Keran had no intention of staying a drifter forever.
Ever since he’d escaped Azure City, he’d had no steady supply of resources, and every step of armor modification cost a fortune.
Precision transmission components, high-purity energy crystals, reinforced alloy plating—every single piece carried a hefty price tag.
The wasteland had its freedom, but resources were scarce and unreliable.
Progress was way too slow out there.
More importantly, he was on his own.
Until he got strong enough, he needed a powerful faction to lie low under.
If Undercurrent pinpointed his location out in the open, they’d hold nothing back.
They might even deploy a heat-seeking missile array to carpet-bomb the whole area.
There’d be nowhere to run.
Undercurrent hadn’t gone that far yet for two reasons.
First, he was inside Dawn City’s borders.
Any missiles would get shot down by the air defense network, and exposing their other infiltration cells in the city wouldn’t be worth it.
Second, the Leader hadn’t decided to pull out all the stops to hunt him down.
As far as the organization was concerned, he wasn’t worth that kind of resources.
The real reason he’d picked Dawn City was simple: besides Undercurrent, only the major city-states of the Hundred Cities Federation had a full, high-end mechanical technology infrastructure.
If he wanted to fully modify and upgrade his power armor, to unlock more advanced modification capabilities, he needed access to the Federation’s core technical archives.
First things first, though.
He needed a place to crash and a cover identity.
Keran decided to try his luck on West District’s Repair Row.
After asking around, he finally tracked down a repair shop tucked away in a back alley.
Rumor said the owner was a retired senior Federation Armor Engineer who still held the core schematics for early-model power exoskeletons.
It was the most valuable lead he had access to right now.
…
The alley ran deep, flanked by scuffed alloy walls.
At the very end, he spotted a half-open rolling service door.
The shop had no proper sign.
Just a tiny palm-sized hologram embedded next to the door: a glowing pale blue energy wrench.
You’d never notice it unless you were right up on it.
“Finally found it,” Keran muttered, his eyes narrowing slightly.
The place looked totally unremarkable.
Just your average run-down repair shop, from every angle.
A folding metal table sat out front.
Two gray-haired old men were hunched over it, staring intently at a portable holographic terminal.
Their expressions were so grave you’d think they were running calculations on a warship’s core engine.
One was short, one tall.
The short one had a thick beard and messy shoulder-length gray hair, looking like he’d rolled out of bed and never bothered to comb it.
The tall one had his short gray hair slicked back perfectly, and he sat up ramrod straight.
He only had one arm.
Both were glued to the hologram, their fingers tapping rapidly at the floating nodes of light.
The glow flickered across their faces, making the whole thing look like some high-stakes standoff.
Keran glanced over and was briefly impressed.
The crisscrossing lines between the light dots looked just like stress simulation diagrams for mechanical structures, like they were working out some complex engineering model.
Then he looked closer.
His mouth twitched.
Are you kidding me?
All that serious face for a basic connect-the-dots light game?
It was literally just four-in-a-row.
All that gravitas, all those battle-ready expressions — completely wasted on a children’s game.
“Need something fixed?”
A clear, bright voice called from inside the shop.
A woman stepped out quickly, and Keran found himself glancing at her a second time.
She had fair skin with a healthy flush to it.
She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but she had a warm, easy kind of beauty that grew on you.
Her smile was friendly, like a warm older sister from next door.
She looked about twenty-four or twenty-five, right in her prime.
A black tank top showed off the lean, toned muscles of her arms, and she wore dark gray work pants rolled up to her calves.
A dark headband held her long hair back from her face.
She clutched a tiny energy welder in one hand, and a fine sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead.
She’d clearly been right in the middle of working.
“I was wondering if you were hiring an assistant,” Keran said.
The woman’s eyes lit up immediately.
The look was so unsubtle it was like someone who’d starved for three days stumbling on a table full of supplies.
Put plainly?
She’d just spotted free labor, and she was not about to let it slip away.
“C’mon in, hurry. Don’t catch a chill out there.” She stepped forward and all but dragged Keran inside by the arm, like she was scared he’d change his mind and bolt any second.
Keran glanced up at the blazing sun overhead.
“Pretty sure I won’t catch a chill,” he said dryly.
The repair shop was done in whites and grays, with two floors total.
The ground floor was an open workshop.
Several load-bearing pillars divided the space into three work areas.
Hover workbenches were scattered around, kitted out with full sets of gear: energy lathes, precision welding stations, pulse cutters, the works.
The surfaces were covered in scuffs and scratches, well-used from years of constant work.
Multi-tiered metal shelves lined the walls, neatly sorted with every size of mechanical part, energy module, and sheet metal you could ask for. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
It was like a tiny hardware warehouse.
An open-frame metal staircase at the back led up to the second floor, which was their living quarters.
“I’m Lina. I run the place right now.” She let go of his arm and introduced herself easily.
“Just call me Lina.”
“Keran.” He nodded.
“I know basic armor repair, mechanical maintenance, and power component calibration. Looking for steady work.”
Lina’s eyes got even brighter.
She’d figured he was just some drifter with no skills.
The guy actually knew his way around a workshop?
This was too good to be true.
“Are you a student at Dawn Academy?” she asked casually.
Dawn Academy was the city’s official premier institute.
Only the most talented students from across the city got in.
They taught full tracks in mechanics, biology, energy systems, you name it.
Top graduates went straight to key city positions or research institutes.
It was the city’s most important talent pipeline.
That said, actual top graduates were one in ten thousand.
Even with the best training program around, the success rate was abysmally low.
“Just taught myself the basics,” Keran said flatly, offering no further explanation.
“That’s still impressive.” Lina smiled, then grew serious.
“But fair warning: I’m short-staffed, but I don’t keep people who can’t pull their weight. Let me grab a broken energy converter, and we’ll see what you’ve got…”
Before she could finish, the short, bearded old man by the door spoke up, his voice rough and gravelly:
“Kid. You really wanna work here as an assistant?”
Lina looked confused.
“Grandpa, it’s normal for people to look for work.”
The old man ignored her.
He shoved the holographic terminal aside, stood up, and walked over.
He was the real owner of the shop: Gareth, a retired senior Armor Engineer from Dawn City.
“You wanna stay? You pass my test first.”
The one-armed old man, Halden, shook his head in exasperation.
His finger was still hovering over the light game board.
He’d been one move away from four in a row.
“Hey. C’mon. Don’t be a sore loser.”
“This is important,” Gareth said, without so much as a flicker of guilt.
Halden sighed and followed after him.
He was clearly used to his old partner’s antics by now.