Harsh calibration lights snapped on and off in Professor Cogsworth's lab.
No club strobe—just a lab pattern that made every surface look guilty.
The lights pulsed on-off-on, the kind of timing you use to disinfect a room and not care who's standing in it.
Brass-and-glass benches.
Coils wound tight around ceramic cores.
The air tasted like machine oil and hot dust—overworked fans, cooked insulation, and a faint metallic bite.
My view booted in stages: HUD, then the room, then the assault-frame settling onto my joints like someone dropped a toolbox into my ribs.
A fat splash screen slapped over my center view:
[BOOT SEQUENCE]
[OS PATCHED 2.0 (BETA)]
[DEVICE: SIEGE-FRAME // RED]
BETA.
Figures.
I tried to inhale.
No lungs—just a pressure sensor pulsing the habit.
The Siege-frame’s chest plating still rose and fell on a loop, like it didn’t trust me to stay calm without the animation.
“Ah! Excellent! He’s awake,” The Professor chirped from behind a safety screen—thick coreglass with hairline cracks filled in by gold solder.
Too cheerful.
Like we weren’t standing next to my chassis with something unwanted still riding in it.
“Readout: Integrity stable at forty-one percent. Stress baseline improved by—oh, three point two.”
“Chassis is mostly repaired,” he added fast, “but Integrity’s pinned in yellow and it won’t stop climbing when you move.”
Papers rustled.
Tools clinked.
“And your actuator jitter is… mostly non-lethal.”
I ignored the jitter and pulled my vitals.
Professor Cogsworth hadn't just patched me; he'd refilled everything that could be refilled.
[HP: 1575 / 1575]
[MANA: 550 / 550]
[CORE-BATTERY: 100%]
At least the bars were full.
In this frame, I took first contact.
Fully charged, freshly bolted together—still moving like my joints hated each other.
I forced a step.
Servo whine.
Then—nothing.
Then the world hit me a half-second late.
My chassis dragged forward, hips first.
The motion landed late—half a second behind my input.
The weight wasn’t heavier.
It was in the wrong spots.
The balance point was off.
The core carried too much, so every step started at the hips whether I wanted it or not.
> [NOTICE: TURN-RATE TEST QUEUED]
> [NOTICE: MOVE-SPEED TEST QUEUED]
I rotated to find him.
My view dragged behind the motion—sick latency.
I turned, and my camera caught up after.
TURN-RATE TEST.
I ran it.
Slow sweep left, slow sweep right.
Red warnings stamped under the readout.
> [DEBUFF: TURN RATE -23% (PERMANENT)]
> [DEBUFF: MOVE SPEED -18% (PERMANENT)]
> [STATUS: MOVEMENT PENALTY (STACKING) // REFRESH ON ABRUPT MOTION]
“Shake it off,” I muttered, and snap-turned to test the limiters.
Bad call.
The penalty stacked.
My view smeared.
The lab streaked at the edges—my camera scrambling to catch up.
My right side dipped and the stabilizers screamed to catch it.
I almost toppled into a worktable full of crystal housings and tiny screws.
[-6 HP] from the stabilizers catching me—no impact, just stress feedback dumped through the joints.
The Professor leaned in behind the safety screen—tiny mekling, oversized goggles, hands already on the console.
He’d been waiting for me to do something stupid.
He tapped twice.
“Safety governors,” he said.
He moved like he’d rehearsed the speech.
“The malware made your inputs unreliable. Patch 2.0 clamps the moment you spike torque.”
I clenched.
The servos answered.
Nothing else did.
I tried the one thing that made the heavy-frame more than a slow tank.
FIRE_MAIN_CANNON
The right arm shifted.
Panels tried to separate.
The deploy sequence started—
—and froze mid-motion.
A lock screen slammed into my HUD.
Feedback surged through the helmet speakers—pressure without sound, without static. Just raw data compression. Silence, without warning—just a deafening weight that locked my joints mid-sequence. Sound, without warning—just a deafening crunch of data. Painkillers.
> [WEAPON LOCKED]
> [ADMIN SAFETY GATE ENABLED]
Professor Cogsworth flicked a graph up over the console.
System Stress jumped every time I moved too fast.
Integrity dipped with it—clean, repeatable loss.
"Lock stays," he said.
The cheer dropped out of his voice.
"Until we isolate the Tox-Tech spore and bring you up. Otherwise the cannon will dump a bad shot straight into my power lines."
He slid a checklist across the console—neat boxes, numbered steps.
The kind of handwriting you use when you're trying not to shake.
I stared at the locked weapon icon.
Under the hum of coils and fans, I heard it again—faint, intermittent.
A ping.
Not from the lab.
It rode under the coil hum, a second signal buried in the same noise floor.
Something twitched in my system—alarm without a message.
"Output cap," Professor Cogsworth said, too casual for how hard my joints were shaking.
A yellow line was painted on the wall.
A matching mark sat on my right forearm plate—Zenith calibration paint, chipped where the plating flexed.
"Lift until the marks align. Do not exceed the torque cap."
> [CAL: TORQUE LIMIT // 62%]
> [WARNING: MICRO-FRACTURE RISK]
I lifted.
Too fast.
Instinct.
Old movement routines trying to snap me into place.
My shoulder servo screamed.
The tile popped—sharp ceramic that meant I'd just bought Professor Cogsworth another repair bill.
A hairline crack ran out from my heel in a fast, branching line.
[-5 Core Battery] to stabilize.
Professor Cogsworth squeaked, eyes huge behind his goggles, and—without breaking stride—slid a clipboard into my view.
"FLOOR DAMAGE INVOICE," it read.
Itemized.
Of course it was.
His hands still shook around the clipboard.
"Again," he said, voice high.
Alarm hiding under the joke.
Coolant ticked through my ribs.
Vents hissed hot air in short bursts.
The frame was breathing fast for me.
My HUD flashed little red bites at the edges.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
> [STRESS +3%]
> [NOTICE: JOINT LATENCY SPIKE]
Slow lift.
Hold.
Release.
I treated it like a live bug: one change at a time, no sudden inputs.
No snap-corrections.
The marks aligned.
I held the angle.
The servo whine steadied.
My HP bar didn't fill so much as… stop threatening to dip for a second.
Relief still hit anyway.
The frame stopped screaming for a second, and my hands stopped hovering over the next error.
Then I tried to "help" the release with a quicker drop.
Penalty stacked immediately—like the system slapping my wrist.
> [MOVEMENT PENALTY STACK +1]
[-2 HP] as the frame shuddered through my spine.
Professor Cogsworth clapped once.
"Good. Now—melee calibration."
A ceiling rail clicked.
A training drone dropped—round, polished, two sparring blades unfolding.
The stun emitter pulsed blue, steady as a metronome.
My threat tagger still treated it like a live target.
> [RANGE MODULES DISABLED]
> [SIEGE_FIRE_CONTROL: DISABLED]
So the cannon icon stayed gray.
Useless.
The drone dashed sideways—fast, clean.
My camera pan crawled to follow, the turn-rate penalty dragging my sight behind it.
I swung wide anyway.
Momentum carried.
My feet tried to correct—stumbled instead. Tried to stabilize, but the pivot-delay lag left me over-rotating—shoulder twisting past the safe arc while the drone corrected and slashed my thigh plate for free. Compensate.
Penalty stacked.
The drone tagged my flank with a zap.
My HUD jittered—corner elements tore for a few frames, snapped back misaligned, then corrected.
[-18 HP].
The hit came through hard and hot, crackling vibration—dirty current under my plates.
Servos desynced for a beat.
“Short strikes!” Professor Cogsworth yelled.
“Plant! Don’t chase!”
I planted.
Wide feet.
Took the movement penalty as truth instead of insult.
Piston jabs.
Minimal arc.
Timing instead of speed.
The drone lunged.
I met it mid-window—metal on metal—sparks snapping off the blade guards.
> [STRESS +4%]
Cost.
Always cost.
It dashed again.
I caught the rhythm—dash, pause, lunge.
On the next commit, I clamped down with a hydraulic grip.
The chassis buckled.
I squeezed until the drone’s status light blinked twice, then I cut power and let it drop.
Parts rattled to the floor—thin Zenith alloy clatter, that high-grade scrap, echoing under the benches.
[-4 Core Battery] from the exertion.
My vents hissed harder.
I’d won.
[+50 XP]
The takeaway was ugly: without range, I had to fight point-blank.
Point-blank meant Stress spikes.
Stress spikes meant Integrity dropping off a cliff.
Boots hit the metal stairs—crisp, measured.
Not Professor Cogsworth’s scuttle.
Justiciar Camila.
She stepped in like the lab was already a scene to process.
Tactical coat.
Rifle slung.
Eyes scanning cracks in the floor, the dead drone, then my locked weapon icon.
She tossed Professor Cogsworth a small crystalline cartridge.
A core-drive.
Professor Cogsworth slotted it.
A map projected above the table—The Sink’s industrial handshake relays lighting up in dirty chains.
One sector pulsed harder than the rest.
“Sector D,” Justiciar Camila said.
“The spore pinged home. Trail’s live. We move now.”
Professor Cogsworth’s ears drooped.
“He needs a recharge cycle. More calibration.”
Justiciar Camila didn’t look away from the gray cannon icon.
My fist clenched.
My knuckles tightened.
A tiny servo whined under the plating.
> [STRESS +1%]
In the background, the beacon-ping repeated—steady, evenly spaced, refusing to drift.
Professor Cogsworth blocked the lab exit with his own body—tiny, stubborn, forcing me to sidestep him if I wanted out.
“One last controlled stress test. Then you can run off and get yourselves deleted in someone else’s sewer.”
He powered the spectrum analyzer.
Brass ribs unfolded.
The coreglass face threw waveforms into the air—bands crawling until one line finally held steady on the spore’s ping.
My joints buzzed under the field—fine vibration that meant the sensors were reading too much at once.
A new drone dropped from the ceiling rail.
Not the coin-sized sparring toy.
This one hit the floor with a real thunk.
Plated.
Shielded.
A soak-bot.
Its forearm shield snapped up with a clean, precision-engineered Zenith click.
Stun emitter on the other hand pulsed a calm, surgical blue.
“Do not chase,” Professor Cogsworth said.
“Show me control. Torque cap sixty-two. No spikes.”
Justiciar Camila leaned on the bench, eyes on the analyzer, not me.
She didn't need to watch the drill to know what a stun does.
The drone advanced.
I planted, forced. My feet kept honest.
Short steps.
No ego.
My turn-rate ground against the field—slow, reluctant, fighting every degree. Penalty dragged my view a fraction behind the movement—like a camera operator half-asleep.
It feinted left.
My instincts snapped to follow.
Wrong.
Abrupt motion.
> [MOVEMENT PENALTY STACK +1]
My knees
locked for a beat.
The world lurched.
[-3 Core-Battery] to correct.
The drone used the opening on frame-perfect timing.
It hit the exact window my lock gave it.
Stun emitter hit my chest plate.
Whiteout.
Not bright—blank.
The scene flattened for a beat, my view hard-reset mid-fight.
A hard vibration slammed through my ribs and out my spine.
My HP bar didn't just drop; it punched inward, a sudden dent in the numbers.
[-46 HP]
> [WARNING: INTEGRITY FLUTTER]
> [NOTICE: ADMIN SAFETY GATE // JITTER DETECTED]
At the same time, the analyzer screamed.
The waveform snapped taller and tight—noise collapsing into a clean lock.
The analyzer finally had something real to grab.
Justiciar Camila's head whipped.
Professor Cogsworth's ears flattened.
The lab lights flickered.
Ceiling security orbs drifted… then stuttered, their patrol path sliding off-course before snapping back late.
Zenith hardware doesn't drift like that.
Not unless someone's got a hand on the controls.
[EXTERNAL PROBE]
[LOCKOUT INTERFACE: TEST]
Something hit my lockout from outside—quick taps, short retries, always returning to the same seam.
Professor Cogsworth shouted, "Disengage! Now!"
Justiciar Camila didn't answer him.
She watched the waveforms like they were footprints.
"It's tracing back through the conduit runs," she said.
"Triangulating our position."
I forced my right hand up—shaking, servo jitter spiking—and dragged the emergency slider down in my HUD.
Output cap.
Pride for uptime.
> [OUTPUT CAP: 62% -> 41%]
[-1 Core Battery]
The drone bore down.
I didn't backpedal fast.
I bait-stepped slow—deliberate, ugly, careful not to refresh the penalty again.
Let it commit.
Let it overreach.
Then I shoulder-checked—torque low, mass doing the work.
I drove it into a lab pillar with a controlled crunch that rattled the stabilizers and made my HUD hiccup.
[-9 HP] from stress feedback.
[+50 XP]
The analyzer squealed.
The ping spiked again—like whatever was listening just turned its head.
Up top, two security orbs aimed toward the wrong corridor.
Someone had priority over the lab's security script.
That was the proof.
Justiciar Camila stepped into my view, close enough to block the waveforms.
Voice low.
Final.
"We move. Slow frame, locked cannon—doesn't matter."
Professor Cogsworth was already scrambling—tools, cartridges, anything he could carry.
My HUD flashed again.
> [PROBE ATTEMPT: 02]
> [TRIANGULATION: 12%]
He stopped arguing and went quiet, hands moving on muscle memory.
He yanked a wheeled case from under the workbench—scuffed brass corners, Zenith maker-stamps half-sanded off—and shoved it toward the exit.
The lid popped and everything inside was labeled in neat ink: coolant canisters, fat capacitors wrapped in mesh, a portable integrity patcher with a cracked status lamp that flickered between amber and dead-gray, green and yellow, and—dead center—a clunky hand-crank emergency charger.
A hand-crank.
In Zenith.
That meant he didn't trust the grid—and definitely didn't trust anything that could be pinged.
The ping ticked again from somewhere outside the local mesh on the spectrum analyzer.
Stronger.
Like someone leaning closer to the door.
Professor Cogsworth slapped a core-seal across the case seam.
The seal flashed once, then went dull—tamper paint for tech.
“This is a stabilizer and recharge kit. Limited charges. You mount it here.”
He stabbed a finger at the backplate ridge of my Siege-frame.
“Two slots. Left rail first. If you reverse it, it will shear the latch.”
“Copy.”
My voice rasped through the speaker grille, gain too high and full of static.
I knelt slow.
Controlled.
No abrupt motion.
The servos complained anyway, a gritty grind under the plating.
[-1 Core Battery]
The Movement Penalty hovered like a threat, waiting for me to get emotional.
Magnetic clamps snapped shut.
Heavy thunk as the case locked into place.
The kit’s weight pulled me backward—subtle, nasty.
The frame tried to overcorrect on the next step.
> [STABILIZER KIT INSTALLED]
Justiciar Camila paced at the lab entrance, head tilted, listening for repetition in the static.
The security orbs above her drifted… then corrected a fraction late.
Desynced.
Watching the wrong angles.
Like the room was taking input from somewhere else.
Professor Cogsworth pulled up a route schematic—Zenith’s lower transit and maintenance access.
Service tunnels, lift shafts, old core-conduit crawlways sketched in pale blue.
Justiciar Camila marked a path with two sharp gestures: down the maintenance stairwell, across an unused tram spur, then out through a vent line that dropped toward The Sink’s gray throat—wet air, tox-smog, and the distant churn of drainage pumps.
Professor Cogsworth’s voice went parental.
Pointed.
“No exploits. No overexertion. And no hero plays with the cannon.”
A projection flared beside his head—modules listed in red, the kind of list you see right before something gets hard-disabled.
> [AT RISK IF STRESS SPIKES]
> [AUX THRUSTERS]
> [SHIELD EMITTER]
> [LIMB TORQUE LIMITER]
I tested one step with the kit weight.
My foot set down too hard.
The frame shuddered.
> [MOVEMENT PENALTY STACK +1]
A hot ripple of pain ran up my leg as the HP bar twitched.
[-4 HP]
“We can’t draw attention topside,” she said, already looking past me.
Professor Cogsworth cut nonessential systems.
Bench lights dimmed, coil fans spun down, and the lab went quiet in a way that felt unsafe.
The analyzer ping hit again—too clean, too loud, like it was answering someone.
Professor Cogsworth cursed and slammed the display dark before it could keep advertising a pattern.
He pulled a shelf aside and popped a disguised maintenance panel.
Cold air spilled out—damp stone and old metal.
It pulled at the heat in my vents.
Justiciar Camila slipped in first.
Silent.
Professional.
I followed, bulky frame scraping the hatch edge—metal on stone, loud in the cramped shaft.
[-1 Core Battery]
Professor Cogsworth lingered, yanking the stabilizer strap tighter on my backplate.
“Keep Stress down,” he said.
“Conserve Integrity. No forced tricks. The admin gate sees spikes and it shuts you off.”
The panel sealed behind us with a soft, final click.
The lab went dark behind us.
My HUD pulsed one stubborn line.
> [WEAPON LOCKED]
> [-40 AD]
A new marker snapped in beneath the weapon lock warning. The route locked to my HUD and didn't ask permission.
> [DESTINATION: THE SINK // SINK LEVEL 9]
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