Date: 15th July 2026
Location: Dalston Black Market / The Cryptic Vault
Time: 10:15 AM BST
The Dalston underground tech market smelled of cheap vape smoke, damp concrete, and stolen lithium.
I pulled my trench coat tighter against the biting London drizzle.
Behind me, Dom and Ramona were looking around with the wide, terrified eyes of posh uni students who had accidentally wandered onto a gang estate.
["I have scanned the entire perimeter, Pryce."]
["There are exactly fourteen vendors selling the specific unregistered smartwatches you require."]
["I have highlighted the optimal targets on your retinal mini-map."]
"Brilliant," I muttered under my breath.
I followed the glowing green waypoints appearing flawlessly in my AR vision.
Dom bumped into my shoulder.
He was nervously eyeing a bloke covered in prison tattoos who was selling shattered motherboards out of a duffel bag.
"Mason, mate, are you sure about this?" Dom whispered.
"This place looks like it's going to harvest my kidneys."
"Just look intimidating and let me do the talking," I sighed.
A massive headache was already forming behind my eyes.
I was a Grandmaster of the Apocalypse, but right now, I was reduced to babysitting twenty-year-olds in a dodgy car boot sale.
We approached a rusted metal stall overflowing with unbranded, grey-market smartwatches.
The vendor tried to quote us fifty quid a pop, clearly thinking we were clueless tourists.
I didn't even blink.
I leaned in and calmly pointed out the microscopic flaws in his soldering, the degraded lithium cells, and the illegal import serial numbers filed off the back.
Within ninety seconds, I had him sweating profusely.
I walked away with four boxes of uniform circular chassis and a heavy bag of 'broken' microchips for less than the price of a pub lunch.
Dom just stared at me, his jaw practically hitting the wet pavement.
He thought he was a hustler, but he was currently watching Mozart play the piano.
He was taking mental notes, completely and utterly humbled.
"We need the chassis to be uniform," I explained, tossing a heavy box to Ramona.
"Circular dials are mathematically the most stable for housing the Aetheric receiver dishes."
"But they look so chunky," Dom complained, holding one up to the grey light.
"If we merge the back plate of this model with the sleek bezel of that one, we get a minimalist profile."
"Elegant, but untraceable," Ramona agreed.
She began meticulously picking out a selection of matte black, thick-rimmed glasses frames.
"We use the dark frames to hide the metal receiver stems," I nodded, genuinely impressed by their eye for modern design.
We lugged the scrap back to the Cryptic Vault.
Absolute, uncoordinated chaos was waiting for us.
Dexter and Albie had piled the raw materials exactly as I'd asked, but it looked like a bomb had gone off in a Maplin store.
"Right, gather round, children," I groaned, aggressively rubbing my temples.
"We are building a 4D molecular printer from literal rubbish."
The next few hours were an exercise in terrifying precision.
Dexter had the instinctual mechanics of a god.
I didn't have to teach him the 2036-spec fabrication process like a toddler.
He just looked at the raw materials and started silently slotting them together.
His massive hands moved with an unexplained, terrifying intuition.
I only had to step in for the absolute micro-adjustments.
A zero-point-one millimetre shift on the thermal coil here, a slight angle correction on the logic gate there.
He wasn't dumb muscle; he was a silent, terrifying anomaly of engineering.
Finally, the makeshift 4D printer sparked to life.
It hummed with the violent violet energy of the Tesla core.
While Dexter carefully assembled the internal hardware, Dom and Ramona began polishing the merged chassis.
They buffed the cheap metal until it gleamed like high-end Mayfair luxury.
I secretly stepped away to finalise the Tier One units for the inner circle.
I poured the strongest, most stable Aetheric receivers into six specific watches.
My own unit was upgraded to a hidden Tier S.
I subtly engraved the initials 'MP' on the inside of the casing.
I decided to colour-code the bands for quick tactical identification.
I handed them out across the workbench.
"Right, I'm maroon, Dexter is black, Dom is navy blue, Albie gets white, and Ramona is grey."
"And Shienna gets pastel blue when she finally arrives," I finished, strapping mine on.
I made a dry comment about us looking like a highly depressed sentai squad.
They all just stared at me in dead, agonizing silence.
"I severely misjudged the cultural memory of 2026," I muttered, my soul attempting to leave my body.
"Just put the bloody watches on."
Managing this entire fabrication process was physically draining me.
My vision was starting to go grainy at the edges.
My jaw was clenched so hard my teeth physically ached.
My hands were trembling so violently I had to shove them deep into my trench coat pockets to hide the weakness.
Salvation arrived in the form of Eliza.
["Step aside, you fumbling amateurs."]
Eliza's voice echoed through the Vault's loudspeakers, dripping with aristocratic disdain.
["I am taking over the primary manufacturing process."]
["Pryce, your 4D printer is profoundly crude, but it will suffice under my direct command."]
Eliza used the Tesla waves as her eyes and hands, wirelessly hijacking the 4D printer.
The machine instantly became a blur of terrifying, flawless precision.
It began spitting out perfectly refined micro-components, assembling the smartwatches and AR glasses at a speed that defied modern physics.
Dom watched the automated magic happening and immediately pulled out his banking app.
He ruthlessly drained his entire savings account just to buy upgraded motors and premium resin for my printer.
"If this means I don't have to manually polish another piece of plastic, take all my money," Dom sighed in pure relief.
Eliza even took it upon herself to redesign the packaging.
The 4D printer began creating sleek, matte-black boxes with minimalist silver lettering that Ramona had drafted.
["It is remarkably easy to manufacture luxury when one does not have to pay for human error."]
Eliza's avatar smirked from the main monitor as a perfectly boxed 'TimeLink' unit slid smoothly down the assembly line.
Within hours, we had a hundred pristine, highly illegal units.
They were perfectly ready for the upper echelons of London society.
The transition from grueling manual labour to full automation felt like stepping out of the dark ages.
Now, we just had to sell the apocalypse to the rich.
"Right then," Albie announced, flawlessly straightening his bespoke tie.
"Time to go fishing for whales."
Albie hadn't just arranged meetings; he had orchestrated a social coup.
He had borrowed his cousin's pristine, silver Aston Martin under the guise of 'going on a date'.
He had boldly bribed his cousin with the very first free prototype of our luxury watch.
Without even realising it, his cousin had worn it to an exclusive Chelsea country club.
He had accidentally created a massive wave of high-society hype for an unreleased brand.
We drove into Mayfair, looking absolutely nothing like university students.
We pulled up to an exclusive boutique that dealt in experimental, high-end electronics for oligarchs.
Albie walked in first, radiating pure, weaponised aristocratic confidence.
He hit the boutique owner with his trademark, elitist negotiation tactics.
"We don't normally distribute to street-level retailers, darling, but we had a spare half-hour," Albie drawled.
I stepped in behind him, playing the role of the eccentric, genius distributor.
"The architecture is entirely proprietary," I lied smoothly, stroking the owner's massive ego.
"We're strictly invite-only, but your clientele... they appreciate true innovation, don't they?"
The boutique owner, a slick bloke named Tarquin, looked skeptically at the sleek black glasses.
"They look lovely, gents, but the market is heavily flooded with AR rubbish," Tarquin scoffed.
"What makes these worth two grand a pair?"
I just smiled and tapped the side of my frames.
["Showtime, Pryce."]
Eliza's voice whispered in my earpiece.
Suddenly, Tarquin's personal smartphone, his iPad, and the boutique's entire security system chimed in perfect unison.
["Good afternoon, Tarquin."]
Eliza's voice projected flawlessly through the store's high-end surround sound speakers.
["I was just reviewing your internal ledger."]
["Your inventory reconciliation for the third quarter is exactly three days behind."]
["And there is a rather embarrassing £4,000 discrepancy in your offshore tax filings."]
["Shall I resolve those for you, or shall we continue discussing our wholesale price?"]
Tarquin went completely, deathly pale.
His jaw dropped as he stared at the innocent-looking glasses resting on his glass counter.
He didn't know he was talking to a Victorian ghost running on a future-tech doomsday frequency.
He just thought he was looking at the most dangerous, invasive AI ever built.
"How... how many units do you have in the boot of that Aston?" Tarquin stammered.
His hands shook as he pulled out a solid titanium Amex card.
I shared a quick, triumphant look with Albie.
But as Tarquin swiped the card through the machine, a sharp, cold prickle shot straight up my spine.
The boutique's corner CCTV camera gave a violent, unnatural twitch.
I felt a sudden, heavy feedback loop echo through the Tesla receiver on my wrist.
We had our foot firmly in the door.
But the House was definitely watching.