The sun hadn't even cleared the jagged peaks of the Grey-Rock range before the first steam-whistle of the morning shrieked across the quad. I was already awake, sitting on a crate in the main workshop with a lukewarm mug of cider and a stack of blueprints that refused to align with reality. My head felt like it had been used as a grounding rod for a Tier 6 surge, but there was no time for a recovery cycle. The "Open Source" experiment was officially twenty-four hours old, and the machine was already showing signs of friction.
I looked over at the Centurion. It was dormant, its Star-Iron Heart pulsing with a soft, indigo light that threw long shadows against the stone walls. In the dim light, the construct looked like a silent judge. Every time I looked at it, I saw the faces of the people we had saved—and the faces of the people who still wanted to break the world just to see how the gears turned.
