Raven followed Kenneth deeper into the showroom, each step echoing off the polished tile floor as they entered the space beyond the lobby. Rows of polished equipment and electronic gadgets lined the walls. Industrial-grade floodlights bathed everything in a clean, artificial light.
Kenneth gestured proudly toward a line of sleek black panels mounted on test rigs. "These," he said, resting his hand on the nearest one, "are next-gen solar panels. Self-adjusting, low-profile, and they charge in anything. Snow. Cloud cover. Hell, even moonlight if you're patient enough. "
Raven examined the smooth surface without comment. She wasn't impressed. Solar tech had been plateauing before the fall, and Kenneth—ever the salesman—was clearly repackaging decade-old upgrades as game-changing revelations.
"It's the batteries that matter more," he said, moving to a stack of metal canisters with reinforced edges and warning labels etched into their surfaces. "These aren't even legal, technically. Way too much charge density for consumer grade. But your father doesn't mind things that stray outside the lines, Does he?"
He gave her a casual smirk as he tapped the edge of one canister. It gave off a subtle hum. Raven stared at it, silent, as the scent of ozone prickling her nose.
She kept her face carefully neutral. But inside, something old and raw was bubbling. She remembered how her father had traded with Kenneth and his crew—guns, drugs, and worse—for protection. In her last life, that protection had come at a cost. Her. Raven had been the bargaining chip. The teenage daughter offered up like a pack of bullets. Traded to monsters for a few weeks of safety.
She watched Kenneth's mouth move as he bragged about lithium batteries and the blackout resilience of his solar panels, but her mind was elsewhere.
He led her down another aisle, arriving at a glass case framing a large, heavy-looking device lined with steel fins and reinforced piping. A miniature hydroelectric generator, compact and self-contained.
"This is my crown jewel Raven." Kenneth said. "Run this hydroelectric generator in a stream, sewer outflow, even an underground spring and this thing can power a fortress. There are no moving parts inside besides the turbine. Industrial strength. It'll outlast us."
Raven crossed her arms and leaned in slightly. "Could it be converted to run off geothermal?"
Kenneth chuckled. "Sure, if you rip it apart and rebuild it. You'd need heat-conductive alloys, an exchanger coil, and a pit deep enough to touch the planet's blood. Sounds like a fantasy to me."
She didn't reply. She didn't need to. Even at Level 1, her Technomancer abilities—combined with the haul she'd ripped from Grand Theft Autonomous—made it laughably doable. She didn't need his approval. She needed his inventory. And maybe, if he did not play dumb long enough, his corpse.
Her eyes scanned the generator again. She filed away its dimensions, power output ports, and modular housing. She could repurpose the frame, replace the turbine with a geothermal loop. The pieces were falling into place.
But her real prize wasn't in this showroom. It was still waiting. NYU.
The university's R&D division was a goldmine of materials she needed. Cutting-edge engineering equipment. Advanced chemistry labs. Medical storage vaults full of high-tier reagents and plant-growth accelerants. And most importantly—research-grade compounds she could splice into her crops.
With her plant powers, those compounds wouldn't just grow herbs. They'd grow weapons. Roots that released neurotoxins. Vines that constricted and injected paralytics. Blossoms that doubled as gas traps. She would turn botany into brutality.
She imagined a greenhouse full of writhing defensive plants—guardians bred from pain, chemistry, and purpose. Flowers that spread poison and snapped bones.
Raven blinked, returning to the present as Kenneth led her past crates of generator parts and stacked coils of copper wiring. A separate section featured skeletal fan blades and hollowed-out turbine cores.
"Wind power," Kenneth said. "If you've got elevation and patience. The raw materials are all here. Just don't expect it to spin without wind."
Raven tilted her head at one of the blades. Long. Sharpened. Balanced. They reminded her less of turbines and more of scythes. She imagined bolting a row of them to the front of a semi truck, gunning it through a horde of Walkers zombies.
The result Zombie confetti.
Now that's apocalypse fashion.
Kenneth kept walking, but Raven caught the flicker in his eyes as he glanced back at her. Something calculating in his eyes made her suspect he was about to give her a reason to kill him.
"You know," he said, pausing near a crate of sealed solar panel cases, "your dad mentioned something funny yesterday. Said someone raided his private arms cache. The one in the old subway depot."
Raven said nothing.
Kenneth's smile sharpened. "Cleaned it out. All of it. Nothing left but dust. No alarm. No trail."
He stepped closer. "Now hearing that I don't normally believe in ghosts. But I do believe in disgruntled family members. Especially ones with access to your father's toys"
Her pulse didn't change. Her breathing didn't hitch. But she watched him more carefully now.
"So I thought, who could do it? Who would even know how? Your old man's not exactly careful with secrets. And there's only one girl he used to trust with his accounts, his inventory lists, his drop codes."
He smiled wider, lips spreading slow and deliberate. "Someone who's vanished for the last few days. Someone who came back... different more confident as if she is armed to the teeth."
Raven stared at him, blank as stone.
Kenneth leaned in, voice low. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
His words weren't a question. They were a trap.
He was sure he had her cornered.
She didn't flinch.
She just smiled as Raven thought got you!
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