Callsign: Talon (Fueled By Fury #1)

Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

I wake to a blast that shakes the entire hangar as if a star has gone supernova behind my eyelids. One moment, I’m slumped on a crate, half-dozing in the dim light. The next, a surge of brilliant white heat lights up the rafters. The overhead lamps flicker so violently that they seem to burn like firecrackers, their filaments turning bright orange before they short out in a spray of sparks.

Tabitha’s voice blasts through my earpiece, echoing raw panic. “David, get away from the core, now! If this thing goes, I’ll try to shield you, but?—”

I don’t let her finish. I spring off the crate, adrenaline roaring through my veins. My head spins from exhaustion, but I force my legs to move, crashing into a tangle of half-assembled plating. The heat pouring off the reactor core feels like someone has opened an oven the size of a small car. The flicker of wild arcs light up everything in bursts of sickly green and white.

I risk a glance toward Raven One’s frame in the far corner. My half-finished mech is the culmination of weeks of sweat and borderline madness. If the meltdown spreads, the entire mech could be ruined. Potentially lethal if the power surge ignites unprotected fuel cells or scorches the AI mainframe. But I’m sure as hell not abandoning it without a fight.

Sparks’ frantic shouting rattles from the other side of the hangar. “Kill the feed, kill it, kill it, somebody clamp the damn power lines!”

She’s wrestling with a console in the corner. Her silhouette pulses in the chaotic strobe, tethered by a thick cable that feeds into the still-sparking control panel. I hear her slam a fist against it, cursing every piece of hardware we’ve scrounged for this insane project.

The whine of the meltdown frequencies rises in pitch. My ears ring. I scramble on my hands and knees behind a row of spare plating crates, the metal scalding to the touch where the arcs lick them. Tabitha’s voice crackles again with an edge of real fear. “Don’t let that surge cycle again, David! We’ll fry half the boards if it discharges a second time.”

My throat feels like I’ve swallowed a mouthful of sand. “I’m trying,” I cough, no idea how I’ll manage to fix anything in this maelstrom. Still, I refuse to leave our gear to burn.

Patch picks that exact moment to fling the hangar door open. A second wave of brilliance flares behind me, illuminating his shape. He skids to a stop, wide-eyed at the swirling haze. An improvised harness of hoses and coolant canisters rattle around his torso. He instantly reorients, hooking something to a nearby water line with the expertise of a man who’s done it a hundred times before.

I have to shout over the crackling arcs. “Watch out, Patch! If the second surge hits?—”

He slams a switch, releasing a pressurized hose that spews freezing coolant in a frigid cloud. “Then we’d better chill this sucker faster than it can blow!” he hollers. “Now, hold it steady!”

A haze of coolant mist drifts through the hangar. The instant it touches the reactor’s superheated plating, steam erupts in plumes. The ear-splitting hiss hammers my eardrums, but at least the temperature near the core seems to drop a few degrees.

I crawl toward the power distribution board, my heart pounding. Sparks is there, cursing in fits and starts. She tries to shut off the main feed, but the meltdown has shorted out half the panel. The smell of scorched plastic and molten wire makes my eyes water.

“Gimme that,” I shout, sliding next to her. My fingers find a well-worn spanner tool. Sparks coughs through acrid smoke and nods. Together, we jam the tool into a blown fuse cluster. The metal hisses against the half-melted bracket. Heat seeps through my gloves like the panic creeping through my veins.

Tabitha breaks into my earpiece again. “David, reroute the main line to the second set of breakers. They might hold if they aren’t fried. Hurry. This overvoltage is pumping well beyond safe thresholds.”

The second set of breakers. Right. With adrenaline fueling me, I claw to the side panel where backup breakers gleam faintly. I yank them open, half-expecting them to be melted, but they look intact. My heart hammers as I engage the manual override. There’s a crackle, a flicker along the row of lights overhead, then another shocking jolt spits from the reactor. The entire hangar rattles, the walls shuddering with the force.

“Tabitha, talk to me!” I gasp, teeth clenched. A wave of dizziness washes over me from the intense heat and the reek of hot metal.

“Core temperature’s still skyrocketing,” she announces, voice strained. “Try not to cause a second surge like that one. We can’t handle many more.”

Patch’s coolant rig hisses angrily, dumping icy fluid onto the reactor’s exposed plates. Sparks is at the console, flipping power toggles in a desperate attempt to isolate the meltdown. She shouts, “I almost have it, almost have—damn it!”

A violent pop cuts her sentence short, and the entire console shorts in a burst of sparks, hurling her backward. She collapses onto the floor, coughing. I curse under my breath, lurching toward her. The overhead lamps wink from bright to dim as if in a final death rattle. The meltdown rages on, the arcs sizzling across the reactor’s hull.

I squint against the strobe effect, throwing an arm around Sparks to help her up. “Stay low,” I urge. “I’ll handle the manual stabilizer.”

She tries to nod. “Don’t kill yourself. That coil’s a death trap.” Then, through a cough, “Damn this junkyard wiring.”

Anger boils in me. Anger at the staff sergeant who said I couldn’t handle real machinery. Anger at my ex rolling her eyes when I said I’d build a mech that would make the Wolverines take notice. Anger at the persistent shadow of self-doubt that whispers maybe I’m in over my head. But like hell I’ll let this meltdown prove them right.

I stumble across the shuddering floor. My hand hovers near the meltdown override lever, but the ambient arcs keep snapping at me, forcing me back. I snatch a rag from my belt and wrap it around my right hand to insulate it somewhat. Then, I lunge, hooking my fingers around the lever’s base. A shock jolts through me, but I grit my teeth, ignoring the sting. With all my strength, I wrench it down.

A grinding sound reverberates through the hangar. The meltdown’s electric blasts flickered wildly. Then, with a screech of metal, the reactor sputters. Its roar drops from a chaotic caterwaul to a harsh hiss. Coolant steam still billows, but the arcs dim.

Patch seizes the moment and fully opens his rig’s valve, flooding the hot plating with an intense wave of liquid coolant. The temperature plummets, leaving me breathless from the sudden shift. The overhead lights blink uncertainly. I briefly think the meltdown might flare again before the readouts flicker to a stable, if dangerously high, level.

Then, quiet. Not perfect silence, but the meltdown’s savage roar fades to uneasy crackles. I’m panting, shoulders taut. My gloves are partially melted around the fingertips, and my arms tremble from the stress.

Sparks coughs, pulling herself upright as the last hiss dissipates. “Is it stable?”

Patch turns off his coolant rig. “Near as I can tell.” He wipes sweat from his brow. The front of his clothes are half-soaked in coolant and grime. His face is drawn tight with relief, but there’s a flicker of adrenaline in his eyes. “That was…something.”

I force a thin laugh, though it sounds more like a rasp. “Yeah. That’s one word for it.”

Tabitha’s subdued voice reaches me. “David, you all right? Please tell me we’re done blowing up the hangar for today.”

I sink onto a crate, my backbone slumping against the corrugated metal behind me. “We’re done.” I shut my eyes. My body pulses with leftover adrenaline. “Jesus, Tabi. That was close.”

“Understatement of the year,” she mutters, her usual sarcasm undercut by genuine worry. “I didn’t sign up to babysit a blowtorch B-grade fireworks show. Next time, can we do something less suicidal?”

I can’t help but grin, though my hands are still shaking. “You say that like there’s a normal day around here.”

“Little meltdown humor aside, are you okay?” she asks.

“Not dead,” I whisper. “So that’s a plus.”

The stench of burnt metal and electric fumes hangs thick in the air. The hangar walls are scorched black in places. Twisted beams near the center are warped from the blast’s heat. Part of me wants to scream at how quickly we almost lost all we’ve worked for. Another part simply feels numb.

Sparks clears her throat, glancing at me through the dissipating haze. “If you ever try to overclock a power core like that again, I’m going to short-circuit your brain personally,” she snaps, though the corners of her mouth quirk with relief. She grabs a rag from a shelf nearby to wipe coolant off her arms.

Patch shakes his head, spitting coolant from his mouth. “Kid, I get pushing boundaries, but that’s the second time in a month you nearly turned your mech into slag. We can’t keep doing this.”

I push sweaty hair off my forehead, shame gnawing at me along with leftover anger. “We needed more power,” I mumble. “Raven One’s thruster demands keep rising, and I thought if we gave it more juice, we’d?—”

Tabitha cuts in with a sigh. “We’d blow the entire place sky-high, apparently.”

A shaky laugh escapes me. “I’m sorry. I really am.” My gaze sweeps the scorched beams, the half-finished plating, the singed cables hanging in sad tangles. “I can’t stand the idea of someone saying we’re too small or weak, but yeah. This was reckless.”

Sparks levels me with an exasperated stare. “Reckless is an understatement, Wayne.” Her voice softens as she adds, “You scared the crap out of me. Next time, consult me and Patch before hooking up some supercharged monstrosity of a power core.”

I bob my head. “Deal.”

Patch exhales, glancing around at the devastation. “Let’s, uh…switch off external sensors for a bit, okay?” He pulls a small device from his belt, a handheld jammer, and flicks it on. “We don’t need any official eyes poking around after that energy spike. Good thing my scrambler was running. Blended our meltdown into the usual industrial noise from Valis’ refineries.”

I nod, grateful for his foresight. The last thing we need is the authorities bursting in. My hands are steady enough to push upright, groaning at the ache in my muscles. “Hang on,” I state. “Let me make sure the hangar doors are secured in case anyone shows up uninvited, “

“I’ll handle it,” Sparks replies quickly, wiping her brow. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

I start to protest, but she fixes me with a silent challenge, so I shrug and let her secure the perimeter. She trudges away, stepping over broken piping and bits of charred debris. Patch rummages around for a structural scanner to assess the damage near the overhead beams.

Tabitha takes the opportunity to speak. “You can still smell that meltdown arc, can’t you? Sort of an acrid ozone stench.”

“Yeah,” I mutter, tasting it on my tongue. “And burning plastic. It’s lovely.”

She releases a short, dry laugh. “Smartass. Listen, David, you scared me. If that meltdown fully cascaded, I was worried I’d lose you.”

I blink, her admission catching me off guard. Normally, she’d offer teasing disclaimers or half-jokes, but this is raw. “I’m sorry, Tabi. I can’t stand the thought of?—”

“Failure?” she interrupts, finishing my thought. “Yeah, I know. You want to prove yourself, and I get that. But if you fry yourself in the process, you’re not proving anything to anyone.”

I don’t respond as I let the tension drain from my body. “I’m not going anywhere,” I finally reply. “I promise.”

She hums. “You’d better keep that promise, pal.”

A clank from behind draws my attention. Patch has found a ladder and is climbing to the rafters, scanning them. He grunts. “Beams are charred, but they’ll hold for now.” He hops down, landing unsteadily, then gives me a concerned look. “What’s next, kid? You’ll have to rewire half your systems after this.”

I slump onto a half-burned crate with a weary breath. “Yeah, that’s what we’ll do. Rewire everything. Reinforce the meltdown failsafes. Maybe stick some dampeners in line.” My stomach twists at the thought of Freedman’s advanced dampeners, but we haven’t gotten our hands on anything like that yet. “Got no choice, Patch. Raven One’s not going anywhere without a stable core.”

Patch nods curtly. “Try not to kill me while you’re at it, okay?”

A faint laugh slips out. “No promises.”

Moments later, Sparks returns. I notice a streak of soot across her cheek. “Doors are locked, external sensors are off,” she announces, a hand on her hip. “We’re safe for now.”

I exhale in relief. “We can’t leave this mess. We need to strip out the fried wiring and do a full systems check. Tabi, can you run a damage report on the mainframe?”

She clicks her simulated tongue. “On it. Though I might need a few fresh circuit boards. Some of these are absolutely toast.”

Sparks slides onto a low workbench beside me, pulling off her gloves with a weary grin. “We’ll get it sorted, Wayne,” she comments. “Let’s not push any more half-finished power cores beyond recommended specs, okay?”

My cheeks color, remembering how I’d boasted earlier about doubling the output to feed Raven One’s thrusters. “Got it,” I reply, swallowing my pride. I swipe the back of my hand over my damp forehead. “We were so damn close to losing everything. I can’t have that happen.”

She studies me. “I know, but we can’t let ego kill us, either.”

A wave of mutual understanding passes between us. In the hush, I catch the soft hum of the hangar’s battered generators, still running at partial capacity. The meltdown has drained a chunk of our resources. Financial, mental, everything.

Patch clears his throat. “All right. Enough self-pity. Let’s figure out the plan. Step one, we handle the meltdown damage. Step two, we decide how to keep the authorities away from our doorstep. Step three, we live long enough to pay rent, right?”

A startled chuckle bursts from me. “A triple threat.”

Tabitha perks up. “I can handle step two. I’ll jam or spoof any inspectors who try to do a quick scan of local spikes. Just don’t do anything that begs for a second meltdown.”

I nod, my body still trembling from leftover adrenaline. The meltdown has hammered me physically and mentally, but at least we aren’t in a crater of twisted steel. “Let’s get to it,” I announce. “I want to run a manual structural scan, confirm the beams are stable. Sparks, you mind checking the console’s wiring? Patch, you can help me yank the shot cables from the reactor feed line. Tabi?—”

“Yeah, I’ll keep watch on the net,” she finishes with an undercurrent of relief. “And if anything tries to blow again, I’ll scream at you in real-time.”

Sparks claps my shoulder. “Come on, boss. We’ve got work to do.”

I stand, ignoring the burnt copper flavor sticking to the back of my throat. My mind replays the meltdown’s roar, the scalding arcs. I get it, Universe. You want me to remember how close I came to failing. But if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that near-disasters don’t define me. Surviving them does.

After hauling away a pile of charred plating, I pause beside Raven One’s skeletal frame. Her thruster ports look intact, but scorching mars the edges of the plating. I gently lay a hand on the mech’s flank and whisper, “Don’t give up on me, girl.” The metal is still warm to the touch.

“She won’t,” Tabitha tells me. “Neither will I.”

Something heavy and determined settles in my chest. “Thanks, Tabi.” I clear my throat. “Let’s fix this place before the next meltdown rears its head.”

Patch is rummaging for new cables, and Sparks climbs up to recheck the power distribution board. My boots clank on the dingy steel floor as I moved to help. Occasionally, my ears ring with an echo of the meltdown’s roar.

Yet we survived, goddamn it. I intend to turn that survival into something more. A stronger Raven One and a better future. If a second meltdown threatens us, I’ll be ready. Fueled by anger at the doubts that haunt me and the unwavering loyalty of the strange family we’re building, I’ll make sure no meltdown, no scornful recruiter, no condescending ex can overshadow what we’re creating here.

“David?” Tabitha prods. “Your heart rate’s easing off. Good. Deep breaths. We’ll be all right.”

“I know,” I whisper. Somehow, in that swirl of acrid smoke and soaked metal, I believe it. Those who bet I’d never amount to anything might keep on betting, but the day will come when they realize they’ve chosen the losing side.