The Grimstone Mech Assembly Bay wasn't designed for collaboration — it was a graveyard of half-finished dreams. Rows of abandoned prototypes lined the walls like tombstones, their surfaces corroded by rust and regret. Overhead, magnetic cranes hummed lazily, shifting heavy armor plates that nobody had the budget to finish.
Kai Zore walked into the bay with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and a grin that didn't match the gloom. His boots left smudged prints on the oily floor.
He had been here before — not this exact place, but others just like it. Junkyards pretending to be labs. Wreckage pretending to be opportunity.
This feels familiar, he thought. Only difference is — this time, someone actually wants me here.
At least, that's what Eleanor Hart had promised when she handed him the contract.
Across the bay, three figures were waiting.
The first was a girl with dark hair tied into a neat bun, glasses resting on her nose like they were afraid to fall. She was hunched over a holographic console, muttering in clipped precision. Every few seconds, she stabbed the air with her stylus, deleting errors only she could see.
"Don't touch anything," she said without looking up. "I've just finished recalibrating the local energy field after the last incident."
"Incident?" Kai asked.
The second figure — a tall, broad-shouldered boy with soft eyes and a permanent frown of concentration — looked up from welding a joint. "Explosion," he said helpfully. "Small one."
"Containable one," the girl corrected, snapping her stylus at him.
"Containable," he agreed, nodding seriously. "After it stopped being on fire."
Kai grinned. "You two are adorable."
That earned him a glare sharp enough to slice alloy. The girl stood up straight, all posture and purpose.
"Selena Nguyen," she introduced tersely. "Chief Systems Integrator. Don't interfere with my arrays, don't reprogram my nodes, and for the love of the Council, don't touch anything glowing."
Kai held up both hands. "Glowing things are my specialty."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
The big guy finished his weld, flipping his visor up. "Oliver Thompson," he said simply. His voice was calm, grounded, like a stabilizing current. "Material sciences. I make things stronger so they don't fall apart."
Kai nodded. "Good. I have a habit of breaking stuff."
Oliver smiled faintly. "Then we'll get along."
Before Kai could respond, a third voice echoed from above.
"Oh, finally — the infamous anomaly arrives."
A figure descended the stairs from the mezzanine — tall, confident, with blonde curls that seemed to catch the industrial light like liquid gold. She was dressed in a fashionably modified uniform jacket, one sleeve rolled up, an artist's brush tucked behind her ear like a declaration of aesthetic war.
"Valerie Johnson," she said with a flourish. "Visual design, interface sculpting, and aesthetic refinement."
Kai blinked. "You… design armor?"
She tilted her head. "I curate power. There's a difference."
Selena rolled her eyes. "She means she paints things."
Valerie gave a wounded gasp. "I define the emotional resonance of form! A mech's beauty determines its psychological impact! You wouldn't put a dueling spear in a lunchbox frame, would you?"
Kai smirked. "Depends who's holding the lunchbox."
Oliver chuckled softly, trying not to pick sides. Selena sighed, muttering, "And so it begins."
A sharp tone cut through the air — Grimstone's all-too-familiar meeting chime.
The bay's central holo-projector flickered on, revealing Eleanor Hart's holographic avatar. Even in lightform, her posture commanded silence.
"Welcome to your first day as Project Apex," she began. "Each of you was selected not for compatibility, but contradiction. The Council believes true innovation is impossible without predictability. We will prove them wrong."
Kai caught Selena sneaking a side-glance at him, as if silently questioning that wisdom.
Eleanor continued:
"You will be evaluated under the Collective Insight Model — shared conceptual synthesis. Each of you must integrate your domain knowledge to co-design the Apex Suit's prototype core within sixty days."
"Sixty?" Selena hissed. "That's impossible! Just designing a stable cultivation core—"
"Is exactly why you're here," Eleanor interrupted smoothly. "Kai Zore will act as Lead Creator."
Every head turned.
Selena's jaw dropped. "Him?"
Valerie raised a brow. "Lead? Based on what, raw chaos output?"
Oliver blinked slowly. "Doesn't he… blow things up?"
Kai's grin widened. "Only when necessary."
Eleanor's tone didn't shift.
"You are free to challenge hierarchy — but results speak louder than roles. Dismissed."
The hologram vanished, leaving a silence thick enough to choke on.
Selena broke it first. "This is a joke. A statistical insult."
Valerie crossed her arms. "I'm not taking artistic direction from a Sector 4 dropout."
Oliver rubbed the back of his neck, trying to deescalate. "Maybe we just—"
Kai dropped his bag on the table with a thud. "You're right," he said casually. "It is a joke."
That caught their attention.
"Because the system's been laughing at people like me since I was born," he continued, eyes sharp now. "So yeah — laugh. Question me. Hell, insult me. But when this mech stands on its own, remember whose hands built the heart."
The silence after that wasn't hostile — just… uncertain.
Selena opened her mouth, then closed it. Valerie looked away first, muttering, "Overconfidence. Charming."
Oliver offered a quiet nod. "Then let's start."
The first few hours were a blur of arguments, schematics, and accidental sabotage.
Kai's "instinctive engineering" clashed with Selena's rigid precision. He'd sketch an asymmetrical energy loop; she'd erase it before the ink dried.
"This won't compile," she snapped, tapping the projection. "Your algorithm contradicts itself!"
"It adapts to itself," Kai shot back. "Like a heartbeat."
"Heartbeats don't rewrite quantum pathways!"
"Mine does."
Valerie, meanwhile, kept redesigning their armor plating into sleek, dramatic curves that ruined the heat dispersion ratios.
"It's elegant!" she insisted.
"It's inefficient!" Selena countered.
"It's marketable!"
Oliver tried to mediate, stepping between their holograms. "Maybe we just… average it out?"
"No!" Selena and Valerie snapped in unison — the first thing they agreed on all day.
Kai leaned back, watching the chaos unfold. A small smile crept across his face. Feels like home.
At some point, a tool bench caught fire.
Kai instinctively used Divergent Flow to redirect the energy — which, in theory, worked. In practice, it set the ceiling on fire instead.
Oliver scrambled for the extinguisher. Selena screamed, "Containment breach!" while Valerie shouted, "Not the lighting design!"
By the time the flames died, the group was covered in soot and disbelief.
Kai coughed. "Okay. That one's on me."
Selena looked ready to explode. "You think?!"
"Technically," Kai offered, "we learned that Divergent Flow doesn't like symmetrical containment. That's data."
"That's arson!"
Valerie waved smoke away from her hair. "If we survive sixty days of this, I want merchandising rights."
Oliver chuckled softly. "You might get them."
Selena groaned, collapsing into a chair. "We're doomed."
Kai grinned. "Not doomed. Just… misunderstood."
Hours later, when the others had gone to cool off, Kai stayed behind. The bay was quiet again, the fire-scorched ceiling flickering faintly.
He stared at their chaotic, half-finished hologram — the beginnings of something beautiful and broken.
It looked a lot like him.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
Zhao entered, hands clasped behind his back.
"So," the old man said mildly, "how did our collective experiment go?"
Kai smirked. "Depends. You want the truth or the Council-approved summary?"
"I prefer horror stories."
"In that case—" Kai gestured at the blackened ceiling "—we made progress."
Zhao snorted. "You're leading a team of prodigies who don't believe in you."
Kai shrugged. "They don't have to. They just need to believe in what we're building."
"And do you believe in it?" Zhao asked quietly.
Kai hesitated. "I believe… in the chance."
Zhao studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Good. Because chances are all Grimstone has left."
He turned to leave, then paused. "By the way, the Council requested all your progress logs."
Kai frowned. "Already?"
Zhao's tone was grim. "They're watching. Closely. Don't give them a reason to shut us down."
Kai grinned faintly. "You say that like I know how to behave."
"That," Zhao said dryly, "is what terrifies me."
The next morning, Kai found Selena in the bay before dawn, reworking code alone. Her face was tired, eyes red.
"You don't sleep?" he asked.
"Sleep is for people who can afford mistakes," she said, not looking up.
He leaned on the console beside her. "You think I don't care about this project."
She didn't answer.
"I do," Kai said quietly. "But I learned a long time ago — perfection's a trap. You wait for the perfect model, you never build anything."
That made her pause.
Finally, she sighed. "I just… don't want to fail again."
"Then don't." He grinned. "Fail forward."
For the first time, she almost smiled. "You're infuriating."
"Thank you."
Later that day, Valerie begrudgingly adjusted her design to match Kai's uneven armor layout — "asymmetry," she admitted, "has dramatic potential."
Oliver rebalanced the structure to prevent collapse.
Selena's algorithms, reluctantly, began adapting to Kai's unpredictable Flow patterns.
Bit by bit, chaos found rhythm.
They didn't like each other yet. But they were listening.
As they packed up for the night, a faint tone rang from the console — an encrypted ping from Grimstone's network hub.
Selena frowned. "That's… not academy protocol."
Valerie leaned over. "Spam?"
Oliver's eyes narrowed. "No. Look."
The message decrypted itself in flickering red text across the holo-display.
TO: Project Apex
FROM: UNREGISTERED SOURCE // COUNCIL RELAY NODE
"A low-born anomaly has no place in the heavens. Withdraw before we correct this error."
The message disintegrated into static.
The team exchanged uneasy glances.
Kai stared at the fading words, a slow grin curling across his face.
"Guess that means we're doing something right."
Next: Chapter 21 – "Blueprints of Madness" — where their first real prototype takes shape… and promptly explodes.