed forward in a massive punch; if I timed it right, the combined impact of my own strength and the weapon’s slam could put six-inch-deep dents in inch-thick steel. Add a spike from the old Trip-Hammer to it, and I had a can opener to deal with armor or absolutely wreck an unarmored target. And the shockwaves…they were incredible.

  So much so that the Voltsmith’s Grasp needed an upgrade to its armor so my arm wouldn’t shake itself apart.

  I couldn’t build a similar weapon for the SUV technicals, but in the hours I’d spent on the Siege-Hammer, I’d come up with a different idea. It had to do with my seventh-grade science class, and with potential and kinetic energy.

  The next morning—I’d pulled an all-nighter—the first of the technicals pulled up outside of Museumtown’s gates.

  It was hideous. I hadn’t bothered painting the armor I’d covered the cut-back cab in. There was only room for two inside, but the whole back seat and trunk had been converted into two long benches, sitting sideways, with enough space for six people to jam themselves in. That section was unarmored and open; the benches weren’t for tanking hits, just for moving people from one place to the next.

  The cab only had three possible exits. Each side had a door—an up-armored version of a standard car door, with a small window covered in a hatch. The windshield was gone, replaced with a grid of steel rebar that looked more like an oversized screen door than a windshield. And over the passenger seat, above a metal hatch that slid and locked open to avoid cutting the gunner in half, was the gun.

  It wasn’t exactly a gun. It was more of a crossbow. A rapid-fire, slow-reloading crossbow.

  I’d come up with it after trying and failing to build a Heart-powered rail gun. The problem had been obvious right away. A rail gun, or anything similar, required all its power investment at the moment of firing. I couldn’t use Charge batteries to store it, either—the ‘fluid’ Charge didn’t interact with the batteries in the same way, and transferring power from form to form required a Heart. If I’d had six smaller Hearts, I wouldn’t have had to worry about it, but I only had one.

  So, if the upscaled Hearts couldn’t provide up-front power, and I couldn’t efficiently store the stuff they were making with batteries, I simply needed a different storage method—a kinetic storage method—that stored the energy instead of the Charge.

  The Scorpions were my solution.

  They were…crude. Five ‘crossbows’ stacked on top of one another, on a single ‘tower’ of steel. The gunner could operate it with one hand, though, and the bows automatically re-drew themselves over about ten seconds of drain on the Heart. There was a noticeable drop in power to the engine during bow-drawing, especially if all five were going, but that was acceptable. I’d built a relatively quick-firing weapon, with five shots, that only required a loader and projectiles.

  Calvin stared at the contraption, head shaking back and forth. “Well, I’ll be damned. You built a Humvee.”

  “Not exactly.” I popped the door open. The steel clicked and scraped; I hadn’t bothered making it perfect. We didn’t have time for that. “It’s two-seat, plus unarmored transport, and I’m running off the theory that subway panels from the Redline Tunnels will provide enough protection. That’s probably not true, but I couldn’t go heavier and still have the acceleration and speed they needed. “

  “Well, they’re not tanks, that’s for sure,” Calvin said. “Think they’ll work?”

  “I think so. As far as I can tell, Erika’s in Iowa somewhere and still moving, so range won’t be an issue. Remote Voltsmithing is going to put in some work with seven vehicles going, though. And I’m not sure what to do with them on the battlefield. I figured you’d have some ideas.”

  Calvin nodded as a few of the West Side delvers poked their heads out of their tents and stared at the chopped, slapped-together SUV. I didn’t blame them, and I also didn’t bother keeping it a secret. Unlike the Explorer, these were for other people. They’d be driven—and their weapons manned—by other people. It didn’t hurt for other people to see them. And if the Fireborn Crusade knew about them, so be it. I doubted they had anything similar.

  Besides, the crossbows weren’t throwing arrows. They’d throw a steel spear hard enough to punch through an inch of iron plating. I knew. I’d tested it.

  “So, what do you need?” Calvin asked.

  I took a deep breath. Then I let it out. “I need bodies. A half-dozen. Preferably with high Body and Awareness. And a fire mage. Doesn’t matter who, they don’t have to be high-level, just to be able to weld. I can’t build five more of these in time. Not by myself.”

  Calvin smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile, and I suppressed a shiver. “I’ve got just the people for you.”