Chicago had changed. It felt different, even from inside the Museumtown Safe Zone.

  It smelled different, too. Richer and earthier. The scent reminded me of home; not Museumtown, and not Mrs. Faren’s attic apartment. Cozad, Nebraska. Where I’d grown up. And that smell reminded me of Beth.

  I couldn’t afford to worry about my sister, wherever she was. She’d either be alive and thriving in a world that matched her imagination better than the real one had, or she wouldn’t be—just like Mom and Dad. Their farm was probably a safe zone, and they were probably better off than Museumtown. And I had my own responsibilities.

  Besides, I’d been working on something, and when it was finished, getting to Cozad to check on Mom and Dad, or to Green Bay to find Tori’s real mom, wouldn’t be a problem. It was parked in Cindy’s Automotive, and with a few hours of work, I’d have the engine running again. I could feel it.

  I pulled up my stats.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 61 Rank One]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 35

  ?Awareness - 47

  ?Charge - 16/87 (59 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 2

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  [Class Skill - Remote Voltsmithing - Use your Voltsmithing to empower Creations even when others are using them—or when no one is.

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Autoplate Pauldron (8 Charge)

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp Upgrade One (19/30 Charge) - Rail Gun Module, Taser Launcher

  ?Heavy Trip-Hammer 2.0 (25 Charge)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Bio-Electric Scanner) (7 Charge)

  I had a few minutes; as soon as the Consortium announced that Phase Two of integration had started, both Calvin Rollins and I had headed to Jessica’s place. She’d almost certainly want to talk the announcement message over. But to our surprise, she was asleep—and even more shocking, her stepdaughter wouldn’t wake her up. I looked at her nameplate and decided not to push it.

  Tori Vanderbilt: Level 60 (Rank One)

  Class: Telekineticist

  “Mom’s beat. She pushed her Mana to the limit trying to heal people after the battle, and she won’t be ready to talk for a couple of hours. Sorry, Hal, but you’re going to have to wait for this quest,” she’d said.

  I noticed that she’d called Jessica ‘Mom,’ but didn’t say anything about it. We’d talked about it, and she’d agreed to give it a try. Part of me hadn’t expected her to follow through, but I’d been hoping. “Alright. I’m going to be at Cindy’s. Grab the twins when your mom wakes up and come get me. Don’t let her wander around the city looking for me until we know what’s changed.”

  “Got it, Hal,” Tori said.

  My Voltsmith’s Laboratory in Cindy’s Automotive was coming along nicely. It was only Rank One, like me, but the space in the auto garage was downright roomy compared to working on a plywood bed frame in a tower—or the sand on a beach. The Fabrication Crystal and Liquid Charge Generator had given me a couple of heavy-duty tools that promised to change how I operated—as soon as I got them both running. I was eager to get started.

  I had to get there first, though, and Chicago had changed. The grafting was starting.

  The canyonlike streets between towering skyscrapers had been covered with vines and plants since Phase One started three weeks ago, but now, they weren’t canyonlike anymore. They were canyons. I’d seen nothing like them. The cliffs overhead loomed more solidly and menacingly than any of the city’s skyscrapers ever had, and a waterfall poured down into the deepest one, right where the Chicago River should have been.

  The Trip-Hammer idled in my hands as I headed north, away from the waterfall and into a dense patch of brush that hadn’t been there an hour ago. Purple bark and orange leaves with razor-sharp edges blocked my way forward; I revved the weapon’s engine and started smashing through the bramble. The twin hammers spun, shredding wood and vines into a pulp that I crushed under my boots.

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  I’d made it almost twenty yards into the bramble, and the Cindy’s Automotive sign was in sight, when I saw my first monster of Phase Two.

  Orc Harvester: Level Fifty Monster (Rank One)

  Tori would have recognized it instantly. The thing loomed taller than me, with muscles that rippled under its gray-toned skin. It was covered in scars, and unlike most of the monsters I’d seen in Phase One, it wore clothes. Leather armor that looked almost like a second skin covered one shoulder and half its chest, leaving a small, muscular breast exposed. Its two underbit fangs covered half her face, spiking straight up to its nose, and its hands gripped an axe.

  Its scalp was nearly hairless, but its body was partially covered in sparse, wiry hair that did little to hide the skin. It had braided some of it together here and there.

  It—she—stared at me, and I stared back at her. The Trip-Hammer chugged to a stop, and a branch crashed to the ground.

  Then she was gone.

  I fired up my Bio-Electric Scanner, kicking myself for not having it running from the moment I left Museumtown. Chicago wasn’t the same—and it had never been safe, but the ‘Rank One’ nameplate next to the Orc Harvester’s name was a reminder that the order I’d given Tori not to let Jessica wander alone applied to me, too.

  It wouldn’t be a surprise for overworld monsters my level or higher to exist.

  The orange charge dot representing the Orc Harvester faded as she disappeared through the razor-leafed bramble until eventually, she’d vanished from the Scanner, too. Two dots remained, but both were pretty far away, and neither stood between Cindy’s Automotive and me, so after a deep breath to recenter myself and a promise to stay more alert, I pushed forward.

  The Ford Explorer sat on a lift, up high enough off the ground that I could get into what was left of its guts. I felt a little like a vulture or a coyote ripping into a corpse; gas motor parts and wiring that I wouldn’t need—the radio, heater, and air conditioning unit among them—lay on the concrete below me.

  It had taken an hour—all the time I was willing to give the car—but I’d gotten the engine to rev twice before something seized up. And I’d done it with Charge, not gasoline and oil. The next step was going to have to be a consistent run at a thousand RPM, then gradually giving it the gas until it moved. But all of that could wait.

  I hadn’t even begun to see what Rank One Voltsmithing was all about.

  The time had come to change that.

  For clearing the Wild-Seared Tower dungeon, I’d gotten two new, powerful items. Neither were weapons, and in fact, only one would be useful in combat at all. The first, the Liquid Charge Generator, could be used to ‘rewire’ a magical item, destroying its ability to operate off of Mana and replacing it with Charge. I’d been looking for a solution to this for a while, and the Liquid Charge Generator offered an imperfect solution; it could only be used with magical items, not created ones.

  Still, it represented a way to create a lot of Charge quickly, at least on a temporary basis. And once I had it set up correctly, I’d be able to use that Charge to fuel the Explorer—or take the Autoplate Pauldrons to the next level.

  The other, more interesting, item was the Fabrication Crystal.

  Fabrication Crystal (Epic, Charge 10)

  +5 Body, +15 Mana

  This magical item allows for the creation of magically powered minions. On activation, one minion will be created for every ten Mana the user possesses.

  I had two possible plans for it.

  The first was to replicate something I’d seen in a superhero movie. I only had two hands, but the Fabrication Crystal represented nine magical minions if I could convert it to run off my Charge—or an unknown number if it ran off the Voltsmith’s Laboratory’s innate Charge pool. That second option would allow me to treat the minions as tools and put them to work. Whether that was on simple projects like a battery bomb assembly line or more complex but tedious ones like wiring a piece of armor, either would save me time.

  The other option was unique to its stat line.

  I could flip that fifteen Mana into Charge with the Liquid Charge Generator, then replace the Autoplate Pauldron or Bio-Electric Scanner with the Fabrication Crystal. That’d give me a massive pool of Charge to work with—and I could rely on the minions to act as armed drones using either the bombs I created or Remote Voltsmithing-empowered weapons.

  Either way sounded powerful, and I wasn’t sure which was better—combat drones or robotic assistants for crafting.

  If I left the crystal at Cindy’s, I could see the minions making bombs or following the glowing orange blueprint I’d designed for the Explorer’s wiring rig while I adventured, like an automated factory. Remote Voltsmithing would allow them to operate without me. At least, I was pretty sure it would.

  But bringing it with me would increase my combat flexibility and provide new solutions to problems I didn’t even know I had yet. Nine robots—or possibly eleven—could each be built and armed a little differently. Rail guns, acid and shrapnel bombs, and even a sticky auto-Trip-Hammer; the possibilities were endless. I could be a one-man army.

  It took me half an hour of puzzling before I realized that I could do both.

  Even if I had infinite stockpiles of material, the theoretical factory could only produce so much—more than that, and I couldn’t use all the weapons and tools it could create. And eleven combat drones would be too much for me to manage in the field.

  But if I had four working in the factory, four combat drones—each built to do different tasks—and three extras in reserve, that’d give me a solid mix of utility and fighting power. It’d also let me manage destroyed robots. That’d be an issue for sure.

  I sat down and got to work with the Liquid Charge Generator.

  The process was simple. Time-consuming, but simple.

  My Awareness stat, coupled with the Charge Generator’s interface, allowed me to see the looping, spiraling course that Mana took across the Fabrication Crystal. It also allowed me to stitch Charge wires across the course—very, very slowly. I was glad Jessica was sleeping, because otherwise, this would have felt like a massive waste of time. Like something I’d give to a robotic assistant—if I had one.

  It took several hours, and it was well into the early morning hours before I finally finished the device, unstrapped the Autoplate Pauldron, and equipped the Fabrication Crystal.

  Fabrication Engine (Epic, Charge 10)

  +5 Body, +15 Charge

  This magical item allows for the creation of Voltsmithing-powered minions. On activation, one minion will be powered for every ten Charge the user possesses.