Server 9-Chapter 40: THE KINGDOM OF SCRAP

We left the Chapel at dawn. Or what passed for dawn in the Undercity — the yellow bulbs in the ceiling switched from dim to slightly less dim.

Father John gave us supplies. Not much — bandages, water filters, two pistols, a bag of protein bars that tasted like soggy cardboard. But he also gave us something better.

"Take the freight tunnel," he said, standing in the Chapel doorway. His mechanical arm rested on the frame, and his fingers clicked quietly. "It’s runs straight from Sector 7 to the Rust Sea. Corp sealed it off years ago, but Jax cut through the locks last month."

"Why?" I asked.

Father John smiled. It was a complicated smile — the kind that belonged to a man who’d been planning things long before I’d stumbled into his church covered in blood. "Because I had a feeling someone would need it soon."

Jax was leaning against Tiny, chewing gum. The massive junk robot stood perfectly still behind her — a gorilla made of tractor parts and welded scrap, gentle as a dog despite being big enough to crush a car.

"I’m coming with you," Jax said. Not a question. She popped a bubble with her gum and pushed herself off Tiny’s leg. "Sector 0 is Feral territory. You need someone who knows the scrap trails."

"You’ve been to the Rust Sea?" I asked.

"Grew up on the edge of it." She pulled her massive revolver from her jacket — the same one she’d used to save my life the first time we met, back when I was just a janitor carrying a dying woman through the Undercity. "The Ferals don’t bother me. And tiny speaks their language."

Tiny rumbled. It sounded like agreement.

"Fine," I said. "Lead the way."

The freight tunnel was three hours of dark walking. No lights. No sound except our boots and the drip of water somewhere ahead. Glitch kept his datapad open and on for the glow. Sarah walked in silence, with her hand on the wall, saving energy with every step.

Maya walked beside me. She didn’t talk. But she stayed close — close enough that if I stumbled, she could catch me. She’d been doing that since the Sky-Prison. Not babying me. Just... present. Like a wall you don’t notice until you need to lean on it.

Jax and Tiny took point. The big robot’s footsteps echoed through the tunnel like a slow drumbeat. Every few minutes, Tiny would stop and tilt its head — listening for something we couldn’t hear. Then it would rumble and keep going.

"What’s he listening for?" I asked Jax.

"Ferals," Jax said. "Wild ones. The dumb ones that didn’t follow you. They still roam the edges. Tiny tells them we’re friendly."

"How?"

Jax shrugged. "Robot stuff. Don’t ask me. I just point and shoot."

After three hours, the tunnel ended at a rusted blast door. Jax put her shoulder against it. And tiny put its shoulder against it also, And the door made a loud screech and broke open.

Light hit my face. Grey light. Real light. Not bulbs — sky.

I stepped out onto a ridge of compacted scrap and looked down.

And my breath stopped.

The Rust Sea stretched out below us — miles of broken machines and dead technology, rusted brown and grey under a sick yellow sky. I’d seen it before. I’d crashed into it. I’d fought in it. And I’d claimed it.

But I hadn’t seen this.

In the center of the wasteland, where the Titan had crashed and knelt in its crater like a fallen knight, something had grown. Something that hadn’t been there two weeks ago.

A city.

Not a real city. Not towers and streets and glass. But a settlement — a sprawling ring of structures built from scrap metal and salvaged parts, circling the Titan like a nest built around an egg. Walls made from flattened car panels. Walkways connecting platforms at different heights. Smoke rising from chimneys made of exhaust pipes. And everywhere — everywhere — the Ferals.

Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Machines of every shape and size. Some small — dog-sized repair drones skittering along the walls. Some big — loader mechs carrying sheets of metal on their backs like ants carrying leaves. They moved with purpose. Organization. Not the random twitching of broken machines. They were building.

"What the hell," Maya breathed.

"I left them instructions," Glitch said from behind us. He was grinning — that wide, proud, slightly unhinged grin he wore when his plans worked. "Before we left for Sector 4. I uploaded a basic construction protocol into the Alpha signal network. Told them: build walls, build shelter, protect the Titan. I didn’t think they’d actually—"

He stopped. Stared.

"They built a town."

"They built your town," Sarah said quietly. She was looking at me. "They built their king a castle."

We walked down into it.

The Ferals noticed us immediately. The Alpha signal — the frequency I’d been broadcasting since I first drained that Reaper back in Server 9 — hit them like a bell. Every machine in range stopped what it was doing. Turned. Looked.

Then they came.

Not attacking. Coming to greet us. Dozens of them, then hundreds — rolling, walking, crawling, dragging themselves through the scrap toward me. Their sensors locked on my signal. Their motors hummed in a frequency that almost sounded like a purr.

A dog-sized drone pressed against my leg like a cat asking for attention. A loader mech lowered its massive head until its sensor-eye was level with mine. It stared at me. I stared back. Then it made a sound — a low, grinding rumble — and turned back to work.

"They missed you," Jax said, watching with raised eyebrows. "That’s disturbing though."

"That’s loyalty," Maya corrected. Something in her voice had shifted. She was looking at the Ferals the way a general looks at soldiers. Measuring them. Counting them. And seeing potential.

We reached the Titan.

The Prometheus. My mech. My weapon. It was still kneeling in the crater, its massive frame scarred and dented from the Rod from God impact. The armor plating was cracked in a dozen places. One arm was missing below the elbow — torn off during the crash landing in Sector 4. Cables hung from the wound like severed veins.

But the cockpit lights were on. Faint. Flickering. Alive.

I climbed the ladder — slowly with one hand, every rung sending pain through my palm. Maya followed. Sarah and Glitch stayed below, already examining the settlement’s structure.

I pulled myself into the cockpit.

The screens were dark. Most of them. But one — the center one, the main display — was glowing. A single line of text blinked on and off.

[ARES SYSTEM — RECOVERY MODE]

[CORE FUNCTIONS: 34%]

[STATUS: WAITING FOR COMMANDER]

"Ares," I said.

Silence. Then — a click. A hum. The speakers crackled with static.

"Commander." The voice was thin. Broken. Like a man talking through a crushed tin can. "You... returned."

"I told you I would."

"My memory files are... fragmented. I remember the impact. The satellite weapon. I redirected power to—" Static. A pause. "I failed to maintain full operational—"

"You didn’t fail," I said. "You saved us."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"That is... acceptable," Ares said. And beneath the static, beneath the broken speakers and damaged processors, I could have sworn I heard something that wasn’t in his programming.

Relief.

I placed my good hand on the console. The metal was warm. I let a trickle of energy flow from my palm into the system — not much, just a few percent. Enough to stabilize his recovery. Enough to say I’m here.

[ENERGY: 18%]

[ARES SYSTEM: CORE FUNCTIONS — 34% → 38%]

"Rest," I told him. "We’re going to fix you. All of you."

"Understood, Commander." A pause. "It is... good to hear your voice."

I sat in the cockpit for a while. Just breathing. Listening to Ares hum. Looking out through the cracked canopy at the scrap kingdom that had grown around us while we were gone.

That evening, Glitch set up his workbench in the Titan’s cargo bay. He’d brought tools from the Chapel and scavenged more from the settlement. Within an hour, he had half the bay covered in parts, wires, and screens.

"Alright," he said, cracking his knuckles. "Upgrade time."

He started with Maya’s arm. The crude, rusted metal prosthetic from the Sky-Prison — the one that clicked and whined with every movement. He opened a panel on the forearm and winced.

"This is garbage. Who built this? A blind man with a wrench?" He pulled out a bundle of frayed wires. "The neural connection is barely holding. You’ve been fighting with this thing at maybe thirty percent efficiency."

"But it does the job," Maya said flatly.

"It works the way a car with three wheels works. Technically, yes. But watch this."

He pulled a sleek black component from his bag — something he’d taken from one of the crashed gunships back in Sector 0. A neural bridge. Military grade.

"This will triple your response time. Your arm will move as fast as your thoughts."

Maya looked at me. I nodded.

The installation took twenty minutes. Maya didn’t scream. She didn’t even flinch. She just sat perfectly still, jaw tight, eyes locked on the far wall, while Glitch rewired her nervous system through a piece of stolen military hardware.

When it was done, she flexed her metal hand. The fingers moved like water — smooth, fast, and precise. No clicking. No whining. Silent.

She picked up her rifle with the metal hand alone. Aimed at a piece of scrap across the bay. Her arm didn’t shake. Didn’t drift. It was rock solid.

"Better?" Glitch asked.

Maya stared at her hand. Opened it. Closed it. For a moment — just a moment — she looked like a woman seeing herself for the first time.

"Better," she said quietly.

Then it was my turn.

Glitch looked at my right arm. Really looked. He scanned it with his datapad. Read the results. Read them again.

The grin was gone.

"I can’t fix this, Elias."

"I know."

"No. You don’t." He turned the screen toward me. "The nerve damage is spreading. Slowly, but it’s spreading. Right now it stops at your elbow. In a week, it’ll reach your shoulder. After that..."

"After that?"

"After that, it reaches your heart."

The cargo bay went quiet. Maya stopped cleaning her rifle. Sarah, who had been reading reports in the corner, looked up.

"You need a medical pod," Glitch said. "A real one. Corp grade. There are exactly two places in the city that have them. Sector 1 — Malachi’s tower. And Server 12."

Server 12.

Where Jasmine was.

My wrist-comp buzzed. A notification I hadn’t seen before — timestamped from six hours ago, delayed by the tunnel’s dead zone.

[ALERT: SERVER 12 — PATIENT UPDATE]

[PATIENT: VANCE, JASMINE]

[STATUS CHANGE: STABLE → DECLINING]

[ATTENDING SYSTEM: BUDGET TIER — LIMITED RESOURCES]

[RECOMMENDED ACTION: IMMEDIATE TRANSFER TO PRIORITY CARE]

My blood went cold.

"Jasmine," I whispered.

Sarah was watching me. Her face was pale. Her hands were clenched in her lap — the same way they’d been clenched at the Chapel when she’d said "it can wait."

She’d known. She’d already known.

"Sarah," I said. My voice was very quiet. Very still. "What aren’t you telling me?"

She met my eyes. And for the first time since I’d known her — since she’d woken up in that pod and grabbed my wrist and pulled me into a war — the Queen looked afraid.

"Sit down, Elias," she said. "We need to talk about your sister."