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The plasma cannon didn't just burn. It hit.
The bolt carried kinetic energy as well as thermal. In the films, a direct hit from Crimson Typhoon's cannon could stagger a thousand-ton Kaiju, knock it backward, send it reeling. The physics worked in reality too: superheated plasma at that velocity was a projectile as much as a weapon of heat.
But the first test had been conservative. Three seconds. 2,700 degrees. One round. Ryan needed to see what the weapon could do at full specifications before calling the project a success.
He ordered the targets removed from the tunnel. The previous shot had demonstrated that striking a solid object scattered plasma into the tunnel walls, punching holes in the concrete lining. Firing at full power through targets would tear the tunnel apart.
The technicians cleared the debris while Ryan ran another full diagnostic on the cannon. No damage. No degradation. Every component had performed within specification during the first discharge. The weapon was ready for round two.
At two a.m., with the tunnel empty and the team back in the control room, Ryan fired the cannon at maximum settings.
*Charge time: 6.7 seconds. Plasma temperature: 3,600°F. One round.*
The discharge was categorically different from the first test. The light was brighter. The sound was deeper. The building shook harder. The recoil platform traveled a full foot backward before the dampeners arrested it.
The plasma bolt entered the empty tunnel and flew.
Sensors embedded in the tunnel walls at fifty-meter intervals tracked its progress. The data painted a clear picture: in atmospheric conditions, energy dissipation was severe. By five hundred meters, the bolt had lost the majority of its destructive potential. The remaining energy was sufficient to maintain the bolt's coherent structure but not enough to vaporize targets. By the time the bolt reached the tunnel's end at three kilometers, it had expended everything and dissipated into heat and light.
Atmospheric energy loss was a known limitation. Ryan had expected it. The solution would come later: improved focusing lens geometry, higher-density plasma generation, or deployment in vacuum (space-based applications where atmospheric drag didn't exist).
For now, the weapon worked. It fired. It hit. It destroyed everything within its effective range.
At five a.m., the sky was turning gray. Ryan sent everyone to bed.
"Rest today. Full day off. Back to work tomorrow."
He downloaded the test data to two portable drives. One for himself, one for Thornton. The lab's computers were wiped clean.
He locked the facility, walked back to the residential block, and called Patricia.
"Both tests successful. Full details in Thornton's report, which will be submitted by end of day tomorrow."
He yawned into the phone.
"Get some sleep," Patricia said.
"Planning on it."
He hung up and collapsed onto his bed.
-----
Patricia sat alone in her office, the desk lamp the only light. She'd been awake since hearing the first test's muffled boom through the facility walls. She'd guessed what it meant and returned to her office to wait.
Two successful firings. A directed-energy weapon that could vaporize concrete and steel at a hundred feet. Built by a teenager using a hundred million dollars of seed funding that the committee had expected to last six months of preliminary research.
She'd stopped being surprised by Ryan Mercer approximately three surprises ago. Now she operated in a state of permanent readiness for whatever impossible thing he did next.
She picked up her secure phone.
"Latest project: two experimental firings conducted tonight. Both successful. Detailed report forthcoming from the project lead."
The voice on the other end acknowledged, neutral and professional. "Understood. I'll escalate."
The call ended. Patricia knew what would happen next. The report would climb the chain. Senior analysts would review it. Meetings would be called. Offices would light up across the country, one by one, as the implications cascaded upward.
She turned off her lamp and went to bed.
-----
Ryan slept until sunset. Fourteen hours straight.
Kyle woke him by knocking on his door with the persistence of a woodpecker.
"What?" Ryan opened the door looking like he'd been dragged from the bottom of a lake.
Kyle was vibrating with energy. "The firefighting mech model is ready for its mobility test. Do you want to come see?"
Ryan rubbed his face. "The walking test? Already?"
"The professors have been working on it nonstop. It's ready."
"Give me ten minutes."
He washed up, dressed, and followed Kyle to the mech storage hangar. The building had been expanded recently to accommodate a second machine, and when Ryan walked in, he saw why.
Scrapper stood in its usual position on the left side of the hangar. Black, familiar, dormant.
Beside it, surrounded by scaffolding, stood something new.
The firefighting mech was visibly different from Scrapper in every way that mattered. Where Scrapper was broad and heavy, built for power and impact, this machine was lean and purposeful. Where Scrapper had two legs, this one had four, distributed around a circular rail system at the hip that allowed each leg to reposition independently. Each foot carried a vertically-mounted circular saw blade that could raise and lower, designed to cut through forest debris and fallen structures.
The cockpit was mounted in the chest: a 360-degree glass enclosure made from fire-rated transparent panels, giving the pilot unobstructed visibility in every direction. No blind spots. No reliance on cameras or radar. Direct visual contact with the fire environment.
Above the cockpit, the body showed clear Scrapper DNA in its joint design and frame construction. The transmission model, the actuator placement, the structural geometry. The professors had built on what they knew and added what the mission required.
It wasn't finished. It was a test model, skeletal in places, with exposed cabling and unpainted surfaces. But it was standing on its own four legs, held upright by its own balance system, looking like something that could walk into a forest fire and walk back out.
Professor Marsh approached, smiling.
"What do you think?"
Ryan looked at it for a long time. The first mech in the world that he hadn't designed. Built by a team of twenty-five professors and fifteen research assistants using technology they'd learned from Scrapper, applied to a problem he'd given them, in a form they'd invented themselves.
The second mech on Earth.
"Is the structural integrity verified?" he asked.
"Calculated, tested, and recalculated. This is the best model we've produced. The frame can handle full operational loads at the design weight."
Ryan nodded slowly.
"Let's see it walk."
-----