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"Two minutes to stream. Everyone in position."
Patricia's voice cut through the workshop. The team scattered to their marks. Technicians behind the banners. Professors against the back wall. Ward in his usual spot, notebook open, pen ready.
Outside, Chloe had the main camera locked on the workshop's massive front doors. The frame was tight. Nothing visible except the doors themselves, floor to ceiling, sealed shut, filling the entire shot.
She left the camera running and pivoted to her drone controls. The drone was airborne already, hovering at fifty feet, waiting. When Scrapper went outside, the ground camera would be useless. Only the drone would capture what came next.
In living rooms, dorm rooms, offices, and phone screens across the country, millions of viewers found the livestream and saw the same thing: a door.
A very large door.
"that is one big door"
"OPEN SESAME"
"what's behind door number one"
"the suspense is killing me and nothing has happened yet"
Outside the workshop perimeter, the crowd pressed against the security line a hundred meters back. Students on elevated surfaces, craning for any view. Reporters with telephoto lenses aimed at the building, capturing nothing but the door and the top of the three-meter security fence.
"We can't see anything from here!"
"This is ridiculous. Let us closer!"
A blonde foreign correspondent tried to push past the security line, microphone in hand. Two campus security officers redirected her firmly. She said something about press freedom. They said something about perimeter regulations. Nobody moved.
Everyone, on-site and online, was watching the door.
Inside the cockpit, Kyle's voice came through the comm system. "Clock's almost there. You can start the power-up sequence."
Ryan stepped onto the gyroscopic mount.
The sensor vest was locked in its open position on the support frame, spread wide like wings. Ryan leaned back into it. The frame sensed his weight, the buffer engaged, and the vest closed around his torso with a mechanical click. Chest clasps. Shoulder locks. Sealed.
The helmet descended on its articulated arm, settling over his head with precision. The visor sealed. The world outside vanished.
Boots locked into the pedals. Gloves on. Magnetic couplings engaged.
Neural link ready.
Ryan pressed the activation switch on his right glove.
The cockpit came alive.
Lights first. Status indicators climbing up the interior panels. Then the holographic display, projecting its ring of light around him, replacing the old touchscreen with a full environmental readout. Scrapper's schematics in green. Warning channels in red, currently empty. External environment in yellow, mapped from the radar overhead.
A holographic cursor tracked his right hand, circling his wrist like a luminous bracelet.
Ryan tapped the startup command on the holographic interface.
Deep in Scrapper's ankles, the two plasma reactors ignited. Blue light bloomed inside the sealed reactor bays, invisible from outside but radiant on the internal sensors. Power surged through the distribution buses, flowing outward through the frame like blood through veins.
Systems activated in sequence. Drive motors. Joint actuators. Balance processors. Communication array. Each one reporting in with a soft chime.
Behind Ryan, the eight ion batteries came online simultaneously. Their charge displays glowed solid blue in the cockpit's dim light. Ten segments per battery. All full. All eight.
The engine reached full power. A low hum, barely audible inside the sealed cockpit, more felt than heard.
The holographic display consolidated the startup report:
ENGINE: ONLINE SYSTEMS: NOMINAL ENERGY RESERVES: 100% NEURAL LINK: ACTIVE
"Clear the floor," Ryan said into the comm. "I'm rolling over."
Kyle organized the evacuation. The holographic display confirmed it in real time. Yellow figures moving to the edges of the workshop, clustering against the walls, well clear of Scrapper's rotation radius.
"Clear."
Ryan rolled Scrapper onto its front.
The gyroscopic mount absorbed the rotation perfectly. Inside the cockpit, Ryan stayed vertical while three hundred tons of steel flipped around him. No lurch. No vertigo. The mount rotated smoothly on its bearings, compensating in real time.
The impact of the roll shook the workshop floor. Even dampened by the reinforced plating, the sound was enormous.
Ryan stood Scrapper up. Full height. Head nearly touching the sixty-foot ceiling. Walked it to the center of the workshop, faced the main doors.
He checked the time on the holographic display.
11:58.
"Kyle. At twelve sharp, open the doors."
"Copy."
In the livestream, viewers had heard the boom of the roll. Theories flew:
"something just happened in there. that sound was MASSIVE"
"that's the mech moving. same sound as the test videos"
"it crashed. livestream's cancelled. calling it now"
"that's footsteps you moron. it's WALKING"
"TWO MINUTES"
12:00.
Kyle pressed the button.
The workshop doors were multi-fold construction. They didn't swing open. They split down the center and folded outward in segments, panel by panel, each fold widening the gap.
First fold. A two-meter crack of light appeared down the center. Through it, the livestream camera caught a sliver of black.
Second fold. The gap widened. More black. The outline of something massive.
Third fold. Fourth. The doors continued opening, each segment adding another meter of visibility.
Kyle hit stop at the halfway point. The doors locked in place.
Through the opening, Scrapper stood in full view.
Black armor from head to foot. Red lights glowing on the head like eyes. Three banners flanking it: the concept art on the left, the skeleton on the right, the armored version behind. Three eras of the same machine, framing its final form.
Forty feet of steel. Three hundred tons. Standing in the center of the frame, filling the camera from edge to edge.
The livestream chat broke.