Saturday. Six a.m.
Ryan was already in the workshop, running his hands along Scrapper's ankle joint in the gray pre-dawn light, checking cable tension by feel. He'd been up since four-thirty, unable to sleep, running through the sequence in his head — power up, climb, link, move — like a musician rehearsing a setlist before the biggest show of his life.
Chloe arrived at seven with two bags of equipment and a gas station coffee that she clutched like a weapon.
"You look terrible," she said.
"Thanks."
"I mean it. There are bags under your eyes that have bags. Did you sleep at all?"
"Enough."
She didn't push it. She unpacked her gear and started setting up — main camera on the tripod at a forty-five-degree upward angle facing Scrapper's front, giving the widest possible frame. A backup camera on a smaller rig near the workshop door for the wide shot. Wireless lavalier mic for Ryan.
"Audio check," she said. "Say something."
"Something."
"Hilarious. You're wasted in engineering."
Ward and Hartley showed up at eight, earlier than Ryan expected. They'd traded yesterday's casual clothes for something closer to business casual — Ward in a button-down with the sleeves rolled, Hartley in a polo — as if they'd independently decided that today might turn out to be important and dressed accordingly. Tom shook their hands at the door. Lisa offered coffee. They accepted.
The four adults positioned themselves along the back wall, out of the way but with a clear sightline to Scrapper. Ward had a small notebook. Hartley had nothing except the expression of a man who hadn't entirely decided whether he was here as a scientist or a spectator.
At eleven, the media arrived.
Chloe met them at the workshop door, clipboard in hand, checking names against a list she'd spent two days assembling. Twenty-three people in total — freelance journalists, bloggers with six-figure followings, camera crews from two local TV stations, a reporter from a tech outlet Ryan actually read, and one guy who claimed to represent a podcast with "a very engaged niche audience" and turned out to have four hundred subscribers.
Chloe let them all in. She'd negotiated the same deal with every single one of them: you can film, you can stream, you can set up wherever you find space. One condition. Your stream title includes the words "Ryan Mercer" and "Scrapper."
No exceptions.
Some of them had grumbled about editorial independence. Chloe had smiled and reminded them that editorial independence was something they could exercise from the comfort of their own homes, without access to the only functioning mech on Earth.
They agreed.
The workshop filled up fast. Camera crews jockeyed for position, staking out angles around Scrapper's perimeter like surveyors mapping a monument. Within minutes there were over a dozen camera setups ringing the mech — front, sides, rear, low angles, high angles. One crew had brought a stepladder. Another had a drone, which Ryan immediately vetoed.
"No drones inside. The ceiling's fifty feet and Scrapper's head is at forty. You'll crash it into the mech or the rafters, and either way I'm not paying for it."
The drone went back in its case.
Through the various livestream feeds, Scrapper was now visible from nearly every angle simultaneously. Chloe had her main camera on the money shot — Scrapper's full front, tilted up, the kind of angle that made you feel like you were standing at the base of a skyscraper and looking up.
The reporters began their intros. Each one stood in front of their camera with Scrapper looming behind them, framed to maximize the visual impact, and delivered some version of the same opening:
"Good morning, everyone. We're live from Crestfield, Texas, where fourteen-year-old Ryan Mercer is about to attempt a live demonstration of his homemade mech, Scrapper..."
"Behind me is the machine that's been at the center of one of the biggest viral debates of the year..."
"In just a few minutes, we'll find out once and for all whether Ryan Mercer's Scrapper is the real deal or the most elaborate hoax in internet history..."
Ryan tuned them out. He was running through the checklist one more time. Generator fuel — full. Cable connections — seated. Cockpit systems — standby. Diagnostic — he'd run it at five a.m., all green, no new flags since yesterday's report. The neural link had ten uses left.
After today, nine.
One of the sharper reporters spotted Ward and Hartley standing against the back wall and made a beeline for them, camera crew in tow. Ryan intercepted her three steps short.
"They're not part of the show."
"Professor Ward is from MIT's materials science department. That's a story."
"It's a story you can chase after the demonstration. Right now, they're here as private observers."
The reporter weighed her options, decided Ryan wasn't bluffing, and retreated.
Ward caught Ryan's eye from across the workshop and gave a small nod. Thanks.
Ryan nodded back. Then he turned to Chloe.
"We're good?"
She looked up from her camera's viewfinder. Her face had changed — the joking, drumstick-obsessed teenager was gone, replaced by something focused and steady. This was the version of Chloe who'd been shooting and editing video content for two years and knew exactly how a moment like this was supposed to be captured.
"We're good. Chat's going crazy already. You've got—" she checked her phone, "—about two million concurrent viewers across all platforms. And that's just on our stream. The media feeds are pulling their own numbers."
Two million people watching. All of them about to see him either prove the skeptics wrong or humiliate himself on a global stage.
Ryan rolled his shoulders. Cracked his knuckles.
"Let's go."
Four hundred miles away, in a cramped dorm room at Texas A&M, Danny Price was sitting on the edge of his bed with his laptop balanced on a stack of textbooks, three browser tabs open to three different livestream feeds.
He'd been ready since eleven. Alarm set, snacks staged, roommate warned not to interrupt. Marcus had taken one look at Danny's setup and decided to spend the afternoon at the library, which was the most considerate thing Marcus had done all semester.
Danny had Chloe's main feed in the primary tab — the front-facing angle, Scrapper's full frame filling the screen, indicator lights dark, the mech standing silent and waiting. The second tab showed a side-angle feed from one of the TV crews, good for catching details the main camera might miss. The third was a tech blogger's stream with running commentary that Danny mostly ignored but occasionally found useful.
The chat on Chloe's feed was moving so fast it was unreadable. Danny turned it off. He didn't need other people's opinions right now. He needed to see.
He'd believed from the start. Not because he had evidence — because the video felt real in a way he couldn't articulate and didn't try to. The weight. The dust. The way the concrete cracked. You could fake visuals, but you couldn't fake physics.
Today would prove him right or make him an idiot. Either way, he was watching.
Back in the workshop, the reporters had gone quiet. Twenty-three cameras tracked Ryan as he walked to the generator, lifted the power cable onto his shoulder, and carried it to Scrapper's ankle coupling.
The cable connected with a heavy, satisfying chunk that the lavalier mic picked up clean.
Ryan hit the generator.
The diesel engine roared to life, filling the workshop with its deep, mechanical pulse. The sound bounced off the sheet metal walls and came back doubled, tripled, until the air itself seemed to vibrate.
Indicator lights began cascading up Scrapper's frame. Green, amber, red — hundreds of them, tracing the major systems as they came online. The lights climbed from the ankles to the knees to the hips to the torso, each new row illuminating with a faint electronic tick that was barely audible under the generator's rumble.
By the time the lights reached Scrapper's head, the entire mech was glowing. A vertical constellation in the dim workshop. Alive.
"Oh man," one of the reporters breathed, off-mic but not off-camera.
Ryan looked up at the cockpit. Thirty feet of ladder. The crowd behind him, the cameras, the millions of screens — all of it compressed into this single moment.
He grabbed the first rung and started climbing.