CHAPTER 42: CHAPTER 42

The three thousand dollars that Judge Hemlock had given him was only a temporary solution. While it was enough to pay the rent for his workshop and buy groceries for another week, but Ace could already see it running out. He felt a constant, low-level anxiety that never went away; it was like a quiet buzzing in the back of his head that he was beginning to accept as a normal part of his life. To make matters worse, the System remained completely silent, offering him no new tasks or easy ways out. It simply existed in the background like a silent guard, waiting for him to make a mistake.

The money from Ramos’s jobs was tainted, as if it were a leash around his neck keeping him under control. Meanwhile, the money he made from Aegis’s clients felt dirty in another way, making him feel like his entire life was built on the foundation of other people’s corruption. He knew he needed to find a different source of income—something that was truly and purely his own.

Ace stood alone in the middle of the large, empty storage unit, Unit B-17. The only sounds were the faint echoes of his own movements in the vast space, which smelled lightly of dust and dry concrete. The room was barely furnished, holding only a single unsteady workbench, Evelyn’s laptop glowing with a cool blue light, and a weak ceiling bulb that struggled to push back the shadows. The hollow silence felt heavy and unusually quiet without the familiar presence of Silva and his nervous energy. The bartender had returned to his own place, attempting to wash away the memory of the encounter with Deke’s thugs, and Ace was glad he was gone. This was a problem he needed to solve by himself.

His fingers still tingled with the recent memory of the nanites repairing the broken radio connection. He could feel their power humming just beneath his skin like a silent, invisible force waiting to be directed. However, he wondered what good such a powerful repair tool was if he had nothing to use it on. To put it to work, he realized he needed to find raw materials; he needed to find junk.

An hour later, Ace returned from searching the back alleys behind the auto repair shops, his backpack now much heavier. He had found a few discarded items in a rusty dumpster: a cassette player with a chewed-up tape hanging out, a cordless phone with a cracked base, and a small portable TV with a dark, blank screen. He dumped them all onto the workbench, where they landed with a series of dull thuds.

Evelyn looked up from her screen and raised an eyebrow. "Where did you go? On a treasure hunt?" she asked, her voice dry with sarcasm.

"Product testing," Ace replied, his voice tight with concentration.

He picked up the portable TV first. It was surprisingly light, and its plastic casing was covered in a fine layer of grime and grease. After finding the frayed yellow power cord, he plugged it into the wall outlet. Nothing happened. There was no hum, no flicker, and no sign of life—the television was completely dead.

He closed his eyes and turned his focus inward. This experience was nothing like using the Neural-Interface, which caused a sharp pain and displayed sterile blue text. Instead, this felt different—softer, but also harder to grasp. He concentrated on recapturing the sensation he had felt earlier, that feeling of a million tiny points of energy just waiting for his command.

He imagined that energy flowing from his core, down his arm, and into his fingertips. A faint warmth began to spread through his palm where it rested on the TV’s plastic shell.

He poured all of his will into one simple thought: he wanted it to be fixed. He just wanted to make it work.

The warmth in his hand grew stronger, turning into a low, buzzing heat. He could sense something happening inside the device, a microscopic activity he couldn’t see but could feel. It was like listening to a hive of bees working busily behind a wall. A faint smell of ozone and hot plastic filled the air around him, and he wondered if a capacitor was discharging or a circuit was somehow repairing itself.

He heard a tiny pop, followed by a low, steady hum. The dark screen flickered weakly as static snow danced across the glass, accompanied by a harsh hissing sound. Then, an image reluctantly swam into focus, revealing a brightly colored morning news show where the hosts’ smiles looked garish and surreal.

A wild, surprised laugh escaped him. It had actually worked.

But the buzzing warmth in his hand did not fade. Even though they had completed their primary command, the nanites now seemed restless and unsatisfied. Their programming had been vague to fix it and make it better and they were not yet finished.

The dull, grey plastic casing of the TV began to change. The scratches and scuffs smoothed away as if being polished by a thousand invisible hands. The color itself lightened, shifting from the grimy grey to a bright, almost reflective silver. The change spread like a slow wave, consuming the entire device. The plastic buttons, the tuning dials, the speaker grill—everything was being polished, refined and over-polished.

In less than a minute, the transformation was complete. Ace was holding a small, blindingly shiny chrome brick. It was so mirror-like he could see his own wide-eyed, stunned face looking back at him from its surface. The morning news show continued to play, the cheerful, mundane voices sounding absurd coming from the bizarre, glittering object.

He stared at it. While the tv was technically fixed, But it was also... completely ridiculous. Who would want a television that looked like it belonged in a cheap disco from thirty years ago?

Evelyn looked up from her laptop, raising an eyebrow. "What in the world is that supposed to be?" she asked.

"It was a TV," Ace said, his voice faint with disbelief.

"Was being the important word," she said, a dry, amused note in her voice. "Now it looks like a toaster that had a very aggressive midlife crisis. What did you do to it?"

"I just fixed it," Ace said, but the lie felt clumsy as he said it. He gestured vaguely at the tools scattered on the bench, like a screwdriver and some wire clippers, even though they were completely useless for what he had actually done. "I must have polished it by accident with the cleaner I was using. I guess I got carried away." He couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes and instead stared at the object’s bizarre, reflective surface.

For the next hour, Ace continued his experiments, focusing on controlling the nanites with more precision. The cassette player proved to be an easier task. He concentrated on sending one single, clear command: to fix the broken belt that moves the tape. The nanites responded exactly as he hoped. He felt the familiar warmth spread through the device, focused solely on that one task, and then it faded away. To test it, he found a dusty old rock-and-roll tape, put it in, and pressed play. After a brief second of silence, the gritty sound of guitars filled the workshop. It was a clean and perfect repair, which felt like a small victory.

The cordless phone was a partial success. He managed to get the base unit to power on, its lights blinking obediently. But when he tried to fix the handset, his concentration wavered. The nanites sensed a problem but, without a specific instruction, decided to improve the broken antenna instead. They fused it into a single, sleek, and utterly useless silver spike.

He now had a small collection: one perfectly fixed cassette player, one half-fixed phone with what looked like a weaponized antenna, and one deeply confused-looking television.

"It’s something," Evelyn said, coming over to inspect the haul. She picked up the chrome TV, watching her own reflection warping comically on its surface. "You might get a few bucks for the crazy one at a pawn shop. The cassette player... does anyone even buy those anymore?"

"Someone might," Ace said, clinging to a flicker of hope. "May be for nostalgia or a collector could want it." It was a thin hope, but it was the only one he had. He gathered all three items into his worn backpack.

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The pawn shop was called "Cash for Trash." It was a small, messy place that felt like a cave. The air smelled like dust, old metal, and disappointment. The shop was full of items that represented people’s bad choices. There were broken guitars, video game systems without their power cords, and rings with fake gems sitting dusty in their cases.

The shop’s owner was a large man named Gary. He wore a greasy apron and had the tired eyes of someone who had heard too many sad stories. He looked at the things Ace was trying to sell with deep doubt.

Gary picked up the old cassette player first. "The Walkman isn’t too bad," he grunted as he pressed its buttons. The tape inside spun smoothly. "I can give you twenty dollars for it."

Ace felt his heart drop. He had worked hard to get that money, and he was sure the player was worth more than just twenty dollars.

Next, Gary looked at the cordless phone. He plugged the base into an outlet, and a small light turned on. "Well, the base unit works," he said. "But the handset is useless, especially with this... thing attached." He flicked the solid silver spike that had once been the antenna. "My best offer for the Walkman, is ten dollars."

Finally, Gary picked up the small television Ace had covered in chrome. He turned it over in his large hands with a deep frown. "What in the world did you do to this?" he asked. "Did you dip it in liquid metal?"

Ace tried to sound confident. "It’s a retro modification," he said, though the lie sounded weak even to him.

"It looks stupid," Gary stated flatly. But something made him plug it into a wall socket anyway. The news program was still playing, the reporters’ faces reflecting absurdly on the shiny, mirrored screen. Gary stared at it for a long minute, his expression unreadable. Then, to Ace’s utter shock, the man let out a short, loud laugh.

"This is the ugliest damn thing I’ve ever seen," he chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. "It’s so bad it’s almost good. I kinda love it. You’d be surprised what weird things people will buy. Tourists will buy anything shiny. Alright, I will give you forty dollars for the TV."

Ace was stunned. Seventy dollars total. It was not the two thousand dollars he needed. It was not even a small part of the money required to solve his problems. But it was money he had earned by himself, using his own strange skill. He had gotten it without threatening anyone or betraying a desperate man. For the first time in weeks, the money in his hand felt clean and honest.

"Deal," Ace said, perhaps a little too quickly.

Gary counted out the cash—a few crumpled twenty-dollar bills and a ten. It was real money. As Ace turned to leave, the bell on the door jingled behind him, and Gary called out.

"Hey, kid. If you come across any more weird junk like this, bring it by. It’s ugly as sin, but it makes for a good conversation piece. I can’t promise I’ll always buy it, but I’ll always take a look."

Ace walked out of the pawn shop with seventy dollars in his pocket. Even though it was a small amount, it felt heavier and more significant than the three thousand dollars Hemlock had offered him.

Back in the empty, echoing silence of their workshop, Unit B-17, he dropped the small stack of bills onto the workbench next to Evelyn’s laptop.

"Seventy bucks," he said simply.

Evelyn looked from the money to Ace’s face, reading the mix of pride and frustration there. She didn’t make a joke and instead gave a slow, single nod of acknowledgment. "It’s a start," she said, echoing his own thoughts. "We can buy a better lamp with that. This one is practically useless."

Ace looked up at the weak, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Its light was barely strong enough to push back the shadows of the workshop. He felt the nanites stir under his skin, feeling restless and eager with an impulse to fix it and make it better.

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and took a deliberate step away from the lamp. He knew he needed to learn control—not just how to turn the power on, but how to aim it, and most importantly, how to make it stop.

The workshop was quiet. The System was silent, and Ramos’s phone was silent too. For a single, fleeting moment, there was just the faint hum of Evelyn’s laptop and the dust motes dancing in the weak light beside the seventy dollars on the bench.

It wasn’t much, but it was his.