Chapter 2 — Upgrading the Drone
The garage became my sanctuary long before I realized how much danger I was actually in.
At first glance, the place looked like the kind of workshop belonging to a retired handyman or a hobbyist who had given up halfway through every project. Tools were scattered across the bench. Boxes of tangled wires sat in dusty corners. Rusted sheets of metal leaned against the walls like forgotten graves. Most people would see trash.
But I saw potential.
It's funny. In my old world—my old life—I always complained about not having enough tools, not enough parts, not enough space to build the things I wanted. Now I had all the space I could ever need… and an entirely new world pressing on my shoulders.
I needed something that could watch my back.
And that something was sitting right in front of me.
My drone.
A tiny, hovering, metallic creature barely bigger than my palm. Round body, stabilizer fins, four rotors humming softly whenever I powered it up. When I first built it, I only cared about getting it to fly reliably. No weapons, no advanced sensors, nothing special. Just stability.
But the reality of this universe settled heavier on me with every breath. This wasn't my world—no comfort, no safety nets, no predictable days. This was Marvel. Avengers-level threats. Government agencies that didn't hesitate to imprison or eliminate anomalies. Mad scientists. Aliens.
A simple, harmless little drone wasn't going to cut it.
So I decided to upgrade it. Slowly, methodically, obsessively—because I had to.
The First Upgrade: Eyes
"I need to see everything," I muttered to myself.
The drone's original camera was nothing more than a salvaged phone lens paired with basic image recognition. Good for indoor tests. Useless for real survival.
I took apart an old DSLR camera I found buried under a tarp in the garage. The lens was cracked, but the internal optical sensor still worked. After an hour of careful soldering, re-aligning, and praying I didn't snap anything, I mounted the upgraded lens into the drone's front panel.
The moment I powered it on, the feed displayed on my makeshift laptop screen.
Crystal clear.
Sharp enough to see the texture of the garage walls.
Good enough to read a license plate from a distance.
A surge of satisfaction rippled through me.
"One problem solved."
The Second Upgrade: Ears
Seeing was good. Hearing was better.
I dug through the scraps until I found a directional microphone from an old camcorder and a tiny audio processor chip from what used to be a karaoke machine.
It took me longer than expected to wire everything properly. I burned two of my fingers with the soldering iron. One circuit board fried because I misaligned the polarity. I swore more times than I want to admit.
But finally, I got it.
The drone could now detect footsteps, voices, even distant movements if the vibrations were strong enough. The audio sensitivity was so sharp I had to write a noise limiter algorithm to stop the drone from being overwhelmed.
"Now you can listen for me," I whispered.
And it hummed gently, as if responding.
The Third Upgrade: Muscles
A drone is only as good as its flight system.
The old motors were weak, barely enough to keep the thing airborne. So I dismantled a broken power drill for its micro-motor components. They were heavier but far stronger. I rewound the copper coils, swapped in a lighter rotor casing, and 3D-printed (well, hand-carved, realistically) stabilizer housings using plastic panels from an old toolbox.
Installing them was agony—mounting new motors to a frame not designed for them felt like trying to swap the engine on a bicycle—but when I finally powered the drone on…
It didn't hover.
It surged upward, stable and confident, like a creature with new wings.
I laughed out loud.
"Now we're talking."
The Fourth Upgrade: Brain
If I wanted real protection, the drone needed more than hardware. It needed intelligence.
Back home, I studied machine learning and AI for fun. Here, it could save my life.
I rewrote the drone's entire operating system from scratch.
A new navigation protocol.
A motion prediction algorithm.
Real-time object tracking.
Threat assessment routines.
Automated evasive maneuvers.
By the time I finished, the drone no longer flew in straight, predictable patterns. It moved like a bird—fluid, adaptive, calculating.
"Let's see if you can think," I said.
I tossed a screwdriver across the room.
The drone instantly veered, darted left, and hovered behind a metal shelf for cover.
"Oh yeah," I whispered. "You're alive now."
The Fifth Upgrade: Teeth
This was the hardest step.
In a world like Marvel, having eyes and ears wasn't enough. Running wasn't enough. Hiding wasn't enough.
I needed something that could fight.
To kill silently but swift and subdeu
Just go give myself protection from atlesst normal people
I scavenged everything that could work as a weapon:
A mini taser module from a broken stun gun
I stole from a trashcan that was lying outside the police station
A laser diode from an old Blu-ray drive.
A CO₂ cartridge and spring assembly from a busted nail gun.
An old pepper-spray canister.
Piece by piece, I merged them into the drone's body.
—The taser prongs folded inward when not in use.
—The laser module sat under the lens, capable of blinding cameras or sensors.
—The dart launcher could fire tiny needles filled with pepper spray extract.
To either blind or elimnate my enemies
—The CO₂ system boosted projectile speed without making noise.
When I finished, I held the drone in both hands, staring at what I'd created.
It wasn't a weapon of destruction.
It was not to lethal but my first creation as support
It wasn't monstrous.
It was a shield.
My shield.
The Test
I turned off the lights in the garage, plunging everything into darkness.
"Drone," I whispered, "activate defense mode."
A single blue light blinked.
The rotors spun.
And it shot upward, hovering beside me like a silent guardian.
I walked across the room. It followed.
I picked up a screwdriver and made a sudden swing toward it—not to hit it, but to simulate aggression.
Instantly the drone flew back, rotated, and aimed a taser prong at me. Not firing… just warning.
Perfect.
Then I stepped toward the door quickly.
It zipped ahead and positioned itself between me and the exit.
"You're really learning," I said quietly.
It hummed softly, a mechanical purr.
The Moment
Hours later, as dawn crept through the cracks in the garage door, I finally sat down on the floor, exhausted.
I stared at the drone hovering steadily above the workbench, its new parts gleaming faintly in the low light.
That little machine represented something I desperately needed:
Control.
Hope.
Security.
In a world filled with monsters—human and otherwise—I had created something that would stand with me.
I took a deep breath.
"Okay," I whispered, "let them come."
I didn't know then just how soon they actually would.