The Maelstrom chop shop was tucked away in an industrial sector of Watson, surrounded by shipping containers and bathed in the sickly red glow of neon signs. The air smelled of burning flux, stale synth-beer, and raw ozone.
I parked the beat-up Colby a block away, pulled my custom Hand Cannon from its holster, and walked right up to the heavy, corrugated metal front door. I didn't bother looking for a stealthy entrance. I wasn't a Hunter.
I planted my steel-toed boot against the locking mechanism and kicked.
The heavy reinforced door didn't just open; it tore completely off its hinges, flying twenty feet into the warehouse and crushing a standing tool chest.
The music—a deafening, heavy industrial bass track—cut out immediately. A dozen heavily chromed Maelstrom gangers looked up from the center of the room. They were a nightmare of cybernetic obsession, their faces carved off and replaced by clusters of glowing red optics.
In the center of the room, stacked neatly on a pallet, was Dakota's stolen cargo.
"Who the hell are you, meat?" the largest ganger growled. His arms were entirely replaced by heavy-duty industrial lifters, and a heavy machine gun was slung over his shoulder. He scanned my leather duster, obviously failing to register my solid titanium chassis underneath. "You lost?"
"No," I said, my vocal synthesizer rumbling through the cavernous room. I raised the matte-black barrel of the Hand Cannon. "But you're about to be."
A ganger on my left, hopped up on Black Lace, shrieked and lunged at me. Two massive Mantis Blades deployed from his forearms, sparking with thermal energy. He swung the heated blades directly at my neck.
I didn't dodge. I just raised my left arm, catching the blazing-hot metal blade squarely against my bare, metallic forearm. The blade sparked, screeched, and immediately snapped in half against the Clovis Bray alloy.
The ganger stared at his broken chrome in sheer, uncomprehending shock.
I grabbed him by his tactical vest and effortlessly threw his body into the ganger next to him with enough force to shatter concrete.
Then, all hell broke loose.
The warehouse erupted into a storm of muzzle flashes. Bullets rained against my duster, tearing the leather to shreds but pinging harmlessly off my dense chest plating. They had smart weapons and rapid-fire submachine guns. I had a weapon forged with the brutal geometry of the Last City.
I leveled the Hand Cannon and pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The explosive .50 caliber slug crossed the warehouse instantly, hitting the heavy-lifter boss dead center. It didn't just pierce his armor; the concussive force of the custom round caved in his entire chest cavity, lifting his three-hundred-pound frame off the ground and throwing him backward into a scrapped van.
I methodically advanced into the room, my servos absorbing the massive recoil of the weapon. Boom. Boom. Boom. Every shot was a kill. My Exo optical sensors tracked their movements with mathematical precision, calculating trajectories faster than their Sandevistans could process.
When the gun clicked empty, a ganger tried to flank me with a thermal katana. I dropped the empty cylinder, pivoted, and caught his wrist. With a sickening crunch, I crushed the cybernetics in his arm, ripped the katana from his grip, and kicked him hard enough in the chest to send him skidding entirely out of the garage bay.
In less than sixty seconds, it was over. The chop shop was dead silent, save for the hiss of my venting heat sinks and the clatter of a dropped rifle hitting the floor.
I stood in the center of the carnage, slowly reloading the Hand Cannon, slipping the massive brass rounds into the cylinder one by one. I holstered the weapon and looked around.
The warehouse was an absolute goldmine. High-tier cyberware, smart weapons, tech rifles, crates of raw crafting components, eddies scattered on tables, and enough ammunition to fund a small war. It was a veritable sea of loot just waiting to be claimed.
I took one step forward. Then, I stopped.
My servos locked up. I slowly dropped to my knees, the heavy metal of my chassis cracking the concrete floor. I stared down at a pristine, mil-spec tech-sniper lying just three feet away.
I slammed both of my metallic fists into the ground. The impact sent a spiderweb of cracks through the foundation, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Cain?!" Echo's voice flared in my audio processors, laced with immediate, frantic concern. "Guardian, what's wrong?! Did you take internal damage? Is the Light core fracturing again? Talk to me!"
I stared at the sniper rifle. I stared at the piles of components. I thought about the centuries I spent in the Sol System, vacuuming up every single engram, weapon part, and planetary material that had the audacity to drop on the ground.
Echo, I whispered internally, my synthetic voice trembling with genuine despair. We don't have the network connection to the Vanguard. We don't have enough Light.
"Yes! I know! But we're surviving! What is the problem?!" Echo demanded, utterly confused.
I tilted my head back, looking up at the rusted ceiling of the warehouse, and screamed out loud.
"WE DON'T HAVE A POCKET DIMENSION ANYMORE! WE CAN'T LOOT EVERYTHING!"
The silence in the chop shop stretched out for five long seconds.
"...I am going to mute my comms again," Echo said flatly.
"How am I supposed to carry all of this?!" I yelled, gesturing wildly at the piles of guns and cyberware scattered around the room. "I have a Thorton Colby! The trunk is the size of a shoebox! This is thousands of eddies worth of scrap! It's a crime to leave it behind!"
"You are a paracausal god of destruction, and you are having a mental breakdown over inventory space," my Ghost sighed. "Load Dakota's cargo into the car. Grab whatever you can carry in your pockets. And let's go home."