Three weeks in the Badlands was enough to teach me two things: sand gets into absolutely every crevice of a mechanical joint, and modern Night City firearms felt like cheap plastic toys.
Since I wasn't sleeping, I spent my nights in the back of Dakota's scrap yard. Using stripped corporation tech, a heavy-duty plasma cutter, and the geometric blueprints permanently burned into my Exo memory, I started building real guns. Destiny guns.
I stood at the makeshift firing range on the edge of the camp, holding my newly finished primary: a massive, matte-black Hand Cannon styled roughly after a Duke Mk. 44, chambered in heavily modified .50 caliber explosive slugs.
I leveled it at a rusted car door fifty yards away and pulled the heavy trigger.
BOOM.
The recoil would have cleanly snapped a baseline human's wrist, but my pneumatic servos just absorbed the kick with a satisfying hiss. Downrange, the car door didn't just get a hole punched through it; the entire center mass caved in and tore completely off the hinges.
"Holy shit," a voice muttered behind me.
I dropped the cylinder, letting the smoking brass hit the dirt, and glanced over my shoulder. A crowd had formed. Mitch Anderson, the two kids from my first day, and about half a dozen other Aldecaldos were staring wide-eyed at the smoking crater of a target.
I holstered the Hand Cannon on my hip and picked up the rest of my loadout from the workbench: a pump-action Shotgun with a reinforced, extended barrel meant to mimic an aggressive frame, and a heavy Auto Rifle built from the cannibalized guts of three different Militech assault rifles, optimized for zero-spread sustained fire.
"You built those out of the scrap heap?" Mitch asked, stepping forward, his eyes glued to the Auto Rifle. "Sparks... I've never heard a gun sound like that. The kinetic force alone..."
"They require a specific structural density to fire without breaking," I warned, slapping the heavy stock of the shotgun. "But yeah. I like my guns to actually stop what I'm shooting at."
"Think you could build me one?" the younger kid asked eagerly.
"Hey, I asked first!" another Nomad argued, stepping up. Suddenly, a chorus of voices broke out, half the camp trying to place orders for custom ordinance.
"Line starts behind me, boys," a raspy, authoritative voice cut through the chatter.
The crowd immediately parted as Dakota walked up to the workbench. She picked up my Hand Cannon, grunting slightly at the sheer weight of the dense metal, and looked down the iron sights.
"I'm the boss, I get first pick," she declared, handing it back to me. "I want something small. A holdout piece for when I'm working the shop, but with enough stopping power to put a Maelstromer on his ass. And a rifle. Something precise."
I smiled, my optical shutters narrowing in amusement. "A Sidearm and a Scout Rifle. I can do that. Just keep the Panzer charger working."
Two days later, I finally got to test my new loadout in the field.
I was sitting in the passenger seat of the Thornton Galena, bouncing over the cracked, sun-baked asphalt of Route 101. Mitch was behind the wheel. We were the lead car in a three-vehicle convoy hauling stolen Militech optics down from a derelict storage facility.
I stared down at my heavy, armored palm, trying to focus. I pulled from the deep, empty well in my chest, visualizing the chaotic, crackling storm of Arc energy.
A single, pathetic blue spark popped against my index finger. Immediately, my internal temperature spiked, and a blaring red warning klaxon flashed across my optical HUD.
"Cut it out, Cain!" Echo's voice snapped in my head, laced with genuine panic. "I mean it, shut the conduit down right now!"
I closed my fist, severing the connection, and let out a long, synthesized sigh. I'm just testing the limits, Echo. I hate being tethered to Dakota's garage every night.
"Your 'testing' is going to get us both vaporized," my Ghost scolded, his voice tight. "Listen to me. When you reached out and tore a hole in the space-time continuum of the Vault of Glass, something in your internal Light core snapped. You used your own soul as a paracausal crowbar. The conduit didn't just drain; it fractured."
So I'm broken.
"No, you're mutating," Echo corrected, his tone shifting into that of a fascinated cryptarch. "Without the Traveler's background radiation to govern it, your core is trying to stitch itself back together into a closed-loop system. It's generating its own paracausal friction. Once it stabilizes, you'll be a self-sustaining battery. You'll never need a charger again, and your Light will be entirely your own."
And until it stabilizes? I asked.
"Until it stabilizes, pulling too much Light at once will cause a cascading ontological chain reaction. Best case scenario, it shorts out your Exo chassis and we die. Worst case scenario, the resulting explosion cracks the planet's crust in half and vaporizes the continent. It's a 50/50 chance. So please, for the love of the Traveler, do not try to throw a Nova Bomb."
Good to know, I thought grimly, resting my hand on the grip of my custom Hand Cannon.
"You good over there, Sparks?" Mitch asked, glancing over at me. "Your optics are flashing red."
"Just running diagnostics," I replied, my vocal synthesizer rumbling. "Everything is green. How far to the drop?"
"Bout ten miles," Mitch said, shifting gears. "Just gotta get past the old wind farms and—"
A deafening CRACK shattered the night air.
Before I could process the sound, the Galena's front left tire violently exploded. The heavy car lurched hard, spinning out and slamming into a rusted guardrail in a cloud of blinding dust.
Behind us, the comms radio on the dash flared to life. "Ambush! Shiv! They've got the road spiked!"
I kicked my door open, my heavy boots crunching onto the asphalt. Through the swirling dust, the blinding high-beams of four armored buggies flipped on. Raffen Shiv. The Wraiths.
"Contact!" Mitch yelled, popping out with his Ajax rifle, laying down suppressive fire.
Bullets pinged and sparked off the Galena's frame. I tracked the muzzle flashes through the dust. A heavy-caliber sniper round slammed directly into my chest plate. The impact was like getting kicked by a mule, but the Clovis Bray titanium-alloy barely dented.
I looked down at the fresh tear in my borrowed leather duster. They ruined my coat.
I drew my Hand Cannon, stepped out from cover, and fired. The explosive .50 cal slug crossed the distance instantly, slamming into the engine block of the nearest buggy. It detonated in a brilliant ball of orange fire, flipping the vehicle end-over-end.
"Cain, incoming on your left! Heavy ordinance!" Echo warned.
A massive Wraith, heavily chromed, was spooling up a heavy machine gun. At this range, armor-piercing rounds would actually do internal damage.
Instinct took over. I reached into my chest, grabbed a microscopic fraction of the unstable Void energy pooling in my fractured core, and channeled it strictly into my legs. I didn't manifest it as a weapon. I just used it to move.
The world blurred. I closed the forty-foot gap in less than half a second, the asphalt shattering beneath my boots from the sheer kinetic force of a Blink-assisted sprint.
I materialized directly in front of the heavy gunner. His cyber-optics widened in sheer terror.
Before he could pull the trigger, I drove my fist forward, punching straight through his chest plating and out the back of his tactical vest. I ripped my hand free, letting his lifeless body drop.
My internal temperature gauges were screaming.
"Stop! Stop using it!" Echo yelled. "You're at 89% critical mass! Do you want to take out Northern California?!"
I'm fine, cutting it off, I grunted, forcing the Light back down and venting a massive cloud of steam from my shoulder exhaust ports.
I looked around the canyon. The remaining Wraiths, having just watched a giant metallic man tank sniper fire, blow up a buggy with a handgun, and physically punch a hole through their heaviest hitter in the blink of an eye, whipped their buggies around and fled into the dark desert.
The canyon fell dead silent, save for the hiss of my venting heat sinks.
Mitch lowered his rifle, looking at the man with a hole in his chest, and finally at me.
"Jesus Christ, Cain," Mitch breathed, terrified. "What the hell are you?"
I smoothly twirled the Hand Cannon and slammed it back into its holster.
"Just a mechanic," I replied. "Let's change that tire. We have a schedule to keep."