Keran’s mind raced.
Gareth was the target he’d come here for.
Running into the one-armed old man was pure coincidence.
Keran’s eyes settled on him, and his system panel popped up silently.
Name: Halden
Affiliation: Dawn Strategic Defense Department (DSD)
Position: Senior Staff
Level: ???
Keran’s gaze sharpened slightly.
DSD.
One of Dawn City’s true core power structures.
He’d never expected a run-of-the-mill repair shop to have a DSD high-up sitting around.
He knew his identity would fool regular people, but not Halden.
His original plan had been to pass along Undercurrent intel anonymously first, build goodwill, and reveal himself later when the time was right.
But plans never survived first contact.
He’d have to improvise.
Winging a meeting with a senior DSD official put him in a weaker position, but Keran rarely let things get him down.
When circumstances changed, you found a new angle.
If anonymity was out of the question, he’d just lean into it.
Show his worth.
Make them think he was worth recruiting.
Let DSD come to him.
The enemy of my enemy was my friend.
Keran and Dawn City had natural common ground.
Luckily he was already inside the city.
DSD would be cautious about making a mess in a populated area.
If he’d been made at the checkpoint, he’d have been swarmed by soldiers and at their mercy.
Changing plans wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Halden had clout.
Earn even a sliver of his trust, and the whole game would be halfway won.
While he ran through the angles in his head, Keran spoke up: “What kind of test?”
Gareth looked around for something suitably difficult, then his eyes lit up.
He jabbed a finger at Halden’s empty left sleeve.
“Build him a prosthetic arm. If he’s happy with it, you pass.”
“Hey, don’t drag me into this,” Halden said, caught off guard.
But he caught Gareth winking at him and realized this was just a ploy to chase the kid off.
“Grandpa, that’s not fair! You’re being impossible. You’ll scare him off!” Lira was indignant.
“You spend all day drinking and playing games. You haven’t run the shop in forever. Why can’t I hire an assistant?”
Gareth ignored his granddaughter completely.
He stared straight at Keran, waiting for his answer.
Keran’s expression was odd.
He double-checked: “You want me to build a prosthetic arm that satisfies him?”
“If you’re too scared to try, get out.”
“I’ll do it.”
Keran agreed with a hearty chuckle.
He didn’t actually know how to build bionic prosthetics.
It had never been his field of study.
But a prosthetic was still just a mechanical structure at the end of the day.
Frame, joints, power, transmission.
Fundamentally, it was no different from a power exoskeleton.
One went over your body, the other replaced part of it.
For anyone else, it would be uncharted territory.
For Keran?
It was just scaling down exoskeleton architecture and redesigning it from scratch.
Redo the power layout, tweak the transmission system.
It was totally doable.
This was the perfect opening, too.
The test landed right in his wheelhouse, and it would let him build a connection with Halden naturally.
“You’ve got three hours. I don’t have all day to wait around while you tinker,” Gareth huffed.
“Grandpa!” Lira was furious.
Building a prosthetic meant measuring the stump first, designing the structure, then actually building it.
Just the design phase could take hours.
Even with precision lathes speeding things up, it would still take at least two hours.
Gareth was giving him basically zero prep time, and the final product still had to pass Halden’s inspection.
It was straight-up hazing.
But Gareth owned the shop.
Lira’s complaints didn’t mean a thing.
Keran didn’t seem fazed at all.
He pulled out a measuring tool and asked: “Mind if I take your measurements, sir?”
Halden shrugged off his coat easily and told him to go right ahead.
While Keran measured, Halden studied him right back.
Most people would’ve gotten upset at such obvious hazing.
But this kid didn’t look annoyed at all.
If anything, he looked confident.
“Still can’t figure out why Undercurrent put a million-credit bounty on him, though.”
Halden had recognized Keran the second he’d walked in.
The Undercurrent bounty had sent ripples through the underworld.
Every intelligence agency had memorized that face.
It was Halden’s job to keep track of this sort of thing.
He knew all about it.
Seeing the wanted man stroll right into the city told him everything he needed to know about checkpoint corruption.
He’d have to schedule a thorough internal purge soon.
What was Keran doing in Dawn City?
Was he a threat?
Those were the real questions on Halden’s mind.
So far, the guy was acting normal.
He’d keep watching.
Gareth frowned.
He’d picked up something off the kid—a killer’s edge, an aura that didn’t come from taking down just one or two people.
That’s why he’d tried to run him off.
He didn’t want trouble in his shop.
Too bad Gareth had been out of the underworld game for years.
He had no clue this kid was the one Undercurrent was hunting.
“Gareth’s being ridiculous. Handing me the final call. He wants me to play the bad guy and send him packing.”
Halden and Gareth exchanged a quick look.
Keran finished measuring in no time.
Lira, still annoyed at her grandfather, jumped in to help.
“C’mon, walk me through your design. We can draft it together and save time.”
Keran turned her down with a smile.
“No need for blueprints. I’ve got the whole thing worked out already.”
Lira’s eyes went wide.
“Already? It’s only been two minutes!”
“Sure, kid. Keep talking big,” Gareth scoffed.
Designing a full system in two minutes?
Even he couldn’t pull that off, and he was a master engineer.
This kid was full of it.
Keran didn’t bother arguing.
He quickly scribbled out a list of materials and equipment he’d need.
Lira ran the shop day to day, so she could grab everything way faster than he could rummaging around.
Lira had the supplies ready in minutes.
She still thought her grandpa was being unfair, so she was doing everything she could to help.
But she didn’t have high hopes.
With conditions this harsh, she didn’t see how he could pull it off.
Keran picked through the materials and got to work.
Raw metal ingots of various shapes went through presses, grinders, and cutters, slowly taking form under his hands.
He’d picked a common lightweight alloy as the main material.
It was strong, light, and easy to shape.
Rivets, screws, and tension cables were all off-the-shelf parts, which saved a ton of time.
The second his fingers touched a metal component, Keran just knew exactly how to shape it—a feeling that was vague, fleeting, gone almost as soon as it came, honed from years of working with machinery.
Keran mentally disassembled standard power exoskeleton architecture.
If he scaled the whole thing down, swapped the load-bearing frame for a bone-matching bionic scaffold, and dropped the power modules for low-output drive units… A brand-new design took shape in his head in seconds.
Top-of-the-line bionic prosthetics could read myoelectric signals.
The wearer just thought about moving, and neural impulses controlled the arm directly.
Almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
But that level required surgery to implant neural links.
It involved deep electromagnetic theory and nerve interface tech.
Stuff he couldn’t access right now.
He’d set that aside for later.
The next tier down used voice commands, but that still required acoustic interface tech to work.
Mechanical engineering was a chain of interconnected disciplines.
The same device, built with different knowledge bases, had endless possibilities.
Mechanical tech was like a massive, spreading tree.
The higher you climbed, the more branches you found.
Keran settled for a more practical approach.
He adapted the core principles of power exoskeletons for the prosthetic.
Mechanical power at its core, but dialed way down, runs off a small battery pack.
Tension cables strung through the frame transferred force, working like real tendons.
They’d move in sync with the wearer’s residual muscle movements.
Gareth had produced a silver-gray metal flask from somewhere and was sipping from it while he watched.
He was curious to see what the kid would cobble together.
If it were garbage, he’d have plenty of ammo to mock him with.
…
As part after part was machined, assembled, and welded together, everyone could see it was taking shape as a prosthetic arm.
What shocked them most was that Keran never made a single extra part.
Not one second wasted.
That was hard proof he’d had a complete design ready in those first two minutes.
“Well, I’ll be. He might actually pull this off,” Gareth muttered.
Told you you were being a jerk.
Keran almost laughed at how stunned they all looked.
Once you had the full structure mapped out in your head, building it was just manual labor.
Two hours and fifty-two minutes later, he held up a gleaming metallic prosthetic arm frame.
Everyone there knew their way around machines.
The geometry was perfect, optimized for human kinetics.
Precision components, tension cables, and a compact battery pack for power.
Brand new and polished.
They were all blown away.
He’d actually done it.
Lira covered her mouth, her eyes wide with disbelief.
One thought rose in her mind:
“We hit the jackpot.”
“Slip a synthetic skin sheath over the frame, and it’ll look just like a real arm,” Keran explained.
“Quit stalling. Let’s try it on,” Gareth said, swallowing hard.
Okay, so the kid had surprised him.
But Halden still had final say.
He still had an out to get rid of him.
Halden sighed and picked up the prosthetic to look it over.
His expression softened immediately.
The second he fitted it to his stump, he noticed how smooth the lining was.
No rough edges rubbing against skin like every other prosthetic he’d tried.
It felt like resting on a cushion, but it locked into place perfectly.
Halden had always refused to wear prosthetics because they got in the way and felt wrong.
But this one?
No restrictions at all.
Moving it felt like his arm was still there.
The tension cables responded so smoothly that he could do basic movements with barely any effort.
Watching Halden test the arm naturally, Keran felt a flicker of satisfaction.
This was his first time applying exoskeleton design principles to a bionic prosthetic.
The real-world results were even better than he’d predicted.
Perfect.
That was the only word for how Halden felt.
“Well? How is it? Passable?” Gareth asked casually, sipping his drink.
Everything was going according to plan.
Your move, Halden.
Lira stared at Halden nervously, terrified he’d say no.
Halden hesitated.
On one hand, his old friend wanted him to turn the kid down.
On the other hand, the prosthetic was genuinely great.
Which mattered more?
It wasn’t even a question.
“It’s excellent work. I’m very satisfied.”
Gareth spat his drink all over the place, coughing and sputtering.
He glowered at Halden, furious.
What happened to solidarity?
You were supposed to back me up here!
“Keep it, then. My gift,” Keran said, completely unsurprised.
Halden nodded.
“I owe you one.”
Gareth was flabbergasted.
They used his materials, and Halden was the one owing a favor?
What kind of backwards logic was that?
You can’t just give away my stuff like that!
“So… do I get the job?” Keran asked, an inscrutable half-smile on his face.
Gareth’s face went through several shades of red and green.
He had no choice but to swallow his pride.
He turned and stormed upstairs, too annoyed to look at them.
“Fine. Stay. See how long you last,” he threw over his shoulder.
Lira pumped her fist, delighted.
With the matter settled, Halden smiled at Keran, waved, and turned to leave.
Once he was out of the alley, he climbed into a sleek black hover car waiting for him.
His driver handed him an encrypted terminal respectfully.
Halden dialed a number.
His whole demeanor shifted in an instant.
Stern, authoritative, nothing like the easygoing old man from the shop.
“Undercurrent’s wanted fugitive has snuck into West District… Have intelligence keep close tabs on him. I’ve had a brief encounter with the target. Recommend a low-key, non-confrontational approach for now. No strong-arm tactics unless necessary.”
Undercurrent defectors were prime recruitment targets for every city-state.
Everyone wanted their intel.
The problem was that most defectors were low-level nobodies.
Keran was the only one Undercurrent had ever personally put a bounty on, which meant he had to be holding something seriously important.
That’s why Halden was taking it slow.
Test the waters first.
Don’t rush in.