Chapter 384: We Bought Tickets to Ruin the Ending

Rex offered to replace my best friend while standing beside a cage full of teeth, which saved me the trouble of wondering whether his management style had improved since breakfast.

I asked the relay operator to keep the recording, then ended the call before he could turn my answer into a trailer. Lukas stayed beside the controls, looking at the blank screen with an expression I couldn’t read properly.

"For the record, I preferred the version of this trip where nobody offered me a replacement spider."

"Good, because the replacement would probably insist on driving sober and reading warning signs. You’d hate him."

I laughed, but he checked the window before he joined in. Rex had made the threat personal, and pretending it hadn’t landed would only leave us less prepared when he followed through.

The operator sent the convoy footage to the regional watch. Their nearest heavy response crew was dealing with a collapsed freight road, leaving local officers to keep the settlement clear while help traveled in.

We gave them the route console’s copied map. They asked us to stay away from the production yard, which was excellent advice arriving several crimes too late.

After eleven days at the freight compound while grit storms closed the exposed road, we followed maintained roads across Glasswake for another three days while Rex’s convoy stopped to assemble its heavy frames. The stolen schedule showed why he couldn’t simply race ahead. His show needed cages, power, water and a departure lane wide enough for something bigger than a house.

We slept in guarded freight compounds, paid for supplies and checked the crawler every morning. My wing improved with care, though the tender edge still pulled when I spread it too far. I refused to give a future audience the satisfaction of watching me lose because I had skipped a dressing change.

[System: That’s the spirit, mate. Proper wound care motivated entirely by spite, just as the medical profession intended.]

I was willing to support science when science supported being a vindictive bastard.

By the time we reached the old salvage pits, nearly four weeks had passed since we left Ami. The road had eaten more days than the exciting parts made it seem, and our bags contained twice as many cleaning cloths as souvenirs.

During the closure, the girls got ordinary calls instead of emergencies. Lyra teased me about learning to sit still, Cherry sent terrible souvenir suggestions, and Bridget made me promise not to treat a weather warning as a personal insult.

The production yard glowed beyond a ridge of broken black stone. Transport frames stood on heavy wheels around a central service gantry, with workshops and cages arranged along an open departure lane.

It wasn’t a fortress. It was a traveling business full of workers who needed to get things done, which meant it had delivery gates, maintenance routes and people who would rather finish a shift than investigate every stranger carrying a toolbox.

We parked the crawler at a public rest bay, paid for overnight space and approached the staff entrance with the console’s service map. I stayed beneath a loose delivery cover until we passed the booth, letting Lukas handle the transaction while the clerk watched the loading alarm instead of his customers.

Lukas bought two visitor passes from a booth advertising a preview of the rescue equipment.

Apparently Rex still sold tickets to the machinery preparing his crimes. I respected the commitment while hoping to make the refund process extremely difficult.

Old Mate opened the main objective before we entered.

[System: Seventy thousand EXP and a hundred fifty IP for defeating Rex, stopping this traveling disaster business and keeping its cargo out of the settlement. All three, mate, so don’t knock over a souvenir stand and come looking for the big-boy payment.]

I would still consider the souvenir stand if it had another toy with insulting wings.

The objective remained unpaid at seventy thousand EXP and six hundred eighty-five IP. Other jobs could appear, but none would reward the same completed action twice.

We followed a public walkway past a maintenance board showing the yard’s layout. Lukas photographed it while I watched two workers test a suspended counterweight above the service lane.

The weight rode inside a steel guide frame. A plate marked twelve tons sat beside a drawing showing its main brake, fixed handwheel and separate emergency release. Two routes operated the release, one cable near the front and a backup lever behind the support column.

A long safety pin held the backup mechanism locked until a worker removed it. I watched the test crew explain the sequence to a new hire, then return the weight to its raised position before securing the pin again.

Lukas studied the drawing and said we should remember that nobody belonged beneath it during a release.

"I could think of one person who might benefit from a practical demonstration."

"Remember it before you turned the idea into a hobby."

Beside the maintenance board, Rex’s lifting demonstration certificate listed a two-ton marked-object limit. I asked Lukas to photograph that too, but treated it as a claim worth checking against what we had seen, not a promise that his fists would obey the same restriction.

The next display showed the transport frame’s removable drive relay and its fixed emergency brake. We followed the actual cables with our eyes, connecting the neat diagram to the ugly equipment before anyone started shooting around it.

Past the displays, a supervisor shouted at a crew beneath the departure frame to hurry. Chains tightened above them, and the largest cage in the yard began moving into position.

Through its slatted side, I saw thick shoulders, a plated skull and raw seams where extra muscle and armored limbs had been grafted into the body. This was no naturally strange animal someone had labeled dangerous for the ticket sales.

A worker under the frame protested that the support inspection wasn’t finished. The supervisor answered that Rex wanted the cage loaded before the next broadcast.

[System: That thing looks like a bulldozer had a regrettable weekend with a butcher’s freezer, mate. Keep your eyes where its eyes might be, because you’ll only need one proper introduction.]

The creature hit the cage wall before I could answer. The whole load swung sideways, one support foot lifted from the ground, and the workers beneath it had nowhere clear to run.