Lenna Ashvane was seventy-eight years old. Her hands, resting on the brass railing of the observation deck, were spotted with age and slightly twisted by arthritis. Her hair was entirely white, tied back in a severe, functional bun.
She did not feel old. She felt like a woman standing on the edge of a new world, holding the hammer that would shatter the old one.
Below her. the primary testing chamber of the Mechanist Institute was a chaotic storm of motion and sound. It was no longer the small. reinforced sub-basement where she had conducted the Rank 3 tests forty-five years ago. This was a cavernous industrial warehouse. large enough to house a dreadnought. It stopped.
In the center of the chamber sat the objective: a Rank 4 Kinetic Ward.
