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Ryan hung up the red phone and walked out of Patricia's office.
She was waiting in the corridor.
"How did it go?"
"Got what I needed." Ryan stretched. "More or less."
Patricia raised a hand before he could elaborate. "Don't tell me details I'm not cleared to hear. If everything's fine, go get some rest."
Ryan smirked and left. He'd barely reached his quarters when he found Kyle standing outside the door.
"I'm here for the reports," Kyle said, waving awkwardly.
"Right." Ryan had forgotten. A few pages of the firefighting mech component reviews were still unfinished. He let Kyle in, sat at his desk, and opened the files.
After spending weeks immersed in Crimson Typhoon's specifications, reviewing Scrapper-based modifications felt like grading elementary school homework after reading a doctoral thesis. The first-generation mech's design had been clever for its scale, but compared to a fourth-generation Jaeger, every system was crude, every structure was oversimplified, every engineering decision was a compromise that a larger platform wouldn't need to make.
"How's the firefighting mech coming along?" Ryan asked while he worked.
"The professors finalized the structural framework. We've built a physical scale model and several structural test components. Right now we're running performance tests and iterating on the design."
Kyle paused to organize his thoughts. "Current spec has the mech at about thirty feet tall, under a hundred tons fully loaded with the fire suppression system. Light enough to be transported by heavy-haul trailer to the deployment zone."
"That's fast progress."
Kyle scratched his head. "Fast and expensive. We've burned through most of the ten million Calloway allocated. The professors have been hounding him for more funding. Apparently he's been having headaches."
Ryan laughed. Calloway's headaches were a recurring theme. The firefighting mech was now officially MIT's project, which meant MIT's budget, which meant Calloway's problem.
Ryan could build a mech skeleton for a quarter million because the system gave him perfect blueprints with zero wasted effort. Kyle's team had no system. They had to test every structural concept, fabricate every prototype component, run every simulation manually, and iterate through dozens of failed designs before finding the right one. That process cost money. Real money.
"Keep pushing," Ryan said, finishing the last annotation. "Once the firefighting mech produces results, your team will have earned enough experience to attempt an original design. That's the real milestone."
Kyle looked uncertain. "We're still completely dependent on Scrapper's transmission model. We can't seem to get past it."
"Scrapper's transmission design is actually straightforward. With enough experimental testing, you'll internalize the principles. Designing something new on top of that will come with time."
Kyle's expression suggested he did not find Scrapper's transmission design "straightforward," but he took the hard drives and left without arguing.
Alone, Ryan opened the system panel.
Sixty-eight percent. The progress had ticked forward during the phone call. New data had been released: Crimson Typhoon's shock absorption and balance systems. The highlights were the Achilles dampeners in the feet and the magnetorheological dampers in the leg joints. Together, they formed a dual-layer vibration absorption system that could neutralize the kinetic feedback from a 1,700-ton machine running at full speed.
This was the system that let Crimson Typhoon do things no other Jaeger could: sprint, pivot, and perform acrobatic maneuvers that would shake a lesser machine apart. The balance system wasn't just good. It was the best in the entire Pacific Rim universe.
Ryan wanted to study it immediately. Forced himself to look away.
Not yet. The priority was the test arm.
He opened a different section of the system's database: Crimson Typhoon's arm specifications.
Three arms. One left, two right. The right arms were thinner, lighter, and structurally simpler than the left. Perfect candidates for the first physical construction.
Ryan chose the forward right arm. Stripped of external armor, it weighed approximately seventy tons. Diesel-piston driven. The wrist housed retractable hardened-alloy sawblades that could extend and spin at combat speeds. The shoulder joint connected to a dorsal thruster assembly that could rotate the upper body, adding centrifugal force to the arm's striking power.
Compared to the reactor systems, the drift architecture, or the plasma cannon, the right arm was mechanically simple. Drive system and weapon system. Two challenges, both well within Ryan's current capabilities.
He began transcribing the blueprints into his CAD software, translating the system's specifications into fabrication-ready drawings. As he worked, he made modifications: the arm needed to function independently of the main body's power and drive systems, since it would be tested as a standalone unit before being integrated into the complete mech.
An auxiliary power connection. Independent hydraulic lines. A self-contained control interface that could accept drift input from the liquid neural connection device.
The work absorbed him completely. Hours passed. The sky outside his window darkened from blue to black to the starless gray of coastal overcast.
His phone shattered the silence.
Mason Reed.
Ryan picked up. "What's going on?"
Mason's voice was tight. Not panicked, but stressed. "We've got a problem. Someone's coming after us."
"Coming after you how?"
"Not physically. Publicly. A competitor just released a video. Their prosthetic is better than ours, and they're making sure everyone knows it."
Ryan sat back in his chair. "Who?"
"Some company I've never heard of. NeuraPath Technologies. Harvard-affiliated. They've got a brain-controlled arm that makes our prototype look like a toy. And their video just went viral."
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