Drex rolled out from under the busted ATV frame and sat up with a grunt. His back cracked like bricks tumbling down a chute. Sunlight stabbed through the gaps in the junkyard wall, catching on piles of rusted-out machines and scrap towers leaning like tired giants. He wiped his hands on his overalls, blackened with grease, and gave the twisted drive shaft a look.


    “Still dead,” he muttered.


    He stood, cracked open a synth-coffee from the fridge that ran off a solar panel and half a drone battery, and took a long sip. It tasted like burnt rubber and chemicals. So, normal.


    The yard stretched wider than most people’s suburbs—stacked with ruined vending bots, broken-down exo-rigs, civilian junk, and a few things Drex never found blueprints for. He lived in a shipping container with insulation made from old game console boxes and the foam backing from a theatre seat. No windows. One solid door. It wasn’t much, but it kept the rain out and the cold in.


    His workbench—actually a retired food truck counter—was covered in tools, half-eaten cables, bolts, and scorched gloves. Next to it, a mess of reassembled drone wings and a half-built stabilizer rig for a mech arm. His hands were already itching to get back to it.


    The ground trembled. Faint. Familiar.


    Drex leaned out the gate and waited.


    The wall groaned as someone banged it twice. Then a pause. Then once more.


    “Juno,” he said, and swung the gate open.


    In walked a slab of human muscle in faded camo pants and a black tank top, carrying a dented crate under one arm like it weighed nothing. Juno’s buzzcut had grown into a defiant half-inch, and his boots were held together with soldered zip ties.


    “Brought parts,” he said. “You got any of that fried tofu left?”


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    “Fridge. Probably edible.”


    Juno dropped the crate with a thunk-clatter. Sparks jumped from inside. “Scored a dead bot on 12th and Harding. Corpsec didn''t blink.”


    Drex popped it open. Guts of a maintenance unit. Cracked power core. Melted wiring. Control chip was intact, though—worth something. He gave Juno a side-eye.


    “Didn’t blink, or didn’t notice?”


    Juno shrugged. “What’s the difference?”


    They didn’t talk about why Juno was no longer military. Drex had pieced it together—something about a black op, a messy coverup, and a decision Juno wasn’t supposed to make. Whatever the story was, Juno never brought it up, and Drex never pushed.


    Juno opened the fridge, sniffed the tofu, and bit in anyway.


    “Tower lit up again last night,” he said with his mouth full. “Docks one. Local gang sent in a crawler. Didn’t come back.”


    Drex snorted. “Shocking.”


    “One guy made it out last week. No legs. Said there was a centipede monster the size of a minibus.”


    “Bet he still made a profit,” Drex muttered. “People are getting desperate.”


    “People are getting rich,” Juno corrected. “Sometimes.”


    They stood in silence for a bit, Juno chewing, Drex sorting through the crate. He paused at the cracked core. Not salvageable. Maybe useful for something else.


    “You still thinking about it?” Juno asked.


    “No,” Drex said.


    Then: “Yeah.”


    Another pause.


    “Forum post yesterday,” Drex continued. “Homeless guy in Sector 9 built a mech out of scaffolding and fridge doors. Walked into a tower with two scrap bots. No idea if he made it out, but people are talking.”


    “That’s stupid.”


    “Maybe. But it worked for the tanks.”


    Juno didn’t respond. Just pulled out a cigar stub and lit it with a plasma igniter Drex had made him.


    Drex leaned back against a burnt-out crawler. “Think about it. The towers don’t care who you are. Just what you bring. It’s rules-based. Systems. Like a machine.”


    He tapped the side of the cracked power core.


    “I get in with something functional… something responsive… not perfect, but smart enough to adapt…”


    Juno raised an eyebrow. “You’re talking about a mech.”


    “Talking about surviving. And yeah—maybe with a mech built from junk and grit.”


    Juno smirked. “Then we’d need a pilot.”


    Drex stared at him.


    “Oh no,” Juno said. “Nope. Not happening.”


    Drex didn’t say a word.


    “...Maybe,” Juno added after a moment.


    They both looked at the tower off in the distance. The sky shimmered faintly above it, like a heat mirage. It hadn’t stopped pulsing since the last activation. Still waiting.


    Drex’s mind spun.


    If he could get the right parts, wire up the right OS, maybe even build a UI from scavenged tower readings…


    He could make it work.