5

Excursion 1

It was only my third day of my suspension, and I'd already located a major storehouse of the Merchants again. This time, I would be hitting the largest stash of cash I'd encountered yet. There were more guards, but I had also changed the way I stole the money. It was only possible because I'd scouted out this base before. They had more guards than the other ones, and the building itself was larger too. The main storeroom wasn't sealed tight like a safe. It was just a regular door with some gaps, several locks, and a few dedicated guards standing at the door. I would never be able to pick the lock without someone noticing, but in this case, I didn't have to. I would just need more bots.

I had a plan for a new way to get the money out of the building without being noticed. Unfortunately, even though I had a hundred times more bots than my last outing, I still needed to be a lot closer because of how I was using them. I knew I was taking a big risk, but at the same time, I made up for it by being camouflaged, so I was less likely to get caught in the first place.

And by "closer" I meant literally across the street. Actually, the street was too far away; I was across the alleyway. I scouted ahead and hid behind a dumpster. I kept a close watch on all the guards that patrolled around the building, and laid down a trail of robots across the alleyway when nobody was looking. The smell was foul, and even though I had a layer of bots keeping me away from the actual garbage, it still felt icky.

Come on, Taylor. What kind of hero would you be if getting grossed out a bit stopped you?

More bots crawled up and over my body, covering everything. Using the bots just across the street, I watched myself disappear as I adjusted the colour and texture until I basically looked like another garbage bag, blending in with my surroundings. It wouldn't fool anyone who was looking closely, but nobody was taking their time to study piles of garbage in dark alleys at night anyway.

Having settled myself in, I extended and rearranged the trail of bots towards the Merchant building. It was more than just a lineup. I arranged them so that the trail was almost exactly the width of a dollar bill and only four bots thick. That left it at half a millimeter of thickness. I brought some money with me just to check, in fact. I slid the bill into my bot trail, right in the middle. The robots acted like a conveyor belt, sliding the money flat against the ground with a layer of bots on the outside to both move it and hide it. It shot towards the building I was about to rob. I told the bots to bring my money back. They did it quickly and precisely.

I had my camouflaged cash conveyor belt. Now to extend it all the way to the actual piles of cash.

From the alleyway, there weren't many options for entry. Some of the bots I had inside were already scouting the place; I knew which direction I had to direct the bot trail. I did find a vent; I just had to sabotage and break the fan inside of it so the trail of bots remained continuous. Inside the vent, I didn't need to worry about being seen; I could build up my bots as quickly as I wanted.

Being inside the warehouse itself was an entirely different story. Multiple guards patrolled the place. At no point was I ever guaranteed to be unseen; I had to work very slowly and hope nobody noticed my bots before I got the camouflage colours right.

I took nearly two hours to slowly build up a thin, flat trail of robots inside the base. I had to adjust the outer layer to match several different colours between the interior paint and the patterns on the ground. I slowly inched the trail further and further into the base, keeping behind furniture and staying in cover as much as I could. I took the time to ensure that the colour was perfectly matched, so nobody would be able to notice at a glance.

I would hold my breath every time a guard walked nearby. Even though I kept my bots close to the wall, the interior was pretty sparse with very little cover to hide my bots behind. Every few minutes, someone would walk perilously close and I had to slow down the construction of my conveyor belt.

By far, the last part was the hardest. The storeroom had no less than three guards watching it at all times. Getting my bots past them was agonizingly slow. There was no way to get into the room without passing my bots within a foot of where they stood. I had to keep track of when they looked in the other direction and advancing millimeters at a time. Patience was key. But once I was actually inside the storeroom, I was golden.

The room my bots saw was dimly lit with a single lightbulb. Huge stacks of money were piled to the left; drugs were on the right. There was more of both than I had ever seen in my life; there must have been millions in there. The money wasn't organized very well; everything from rolls of bills held together with rubber bands to clean stacks with official-looking straps. I was surprised by how open everything was; I was expecting a safe for the money or something.

Then again, this was the Merchants we were talking about. They tended to keep things simple. They didn't buy complex security systems, they just threw more people and guns at the problem. They didn't have any ideology or philosophy, they just traded drugs for money to whoever would buy.

Thank goodness I hadn't underestimated the distance. I had used up over ninety percent of the bots I had brought with me today to build the cash conveyor. I was worried I would have to sacrifice some of the bots that were protecting me personally to finish it. Thankfully, I still had a hundred million bots remaining. All the extra bots I could spare flooded the interior of the storeroom.

They got to work cutting through the wads of cash, opening them up and laying the bills out flat. Each bill was fed through my robotic conveyor belt, ferrying them through the long path through the warehouse until they reached me. Bill after bill shot out into my hands, flowed towards me like malfunctioning ATM. It was glorious. And here I was, sitting here looking like I was part of trash.

I just hoped Emma and Sophia – Shadow fucking Stalker, I reminded myself – didn't see me right now. They'd probably make fun of me about being garbage or something again. But did I really care? Neither of them knew the first thing about being a hero.

A thick wad of cash was already building up in my hands when I noticed someone approaching the storeroom. I made all my robots stop. The ones in the storehouse all dropped to the ground and covered the wads of cash I had already opened, camouflaging themselves with the floor and hiding behind whatever cover was nearby. I didn't have enough time to evacuate all of them without being noticed, so I just held still and hoped that hiding was enough.

I was betting on the fact that the original pile of money had been so messy that they weren't going to notice a bit of it missing. Or that they hadn't chosen this moment to do some accounting.

They opened up the storeroom. Cash was handed over, and drugs were taken. It was just another dealer picking up supply. I breathed a sigh of relief. Good thing the drugs were on the other side of the room, they didn't walk too close to my money-funneling system. The dim light made it harder to see. The guard stood around counting the money, put a rubber band over it, and tossed it into the pile. He handed the dealer a few small ziplock bags of product, and they were on their way. Both of them had looked pretty tired and not in the state to notice minor details. All of it worked to my advantage.

After they locked the door again, I got back to work. I debated whether or not I should keep going. That had been a close call, but nobody had noticed anything. I'd still only taken a small fraction of their cash, probably around ten thousand by now, but I could get more before it became obvious.

So I elected to keep going. I'd just fill up the pockets of my cargo pants and go. As much as I could carry. Minute after minute, I was trying to keep an eye on the guards.

I was almost done when I heard the roar of a powerful engine, enough to shake my actual body in the other building. The main loading bay door of the warehouse opened. Before I could start evacuating my bots, a giant monster-truck sized machine just appeared in the warehouse. Even while idling, the engine let out a deep, ground-shaking rumble as it sat there.

How the hell had I not been able to notice it before? Something that huge, I should have been able to see, and hear, from blocks away! It certainly hadn't teleported, but it did have some kind of cloaking device. Far more advanced camouflage than what my bots were doing right now. I literally didn't see a fifteen-foot tall pickup drive into the building.

Shit. Shit. I had to get away from there as fast as possible. That truck was obviously Tinker-tech. If the cloaking system was that good, I didn't want to figure out what the weapon systems were like. It also meant Squealer, the Merchants' resident Tinker, was here. And where Squealer was, her boyfriend Skidmark was too.

I had to force myself to snap out of my Tinker inspiration moment. Now was not the time. I saw both Squealer and Skidmark drop down from the vehicle. My bots had stopped collecting cash and were already in full retreat. The last of the cash and most of my robots were already funneling themselves back to me, but dismantling the cash-conveyor trail was slow going. Camouflaged as it was, when I removed the camouflage it would be at its most visible.

"Hey, fuckers! I'm here to check if you shitheads are doing your job! We've been robbed a few times and there ain't any heads rolling yet, so we're goin' around to all the bases and doin' some inventory check!" Skidmark yelled as he went up to the guards in the storage room.

"Boss. There's been nobody here except our customers," one of the guards said. "It's still locked. Nothing's been cut."

"Did I fucking stutter? Open it up anyway!" Skidmark yelled.

The guards obediently unlocked the room. While everyone's focus was on them, I retracted my bots more quickly. I really didn't want to leave any traces behind, especially not with another Tinker. I didn't know if Squealer was capable of figuring out how my bots worked, and I didn't want to risk it and possibly blow my whole identity and powerset.

On the other hand, giant laser cannons.

The bots that were furthest away, I just dispersed. Made them mix in with just the dirt and dust. I could come back and retrieve them a few days later.

A few seconds later Skidmark came stomping out. "What the hell is this?" he yelled. Ripped plastic bags, cut currency straps, and other things I'd left behind were in his hands. "Who the fuck got in here? What the fuck were you doing, sucking each other's cocks?"

The guard was instantly on the defensive. I didn't keep any bots around to keep watch, I was getting out of there. I heard a lot of bangs, painful screaming, and angry yelling. People were getting thrown, boxes and crates were being toppled, and guns were being loaded. I could feel the vibrations as dozens of feet started running. I gathered all my robots around my body and started speedwalking away.

Damn, I should have started evacuating ten minutes ago. I got a bit too greedy. I kept my head down, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible despite cargo pants completely stuffed with cash.

The roar of the monster truck made me start running. It was so loud and so deep I could feel it rattle my body, but I couldn't tell what direction they were coming from. All of a sudden, the roar just... disappeared. FUCK. There was now an invisible monster truck with a giant laser cannon on the lookout for me.

I only moved more quickly and hoped they didn't notice. "Round up everyone on the block! They might still be nearby!" I couldn't tell if Skidmark was a genius or lucky or so-stupid-he's-actually-brilliant. He didn't know when the robbery happened; in any other situation I could have been miles away at home. Then again, he was crazy and violent, maybe he just wanted to shoot whoever he could find to let out his frustrations.

Which happened to be me.

I could only hope that my daily training was paying off. I was certain I could outrun the Merchants carrying guns. I couldn't outrun a bullet. When I heard guards yelling at a distance, I ran faster. When I heard them shooting, I had to change tactics. I wasn't sure who they were aiming for, I could only hope for the best as I tried to get far enough away from their dragnet. They were just crazy enough to shoot whatever they saw moving.

I had to find a hiding place, and fast. Unfortunately, with all of them walking through the alleys, it left the obvious hiding places out of the question. I think they must have been rounding up and shaking down every homeless person they saw there. I didn't have time to climb up an emergency escape to a roof, either.

I didn't hear the monster truck, but I did hear the sound of a parked car getting crushed. I'd never been to a monster truck rally but I'd seen enough commercials for them to know what the sounds were. Crunching metal, shattering glass, the sound of a car alarm going off for all of two seconds before dying in a pathetic wail. Everything except the sound of the monster truck itself.

Just my luck. I bet Squealer picked a random direction and it just so happened to be the way I was going. I definitely couldn't outrun a vehicle, so I had to find a place to hide fast. One of the streetlights had gone out, and that portion of the block was extra-dark. I stopped there and ducked into a storefront. I used my swarm of bots to cover me and blend me into the sidewalk. In the middle of the night, under poor streetlight, the cheap disguise was enough. I hoped.

They were shooting randomly into the street now. I could hear bullets hit the ground, the walls, and even break some windows. Fuck, the Merchants were insane. Drugged out and insane. I had to count myself lucky that I wasn't hit by a stray bullet as I lay on the ground, as tight to the wall as I could manage.

I lay perfectly still until they had passed. I held my breath, as I wasn't completely sure when Squealer had actually driven by. Most of the violent druggies stumbled past and went around the block. Half of me wanted to get up right away and start running, the other half wanted to stay here until dawn.

I settled for something halfway and waited until all the shouting and gunfire trailed off into the distance, and ran home as fast as I could while avoiding the streetlights.

That definitely had to change. I didn't want to die to some drugged-out, gun-happy gangbanger who happened to get lucky. Camouflage wasn't enough, I needed to armour myself.

For once, instead of building smaller bots, I actually went with something bigger. The good thing was that, from the junkyard, steel was cheap. I had mostly abandoned that place as a source of materials because the types of steel that remained had mostly rusted or weren't good for the bots I made; it wasn't ductile enough.

Now I had found a new use for it.

I could cut out rice-grain sized shards of metal. These micro-plates had almost no use for my bots by themselves; they had to be attached to a few existing bots. But they would be the basis of my armour plating, multiple layers of these metallic scales like sharkskin. It was soft, flexible, and I could cover myself as needed. These robots were also far bigger than the ones I had worked on before, and far less versatile. They had one job, and one job only – protect me. My mite-sized bots would still be doing most of the real work.

I tested how strong my armour-bots were. I grabbed a sledgehammer and made them form a protective dome on the floor like a helmet. I struck it as hard as I could.

Huh. It held pretty well. I just had to make sure the inner layers of bots formed a springy cushion.

Time to test it with stabbing. Same results, naturally. The armour-bots were geared for strength, locking tight against each other and presenting the metal scale outside. There were no gaps for a knife to penetrate.

I didn't have a gun to test it against bullets. I just taped a screw to the end of the sledgehammer. If it could stop the force of a sledgehammer focused on to a narrow point, I figured it would be enough to stop a small-caliber bullet at least, maybe even an armor-piercing round.

The first time I tried it, the screw penetrated clean through. Failure. It also damaged the bots. It permanently mangled the metal scales on the impact site.

I got them to stack up into a double layer and tried again. Similar result. The outer layer was just as mangled as my first attempt. The second layer of bots also damaged, but not as much as the first. The force was still strong enough to sever their links to each other, opening up a hole.

I had them stack up into a triple layer of armour. This time, the final layer held. The bots still formed an unbroken mesh. The screw was being pushed back, even with the weight of the sledgehammer behind it. The third layer's bots were still slightly damaged. Their scales were bent out of shape and didn't interlock perfectly any more. So three layers of bots were needed to make a decent bulletproof shield.

It would take me a while to repair the damage, so I definitely couldn't risk getting shot in the same area twice quickly. Either I had to carry a large excess of armour-bots so that they could fill in holes quickly, or I had to depend on my stealth. Neither option was ideal, and while I had some ideas for even better armour, those plans were too far in the future.

I had been so obsessed with my own safety after the frightening incident against the merchants that I had actually forgotten to count the money until now. Once I did, I realized I would have a lot of trouble hiding thirty thousand dollars from my father. Not just the cash. My dad wasn't stupid; he'd notice if massive volumes of materials somehow got into our house without explanation.

I also needed to deposit the money I made at the bank or something. Did they ask questions when a teenager deposited large piles of cash? Probably. I would have to pretend I got a part time job or something and deposit it in regular chunks.

For now, though, I couldn't just hide it under the mattress from dad. Not with the huge haul I had made. I also had to hide the new tools and materials I got from him – how could I possibly explain that I just "found" thirty grand lying around?

I had to start moving my production away from home. Sure, I'd still do some tinkering at home, but the bulk of it needed to be far away. I needed a workshop. That way, I could work more freely without having to explain to dad why I needed armour plating.

At least I didn't need too many complex tools and like welding tools or laser cutters like some other tinkers needed. My bots were my tools, and the things I built mostly operated at the microscopic scale. All I really needed was a secret storage place, since my own builder-bots were the ones doing all the manufacturing of other bots. That opened up the options of places I could accept. I didn't need too much room, I could favour ones that were more easily overlooked rather than size or even security. Even if someone broke into my workshop, there wouldn't be much for them to find.

I was also trying to figure out if I could improve the maximum range I could control my bots. When I went jogging each day, I focused on keeping control of my bots at home as long as I could. I wanted my workshop to be controllable from home so that I could command the bots to work while I was laying in bed. Failing that, maybe I could find a place that wasn't too far from school.

Neither one was possible, unfortunately. I suppose I should be happy that I lived in a neighbourhood without too many abandoned, run-down buildings. It wasn't a rich neighbourhood, but at least it wasn't crime-ridden. Heck, it was probably because it was cheaper that every home was occupied around here. To find an inconspicuous abandoned building meant I had to go further away, and I was edging on ABB territory.

Normally, I wouldn't have gone in this direction just for exercise. On one hand, it was dangerous. There were plenty of homeless drug addicts here, looking for a way to get their next fix. On the other hand, there were also plenty of abandoned or unused buildings. But most abandoned buildings had been taken by the gangs or homeless squatters. Due to the collapse of the shipping industry and the gang wars, there was no shortage of abandoned offices and warehouses. But for the exact same reasons, there were tons of people who had been left jobless and homeless.

I went out on several evening jogs to find out what I could use. Naturally, I covered myself in my armour bots since I would be wandering near contested gang area. Their additional weight slowed me down, but I just considered it good training. The ones that weren't protecting me, I scattered as far as I could send them, leaving them to scout out potential locations. I had my bots keep an eye on gang members - although the bad part of town meant lots of places that were easy to set up shop, it also meant it was close to gangs. I needed to make sure I didn't accidentally run into gang turf by accident.

I scouted a few places that seemed to be abandoned, and there was one not too far from Lord's Market that had potential. It was sort of near the edge of ABB territory, but there weren't many other abandoned buildings closer to the "safe" side of town, and this was about as far from gang territory as I could get. Just to be safe, I circled around a few blocks away to see if the gangs hung out around here, or had a safehouse nearby.

When I was watching out for gang members, I found something I didn't expect.

"Who the fuck are these kids? They think they can steal from ME? Do they not know know that's MY casino? Stupid children need to be taught harsh lessons. If you see them, shoot them. If they are on the ground, pump a couple extra rounds just to be sure. If you don't kill them, I will burn them to death myself." My bots found a man shouting half a mile from me.

I turned my attention to who said that. I recognized his face, even through the low-resolution image the bots gave me – the metal dragon mask on the heavily tattooed shirtless man was an easy giveaway. That was Lung, the leader of the ABB. He was arguably the only reason that the ABB was holding territory against Empire 88, despite having less than one-fifth the number of capes. Lung, alone, was worth a dozen. He was one of the most powerful capes in the world, someone who could theoretically take on Alexandria herself given enough time. He got stronger the longer he fought, and nobody knew if he had an upper limit. The only – and I mean the ONLY – way to survive him was to knock him out before he because uncontrollably strong.

He was also pretty ruthless, if the rumours were true. There was no reason to doubt it. He'd built up a reputation for himself here. It wasn't as if all the different Asians – Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, and others – were naturally united or something. There was more than enough bad blood between them from old history, World War 2, Vietnam War, the Korean War... lots of them hated each other on principle. Lung was able to unite them purely through an iron fist. There was a reason the police, the PRT, and everyone on the online forums warned people not to fuck with Lung. If he said he was going to murder some kids, I wasn't going to take any chances and I would act as if he was probably going to murder some kids.

Another group of of my bots, several blocks in the other direction, detected a lot of shouting, screaming, alarms, and lots of commotion in general coming from the Ruby Dreams casino. I didn't know that it was owned by the ABB. I didn't see who the robbers were – but the shouts did sound like they were mostly younger voices. Maybe they didn't know that Lung already knew about them. And that he was going to kill them.

So, Lung was to my south, the child robbers were to my north, and I was right in between. I had to put my running skills to the test to warn them.