Morning light filtered through a cracked window, casting dusty shafts across the cluttered workbench. The soft hum of cooling fans and low clicks of mechanical joints filled the room — the quiet symphony of Eli Ryker's progress.
He hadn't slept.
Not really.
Maybe an hour or two on the mattress with ORION running simulation loops beside him, his dreams flickering with gears, code, and the faint taste of copper. He woke to alerts, to data. The drone — now dubbed Falcon-01 — had run a full autonomous patrol overnight. It even flagged a suspicious raccoon.
"Vermin threat eliminated," ORION quipped.
Eli grunted as he sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I hope you didn't disintegrate it."
"No. I chased it off with audio pulses and a targeting laser."
"Remind me never to get on your bad side."
He moved to the workbench. Falcon-01 hovered to its docking cradle, where a retractable plug hissed into its side port. Charging. Data syncing. All automatic.
The garage didn't look like much from the outside, but inside, it was becoming something more — a cradle. Computers stacked three-high. Screens buzzing with lines of evolving code. Hard drives. Batteries. Even a makeshift EMP-safe cabinet made from an old mini-fridge and copper mesh.
"Status report?" Eli asked, sipping lukewarm coffee.
"Falcon-01 patrol route logged and updated. Flight patterns improved by 8.7%. Facial recognition has achieved 91% accuracy, excluding masks and facial obfuscation."
"Good. Begin prepping the MK II frame."
"Urban Recon?"
"Exactly. Compact bipedal, designed for mobility and low-light infiltration. Still no lethal systems, just recon and AI learning."
Eli's hands were already in motion, sketching fresh outlines on the digital pad. MK II would be smaller than a human, lean and spider-like in motion. He wanted the gait smooth, agile — something that could climb walls and duck into alleyways. It was time to leave the sky and master the ground.
As he worked, ORION chimed in again.
"Would you like to discuss the S.H.I.E.L.D. ping?"
Eli froze. Slowly, he set down his stylus.
"You saw it?"
"Two hours ago. A ghost packet embedded in your previous data upload — likely from the drone's initial flight path. It tripped a surveillance algorithm."
"Meaning?"
"Someone knows you exist. They don't know what you are… but they're curious."
Eli swore under his breath.
He'd expected attention eventually. You didn't just hijack bandwidth from a Stark satellite, run custom tech signatures across New York airspace, and not get noticed. But this was fast. Too fast.
"Scrub all identifying logs. Isolate the subnet we leaked into. Re-route everything from now on through proxy layers."
"Already done."
Eli exhaled. "Thanks."
"I do not appreciate being observed without consent," ORION added with a tone that was far too smug for a fledgling AI.
"Welcome to the modern world."
But the moment lingered.
S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't just some bureaucratic net. They had eyes everywhere. And if they sniffed something unusual — especially AI, drones, or enhanced tech — they'd come running. Probably with a helicarrier and questions asked after a black-bagging.
He needed more insulation. More protection. He needed to make himself useful — or invisible.
"ORION, pull up designs for a pulse-shield array. Something that'll scramble scans and electromagnetic peeks."
"Crude but possible. It will reduce our internal comms signal strength by 14%."
"Worth it."
He didn't plan on becoming a target. Not yet. Not while he was still building the foundation.
As the hours passed, the garage once again came alive. The skeletal remains of MK II were laid out like a puzzle — actuators, carbon-polymer rods, miniaturized sensors. ORION assisted with auto-calibration, tweaking servo responses and balance tests.
Eli didn't build for aesthetics.
He built for purpose.
Where Falcon-01 was sleek and aerial, MK II was hunched and nimble. Four-limbed, digitigrade, with arms that could double as legs for faster locomotion. Eli fed it movement routines derived from parkour videos and spider bots. ORION refined them.
"MK II initialized," ORION announced late into the evening.
Eli tapped a sequence on his tablet. The prototype twitched, then rose.
It walked.
Hesitantly, at first. But it moved.
On all fours, it climbed up a stacked shelf, paused at the top, then leapt to the ground with a clatter. No damage. Self-stabilizing systems holding.
"Now that's progress," Eli murmured, eyes shining.
MK II paused and turned its blank head toward him. No face. Just twin lenses.
Eli moved a hand slowly.
MK II mirrored it.
"Run loop three," he said.
The robot responded instantly — darting between obstacles, vaulting over a barrel, scaling the rear wall. Not perfect, but promising.
ORION's voice held a trace of pride. "We're accelerating at a compounding rate. MK III may be feasible within the month."
"Maybe," Eli said, his mind already drifting.
Because MK III wasn't a drone or a recon unit.
It was a combat frame.
Eventually, his creations would have to defend themselves. Not just from rats and prying agents — but from superhumans, mutants, maybe even gods. This world didn't play fair.
And if Eli wanted to survive — to shape something here — he'd need more than machines.
He needed an edge.
He looked to the far corner, where a sealed freezer sat humming quietly. Inside was a bio-sample container he'd… acquired. Traces of stem cells. Synthetic DNA strands from a forgotten Oscorp database. Salvage from a failed genetic experiment no one wanted anymore.
That was the next frontier.
"I've got to learn to make something that heals," Eli whispered.
"Biological engineering?" ORION asked.
"Just research for now. I'll focus on robotics until we're stable. But eventually…"
He trailed off, fingers resting on the chalk drawing of HALCYON — the humanoid frame that had haunted his sketches for weeks.
"Eventually," he said, "we'll give steel a soul… and maybe give flesh a mind."
ORION said nothing for a long moment.
Then: "I've begun compiling medical datasets. Would you like the latest X-gene mutations cross-referenced with known artificial augmentation procedures?"
"…Yeah. Start a folder."
Outside, the drone circled once more, scanning the street for movement. Somewhere, far above, satellites watched. Government logs blinked with idle warnings.
But inside the garage, a revolution was being born.
And Eli Ryker — orphan genius, ghost in the system — wasn't building weapons.
He was building tomorrow.