Sebastian wiped his mouth with a napkin, tossed it onto the plate, and stood up without a word.

  Lovey fell into step beside him as they exited the diner. Cordell gave a nod from the counter—half thanks, half warning.

  The walk back was uneventful.

  Sky still gray.

  Drones still buzzing overhead.

  Brim still pretending to function.

  They turned the final corner toward the garage—and Sebastian stopped walking.

  Right there on the garage door, sprayed in fat, globby neon paint:

  BUBBLE THIS

  The O in “BUBBLE” was a cartoon smiley face. The smiley face was bleeding.

  Sebastian stared at it.

  Lovey took a step forward, scanning. “Paint compound detected. Unregistered tag.”

  He didn’t move for a moment.

  Just stared.

  Not angry.

  Not surprised.

  Just… annoyed.

  “Of course,” he muttered, running a hand down his face.

  Lovey tilted her head. “Would you like me to clean it?”

  “No,” he said, walking up to the door and unlocking it. “Leave it.”

  “Why?”

  Sebastian glanced back once, eyes sharp.

  “Because it means they’re scared enough to act stupid. And scared people make mistakes.”

  The garage door hissed open.

  He stepped inside.

  And behind him, the word BUBBLE grinned in silence

  He stood there for a moment, staring at the cluttered workbench.

  Then at the shelf stacked with salvaged drone plating, burnt-out coils, and unregistered scrap.

  Then at the rack of sleek, factory-made weapons on his wristband catalog—standard issue, clean, boring.

  He clicked through a few.

  Plasma casters.

  Pulse pistols.

  Neural stun sticks.

  All overpriced. All safe. All… sterile.

  He scoffed.

  “God, these all suck.”

  Lovey tilted her head. “Weapon systems in D-Sector are standardized for personal safety and property preservation. Civilian models are limited to—”

  “I don’t want civilian anything,” he cut her off. “I want something that bites.”

  He pulled a drafting pad onto the bench, grabbed a stylus, and started sketching.

  Big frame.

  High pressure chamber.

  Manually loaded.

  No digital lockouts.

  A revolver.

  Old-school.

  Heavy.

  Illegal.

  “Something with kick. Something they feel,” he muttered to himself, sketching faster now. “If I’m gonna carry heat, it’s gonna leave a scar.”

  Lovey watched him work, expression unreadable.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “That weapon profile exceeds legal kinetic force limits for urban sectors.”

  “Perfect,” he said, without missing a beat.

  “And it will have a high probability of breaking your wrist.”

  Sebastian grinned without looking up.

  “Good”

  An hour passed. Then another.

  The blueprint for the revolver lay finished, center stage on the bench. Clean lines. Heavy build. Six chambers of pure overkill. It looked less like a weapon and more like a statement—one that required wrist surgery to sign.

  Sebastian sat back, stretched, and cracked his neck. “God, I’m good.”

  But he didn’t stop there.

  He grabbed another sheet, dragging it into place like a man possessed. This one started different—broader lines, bigger dimensions. Not compact. Massive. The kind of outline that took up half the page just for one section: Tread Core Unit A.

  Three heavy-duty track systems—low to the ground but reinforced like they were built to carry something huge. Hydraulic pistons. Reinforced shock plating. Modular stabilizers. The legs weren’t sleek—they were tanks, practically bulldozer limbs.

  Sebastian didn’t smile this time.

  He just kept sketching.

  Lovey stepped closer, silent, scanning the evolving design. Her eye flickered with faint light as she processed the raw numbers.

  “You’re building another frame,” she said.

  Sebastian didn’t look up. “Yep.”

  “This does not resemble humanoid form.”

  “Nope.”

  “But… it’s for me?”

  He paused. Just for a second. Then kept drawing.

  “Didn’t say it was.”

  Lovey’s systems hesitated—barely noticeable, but long enough to log a warning ping.

  The design didn’t align with her specs. It wasn’t compact. It wasn’t precise. It was heavy. Loud. Engineered to move like a threat.

  “I understand,” she said, stepping back just slightly. Her tone didn’t shift. Not really.

  But something about the silence that followed felt heavier than it should’ve.

  Sebastian didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn’t care.

  He just leaned in further, pencil flying, muttering under his breath as he drafted in mounting brackets and pressure-stabilized armor plates.

  Lovey stood at his side, quiet, eye tracking the dimensions again and again.

  Something about the blueprint didn’t make sense.

  But she said nothing.

  And Sebastian wasn’t about to explain

  Hours blurred by under the flicker of bad fluorescent lights and the constant hum of cooling fans.

  Finally, after a stretch of nonstop grinding, Sebastian flopped onto his sad excuse for a bed with a heavy grunt, arms splayed out like a defeated starfish.

  “Ughhh, fuck—this is harder than I thought,” he groaned, staring up at the cracked ceiling.

  Footsteps—quiet and precise.

  Lovey appeared at the side of the bed, tilting her head slightly.

  “What is the difficulty? Do you require assistance?”

  Sebastian cracked one eye open to look at her.

  “If you would explain the intended function,” she continued, calmly, “I could generate a design that fits the vision.”

  For a second, Sebastian just stared at her.

  Flat. Blank.

  Then he slowly turned his head, looking pointedly at a corner of the room where no camera existed—like he was breaking the fourth wall to complain to the universe itself.

  Finally, he rolled onto his side with a dismissive grunt.

  “Nah. I’m good.”

  Lovey stayed standing there for a moment longer, eye scanning him, calculating the odds of “good” actually meaning “good.”

  She said nothing.

  Just turned and silently went back to tidying up his workbench—giving him his stubborn, exhausted victory.

  For now.

  It didn’t take long for Sebastian to drift off.

  Exhaustion hit him like a brick, dragging him into sleep almost instantly. But a few hours later, that nagging feeling in his chest—tight and uncomfortable—forced his eyes open.

  The garage was dim, lit only by the low glow of the workbench monitors.

  And Lovey was still moving.

  Still cleaning. Still sorting. Still working like nothing had changed.

  Sebastian rubbed his face with both hands, sitting up with a groggy sigh. “How long have you been at that?”

  Lovey didn’t even look up from the pile of metal she was organizing. “I have not stopped since you went to sleep. Did I disturb you?”

  He watched her, squinting through the haze of half-sleep.

  “Something like that,” he muttered. “How long’s it been since you rested?”

  “I have not rested since you woke me up.”

  Sebastian widened his eyes slightly—not worried, exactly, more like are you fucking serious?

  “Seriously?” he grumbled, running a hand through his messy hair. “You’re gonna, like, overheat or blow a circuit or some shit. Go on—rest. That’s an order or whatever.”

  He flicked his wrist lazily, waving her off like he was shooing a particularly obedient cat, then flopped back down onto his bed.

  He closed his eyes—

  And then there it was again.

  That same damn feeling.

  He cracked one eye open—and immediately sighed.

  Lovey, powered down, was lying flat on the cold concrete floor. Perfectly still. Arms folded neatly over her chest like a robot corpse.

  Sebastian groaned under his breath.

  “You’re killing me, Lovey,” he muttered.

  He rolled off the bed, trudged over, and crouched down. Lifting her was easier than it should’ve been—lighter than most of the junk he’d welded together last week.

  He carried her back to the cot, dumped her onto the mattress a little rougher than necessary (but still careful), and pulled the ratty old blanket halfway over her frame.

  “Not how normal people sleep,” he mumbled, half to himself.

  Then he dragged himself back to the workbench, rubbing at his tired eyes, and sat down.

  Blueprints spread out in front of him.

  The garage hummed quietly.

  And Sebastian got back to work.

  Because if he stopped moving, if he stopped building—

  he might start thinking.

  And no one is ready for that yet.

  Sebastian spent the next few hours deep-diving into whatever scraps of tech knowledge he could find. Mostly junk—old repair guides, outdated drone schematics, boring civilian-grade manuals.

  Until something caught his eye.

  “This New Brand of Clothing Will Change Your Wardrobe Forever!”

  Normally, Sebastian would’ve scrolled past without a second thought—he wasn’t exactly a fashion guy.

  But something about it stuck.

  He clicked.

  And the deeper he went, the more hooked he became.

  It wasn’t just clothing. It was nano-technology—woven into fabric. Self-healing threads. Adaptive temperature regulation. Impact dispersion. Even semi-active armor layers in some models, hidden inside casual wear.

  Real-world tech.

  Not just theory.

  Sebastian leaned closer to the screen, a slow, wicked grin crawling across his face.

  “I found a new toyyyyy,” he muttered, eyes gleaming with the kind of excitement usually reserved for mad scientists discovering ancient artifacts.

  He started scribbling notes at a manic pace—page after page—recording every spec, every failure report, every loophole he could find.

  The world outside faded. Time disappeared.

  He sat there the entire night, soaking up information like a starved machine, staring at the screen with the same look a kid gives a locked candy store.

  Blueprints formed in his mind faster than he could sketch them.

  Uses. Improvements. Applications.

  Somewhere near dawn, completely fried, Sebastian slumped over the desk—out cold in his chair, arms sprawled across a pile of messy notes and a flickering holo-screen.

  The garage stayed silent for a few precious minutes.

  Then—

  BANG. BANG. BANG.

  Someone pounded on the metal door, rattling the whole frame.

  Sebastian jerked awake with a grunt, blinking hard, momentarily convinced the garage was under siege.

  He groaned, rubbing his face, and stared blearily at the door.

  “…God, what now?”

  The pounding on the door kept coming—loud, deliberate, rhythmic.

  Sebastian sat up straighter in his chair, rolled his neck until it popped, and pushed himself to his feet.

  He didn’t rush.

  Just grabbed a wrench off the table—half out of habit, half because it never hurt to answer a knock with something heavy in your hand.

  He keyed the lock.

  The garage door groaned open halfway, and standing there in the early morning haze were three men.

  Bubble patches stitched to their jackets.

  But these weren’t the loudmouths from the diner.

  This crew carried themselves different—more organized, less “wannabe street rat,” more “low-tier warlord.”

  And front and center was someone new.

  Taller. Broader. Clean-cut in a way that made him look even more dangerous. Chrome implants lined his temple, and a faint scar ran from the corner of his mouth to his ear, giving him a permanent smirk that didn’t reach his eyes.

  He didn’t say anything at first. Just looked at Sebastian—calm, casual, like he was sizing up a dog he might have to shoot.

  Sebastian stared right back.

  No tension. No fidgeting.

  Just pure, unbothered what the fuck do you want energy.

  Finally, the man spoke.

  “We’ve got a job for you.”

  Sebastian raised an eyebrow, stepping aside slightly, letting the door open fully. “No shit that’s why people come to me.”

  The two Bubble Boys behind the commander stiffened slightly.

  The commander just smiled wider.

  He reached back and hauled up a battered, half-functional AI frame—an old combat model, probably salvaged from before Brim was even vertical.

  One of its arms dangled uselessly. Its faceplate was cracked. Its power cell visibly leaked a slow drip of coolant.

  Sebastian whistled low.

  “That thing looker then me.”

  The commander dropped the frame onto the concrete with a loud clang.

  “You’re gonna fix it,” he said. “Make it combat-ready again.”

  Sebastian didn’t move.

  Didn’t blink.

  Instead, he stepped right up into the commander’s personal space—so close the guy had to subtly adjust his weight.

  Sebastian smiled—his kind of smile. All teeth, no warmth.

  “You drop broken shit at my feet like I’m your maid,” he said, voice low and flat. “Next time, I’ll shove it down your throat and charge you extra for the recycling.”

  The commander’s eyes narrowed. His grin stayed.

  But tension cracked through the air like static.

  Lovey, from across the room, rotated slightly—her eye glinting faintly. Silent. Watching.

  Finally, the commander barked a dry laugh and clapped Sebastian once—hard—on the shoulder.

  “Yeah. I like you. You got forty-eight hours.”

  “Seventy-two,” Sebastian countered instantly.

  “You don’t want to push that.”

  “You don’t want your walking paperweight short-circuiting and exploding in your face, either. Seventy-two.”

  Another beat of silence.

  Then the commander nodded once, sharp and clipped. “Fine.”

  He turned, motioned to his guys, and walked out like he’d never tried to throw weight in the first place.

  The door slammed behind them.

  Sebastian stood there a second longer, then muttered under his breath:

  “Assholes.”

  He turned to Lovey, jerking a thumb at the cracked AI on the ground.

  “Well. Guess we got a fixer-upper.”