"The bracelet's charm," Sol said, "is the sword. Compressed. Stored in a hammerspace anchor the same way ARTORIUS stores itself above the cloud line. When you draw it, it returns to full size."
"And it summons the mech."
"It gives you the choice to summon the mech," Sol corrected. "There are two ways. The method determines what happens."
Zach waited.
"First method — you draw the sword and hold it. Keep it in your hand, tip pointed skyward, and call ARTORIUS by name. The mech reads the drawn blade as activation and forms around you. Plates, joints, the helm — everything assembles on your body in sequence, from the ground up. You're inside it before it finishes arriving."
"Like armor."
"Like armor," Sol confirmed. "Personal. Immediate. For close situations where you need the mech around you before you've had time to cross a distance. Four seconds from draw to full formation."
"And the second method."
"Draw the sword. Throw it into the sky." A pause with something in it — the particular quality of something that had seen a thing enough times to still find it worth anticipating. "ARTORIUS follows it down. Full descent, full form, landing on the blade's position. Faster entry for open engagements — the mech arrives first, creates the ground situation, you board after. Or use it as a distraction. Or to cover someone else's position while you reach the cockpit from distance."
"Which is better."
"Neither. Situational." A pause. "Your father preferred the throw. Every time, regardless of the situation, because he said watching it fall never got old."
Something in the voice shifted. Brief, contained, back to dry almost immediately. But the shift was there.
Zach looked at the charm.
"He made this," Zach said. Not a question.
"The second pilot — Cass — started the tradition. Each pilot adds something to the bracelet. A charm. Something personal, something that means something specifically to them. Your father added the sword." A pause. "There are two other charms on the bracelet. You haven't looked at them closely yet."
Zach looked.
There were. Small, easy to miss against the band — he'd focused on the sword because the sword was obvious, because it was what the dying man had been holding out to him. But there were two others. A small circle, smooth, worn down from something more specific over time. And something angular — too small to make out clearly in the pre-dawn light.
"Later," Sol said, reading the direction of his attention. "Those stories belong to people who aren't here to tell them. I'll tell them for those people when the time is right."
Zach closed his hand around the charm.
Around all three of them.
"Okay," he said. "Let's wake them up."
They argued about location for six minutes.
"Not inside," Kai said immediately, once Zach had explained — with Sol's occasional interjection correcting details he got wrong — what was about to happen. "Four hundred and seventy tons comes through the roof."
"Seventy-two," Sol said through the bracelet.
Kai looked at the bracelet. "What."
"Four hundred and seventy-two metric tons. You said seventy."
"I was rounding—"
"Precision matters when you're discussing structural load."
Kai stared at the bracelet for a moment with the expression of someone recalibrating.
"The clearing," Tyler said, before the argument could develop. Two blocks north. Demolition site. Corp pulled the building six months ago, never started construction. Open ground, no structural risk, empty at this hour."
"Acceptable," Sol said.
Tyler looked at the bracelet. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." A pause. "You're the reader. I can tell from your word choices."
Tyler blinked.
Bambam pointed at the bracelet. "Did she just—"
"I form opinions quickly," Sol said. "It's a survival skill."
"She's like that," Zach said.
"You've known me for five hours," Sol said.
"I have fast instincts."
A pause that was almost warm.
"Your father used to say that too," Sol said. Quiet. Just for Zach, just at that register.
He didn't respond to that.
But he heard it.