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Danny Price woke up at six a.m.
Not because he had class. Classes were done. Summer break. He woke up because today was the livestream, and he intended to be ready four hours early, which was excessive and he knew it and he didn't care.
He'd seen the announcement at midnight. Shared it to the fan community server he'd joined after the first test video went viral. The server had been awake until three a.m. discussing what "final configuration" meant and whether Scrapper might somehow, impossibly, be operating without the power cable.
The consensus was no. The cable was still there. Had to be. Nobody had solved portable power generation for a three-hundred-ton bipedal machine. That was a physics problem, not an engineering problem. You couldn't just build your way around it.
Danny agreed with the consensus. He also didn't care. He was watching regardless.
He set up his laptop, opened three browser tabs for three different feeds, made coffee, and settled in to wait.
Six hours to go.
Two hundred miles away, the main gate of MIT's campus was experiencing a problem.
By eight a.m., a crowd had formed outside. Not students. Visitors. Fans. People who'd driven through the night, caught early trains, called in sick to work. They stood in a mass that spilled from the gate entrance onto the sidewalk and into the street, blocking traffic and alarming the campus security team.
Normally, MIT's campus was open. Sign in, walk around, enjoy yourself. But "normally" didn't account for several hundred people trying to enter simultaneously, all heading for the same restricted area, all there to see the same thing.
"Please, just let us in. We drove eight hours for this."
"We'll be good. We won't touch anything. We just want to see."
The security chief held his ground. "The research facility is behind a restricted perimeter. Even if I let you onto campus, you can't get within three hundred feet of the workshop."
Nobody cared. They wanted to be close. Close was enough.
The chief called Calloway's office for guidance.
Inside the workshop, the transformation was complete.
The technicians had worked through the night. Every piece of equipment, every tool cart, every spare parts shelf had been moved to the sides of the workshop and concealed behind printed banners. Three massive fabric panels now enclosed Scrapper's space, creating a corridor that ran from the mech to the main doors.
The left banner showed Scrapper's original concept art. The squat, wide design with the mismatched hands. Where it all started.
The right banner showed the skeleton-era Scrapper, all exposed cables and bare steel, lit from below in a way that made it look like something from a cyberpunk film.
The rear banner, directly behind Scrapper, showed the armored version from the last test. Black plating, red eye-lights, fist raised. The image that had broken view records across every platform.
Three eras of the same machine, framing the real thing lying in the center.
Chloe would have approved. She would have said the composition was "editorially cohesive," which was film-school language for "it looks cool on camera."
At eleven, Ryan arrived with his parents and Chloe. The team was already there. The professors were there. Ward was there, notebook in hand, standing against the back wall in his usual spot.
Outside the workshop's security perimeter, students had gathered. They stood on benches, walls, anything that gave them a better angle, craning their necks toward the closed workshop doors. Campus security was trying to push them back, but the students had home-field advantage and a deep understanding of which elevated surfaces provided the best sightlines.
Calloway arrived with Ward. Ryan intercepted him immediately.
"I need you to clear the area outside the workshop. I'm taking Scrapper outside today, and I don't want anyone within a hundred feet of the doors."
Calloway processed this.
"Outside," he repeated.
"Outside. As in, through the doors, into the open air. Scrapper is leaving the building."
Calloway's face went through several stages. The implications were cascading. Scrapper going outside meant Scrapper wasn't tethered to the generator. Which meant the power cable was gone. Which meant Ryan had solved the energy problem. Which meant the bet was about to be called in.
"The cable..." Calloway started.
Ryan smiled at him. The bright, uncomplicated smile of a fourteen-year-old who was about to collect ten million dollars.
"I think you already know the answer to that question, sir."
Calloway stood very still for a moment. Then he turned to the security chief and gave the order: clear the surrounding area, bring additional personnel, establish a safe perimeter. Let the crowds onto campus but keep them back. Way back.
Inside the workshop, the final preparations were underway.
Ryan pulled the video camera from his bag. Kyle appeared at his elbow instantly, hand already reaching for it.
Ryan walked past him without slowing down and handed the camera to Chloe.
Kyle froze. Watched Chloe take the camera with the practiced ease of someone who'd been doing this since before he knew Ryan's name. Watched her check the lens, test the viewfinder, adjust the angle, all in about four seconds.
She looked up. Caught Kyle's eye. Held it for exactly long enough to establish the hierarchy.
Then she went back to work.
Kyle retreated into the research team with the quiet dignity of a man who'd just been outranked by a seventeen-year-old with a ponytail.
The assistants were huddled nearby, having the conversation that everyone was having.
"What if it doesn't work?"
"The diagnostics were clean."
"Diagnostics aren't the same as a live test under full load."
"He says two hours of runtime."
"He also says he's taking it outside. That means no cable. No backup. If the reactor fails mid-stride, three hundred tons of steel falls over in public, on camera, in front of the whole internet."
"Has he ever been wrong?"
A pause. Nobody could cite an instance.
"Then I guess we trust the math."
Time crawled toward noon.
Chloe deployed a small drone, checking the battery, testing the controls. When Scrapper went outside, she'd need aerial footage. The drone would handle the wide shots. She'd handle everything else.
Ryan climbed into the cockpit.
The new gyroscopic mount cradled him like a hand. The sensor suit sealed. The gloves locked. The helmet clicked into place, and for the first time, the holographic display activated around him, a ring of green and yellow light mapping Scrapper's systems and the surrounding environment in real time.
Everything was different. The cockpit that had been an open cage in Crestfield, a blind box after the armor went on, was now a command center. Full situational awareness. Full body stability. Full power independence.
Ryan checked the reactor status. Both units online. Eight ion batteries at full charge.
He had two hours of operational time. He intended to use about fifteen minutes of it.
The rest was insurance.
"Ready?" Chloe's voice came through the cockpit speaker. She'd patched her radio into Scrapper's communication system.
Ryan looked at the holographic display. Green across the board. The crowd outside, rendered in yellow wireframe, was being pushed back by security personnel. The workshop doors were clear.
He took a breath.
"Ready."