Time to Upgrade

Chapter One

Nym bit down hard on her tongue, tasting the metallic tang of blood dribbling down her throat as electric shocks jolted up her arm. All Mr. Margrove would see, though, was the flex of her left hand around the forceps, or the slight twitch of the wire between the metal tips. She bit back the curse working its way up her throat, swallowing it down along with the taste of copper. She would rather that over letting her client know the truth—the only repairwoman in all of Verge couldn’t fix her own busted droid parts.

She wiped away the bead of sweat trickling down her face, droplets pinging on her shoulders where metal met flesh as she released a shaking breath. Mr. Margrove only needed a simple wire replacement to reconnect his dysfunctional foot—a task that would normally be fixed in under five minutes if she wasn’t fighting a short circuit. As waves of pain rushed over Nym, her vision grew fuzzy and she blinked several times until the circuit board came back into focus.

“You okay, Nym?” Mr. Margrove asked, his thick black brows drawing together as he peered down at her.

“No worries,” she coughed out. “Just trying to be careful with the replacement.”

The old man scoffed. “You and I both know this leg is junk. How many times have we replaced this wire?”

“Four times.”

“Exactly.” He smacked at the metal knee, the sound a hollow ring. “Can’t afford a new one, or a new wire. Don’t know how you keep managing to find replacements when the damn thing keeps frying them.”

“Perks of being a scrapper, I guess,” Nym muttered, her focus narrowing on the copper coils she carefully wrapped together. Her tongue stuck just slightly out of the corner of her mouth in concentration, and Mr. Margrove silenced his reply. 

It was a well known fact throughout Verge that when Nym had her ‘concentration face’ on, she wasn’t to be bothered. If someone spoke to her, she surely wasn’t listening. If she did listen, then she wasn’t to be blamed for any electrocutions that may occur.

Once the coils were safely secured, she grabbed the piece of electrical tape stuck in preparation to Mr. Margrove’s knee and wrapped the joining carefully before tucking the wire back into his open shin. Once all the screws were back in place, Nym sat back and smiled, her tongue back in her mouth. 

“Thanks, Nym,” Mr. Margrove said, flexing his mechanical foot back and forth, wiggling the toes. “Just as good as the first repair.”

“I try,” Nym replied, wiping her hands off on a rag. “Just try to remember to power down the limb each night. Maybe it’ll last longer this time.”

“Got it, kid. How much do I owe you?”

Nym stood, eyes glancing over the elderly man. He’d lost weight since she last saw him, his shirt sitting baggier around his middle and the shoulders slumping long. And if she remembered correctly, which she was sure she did, his daughter had lost her job in the refinement plant last week. He was far too prideful to let Nym do the work for free though, and she could use the coins for rations too…

“Let’s call it twenty shoots and we’re even,” she replied, gathering her tools to clear the space.

Mr. Margrove stood, hands on his hips. “I don’t need your charity, Annora Neith. Last time, it was seventy-three.”

Nym flinched at the sound of her birth name, and tried to cover it with a casual shrug. “Last time I had to scrap the wire last minute. And I cancelled a couple of stripped screw removals.” All lies, but he didn’t need to know that. “This time I had extra on hand, cause I knew you’d be back.” This was at least true.

He shuffled his feet, and Nym moved about the room, placing tools in drawers, on hooks, and into containers all around her workbench. When she saw him counting out the nickel pieces from the corner of her eye, she ducked her head to hide her relief. She knew he wouldn’t argue it when he thought about the food his family needed, and how tight their pursestrings would be with one less worker in their hob.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, putting the coins in the pay hoppers by the door. The sensor above turned green, the front door unlocking with a soft click. “I’ll be more careful with this one, Nym.”

“Promises, promises,” Nym laughed, crossing the crowded workshop, dodging the mess that gathered after a day of repairs to walk him out. “Luckily for you, I plan to be around for a bit. You know who to call when it breaks again.”

“You know none of us can afford anything else. ‘Sides, you’re the best mech specialist in Verge. Maybe even Pith, if you ever advertised to them.”

Nym snorted, leaning against the open door. “Those rich assholes would rather upgrade than fix a broken part. Which only helps all of us when I go scrap.”

“Not wrong there. Guess we’ll keep you as our little secret.” He let out a loud laugh, waving to Nym as he took off down the packed streets. She watched as he went, warmth spreading up her chest and into her face.

That was payment enough. The twenty shoots weren’t going to buy her more than two freeze-dried ration packs if she haggled well enough at the V-Mar tomorrow. Knowing he was going to keep going for his family mattered more. Each time his wire fried, Margrove stumbled into Nym’s shop, dragging his dead leg behind him and leaning against whatever Verge neighbor was free from factory work that day—and he wasn’t the only one. 

Nym’s front room was a rotating door of dead limbs, unseeing eyes, locked jaws, or any other upgrade a person needed to survive in Verge. Every mech part could malfunction, and she’d seen and fixed them all. So long as she could keep fixing their parts, she could avoid the factory work all her neighbors were subjected to.

The only thing she couldn’t fix was the glassy stare in their natural eyes. The vacant looks she saw as the shifts switched and they made the long trek back to their hobs. 

Shuffling around the dusty space, Nym rotated her mech arm as her natural one continued to pick up from the day’s work. Loose screws, magnifying glasses, soldering tools, and dud wires all went into their respective bins along her cracked wooden bench—the material so dry, it was a wonder it even held up this long.

When she stretched her arm back a jarring shock seared across the scarred joint, pulling a cry from Nym. The lightning pain raced along her body and her vision blacked out. She blindly grabbed for the work bench, letting the mechanical arm hang limply and breathing through her open mouth. Slowly, she brought her forehead to her hand, sweat coating her skin and grounding her mind back into her human parts. Muscles in her left shoulder twitched as she counted to ten. Soon, the twitching calmed and the halo of pain-fog lifted, allowing her to see her work stool and sit down heavily.

One at a time, she moved her mech fingers to touch the tip to her thumb, then made a fist and rolled her wrist, working through the exercises. When none of the movements stuttered or sent new jolts of pain through her, Nym confirmed that the stretch had settled whatever broken piece sat inside her metal arm. She brushed her fingers along the discolored metal—a dark silver color from years of wear and tear. The cold under her fingertips was as familiar as her own skin, and just as long a part of her life as the now frequent zapping.

  She was considering for the hundredth time ripping off the arm and tossing it in the heaps when a knock echoed on her door. 

“Closed for the day!” Nym shouted, tilting her head back. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow!”

The banging persisted, getting louder with each thud. Nym groaned as she got up, walking to the door. As she pulled it open, she said, “This better be an emergency.”

“It is,” a man answered, his face hidden by a dark hood. “Please, you have to help me.” His voice shook with tension as he pulled his cloak tighter around his hunched figure.

Nym did not know this man. 

For starters, he didn’t deploy the emergency protocol that all her customers knew, which kept her and them safe from the servos who liked to enact ‘random raids’ on all the shopkeepers after hours. Aside from that, this stranger was too…clean. His cloak too new, his shoes merely dusted and not covered in the caked on and worn in tracks of mud and soot. Everything about him screamed that he was from Pith. But that meant money, which meant Nym stepped back, motioning him into her hob.

It also meant she flipped a switch on her wall panel as she closed the door, activating her hidden cameras and turning on audio recording, which, at a certain spoken phrase, would alert her neighbors that she was in danger. 

One could never be too careful when the rich came to play in the slums.

The man looked around the room, his cloak swirling the dust on the ground—another sign he wasn’t Verge. No cloaks here touched the ground, only mid-calf at the most. After he finished what Nym suspected was a casual search for cameras—which he would never find—he stood up straight, tossing back the hood on his cloak and turning towards her. 

“Are you the repairwoman?” he asked, a desperate look in his sharp green eyes. He was younger than Nym expected, no more than twenty with a shock of wavy grey hair sticking out in all directions.

“I am a repairwoman, yes,” Nym answered hesitantly. “There are quite a few of us here in Verge. If you show me your mech, I’ll let you know if I can fix it.”

He coughed, raking a hand through his hair, the other hiding something behind him. “Are you Nym, though?” His eyes darted around the space before landing on her, again his eyes piercing. 

“Why do you need her?” Nym replied, backing up to her workbench. 

He took a deep breath, then pulled out shining metal from behind his back. Nym hid her flinch, hand gripping a wrench on instinct before she registered what he held. Then, her breath caught in her throat, her eyes flickering between it and him.

“I know,” he said, pulling off his cloak and tossing it onto a bench before placing the item on her workbench. “But I need someone to fix this. Someone who can be trusted to be discreet. Everyone says that’s Nym, so, I really hope that’s you.”

Nym stared down at the very early model droid sitting on her workbench. The very illegal early model droid. If she was caught with this in her hob she’d lose rations for a month, minimum. And that was only if it was one of the servos who she had done work for that caught her. If a servo from Pith found her with this, she’d be lucky to be killed in the V-Mar. 

“Let’s start with your name,” she said, stepping back from the droid and looking over at the stranger.

“I’m called…” he hesitated. “Fenix.”

“You’re called it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay…” Nym crossed her arms. “And what are you doing with an illegal model droid, Fenix?”

His cheeks turned slightly red, the freckles on his nose in stark contrast. “Looking for someone to repair it.”

“Uh-huh. What repair does it need?”

“Does that mean you’ll help me?”

“I don’t know if I can, since I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Are you at least Nym? Or am I about to be arrested for trusting the wrong person?”

She laughed at that, breaking a bit of the tension covering the room. “Yes, I am Nym. There’s my honesty for this interaction. Now it’s your turn, Fenix.”

His shoulders dropped in relief, a nervous lop-sided grin showing off a dimple in his right cheek. “There’s a chip inside and I need it out.”

Nym eyed the piece, the old metal and weak screws holding it together. “Why not smash it to get the chip out?”

He leaped forward, placing a hand protectively over the droid. “It has sentimental value. I need the droid intact. And the chip inside.”

“I take it they don’t encourage any mech work on your side of the ring?”

The blush on his cheeks deepens. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nym raps her knuckles against her workbench. “Maybe next time you can wear shoes that are more than a year old. That is, if you even have any.”

Fenix looked down at his shoes, then back up at Nym, eyes wide.

“Okay, yes. I’m from Pith. Which is why you know exactly why I can’t trust anyone there with getting this chip out. It also means you know I’ll pay you well, both for the repair and your discretion. Do you think you can help me out? Please?”

She picked up the droid, moving it around as the dead limbs flopped from side to side. It would be a lot easier to break the thing apart and take out what was needed. Sentimentality didn’t have much value in outer rings, but that was just another luxury of the rich inner rings. She also bet that turning him in would get her a whole plethora of shoots. Hell, maybe even some florets or blooms…

That would only tank her reputation though. There wouldn’t be enough money to last a lifetime, and she needed to keep clients who trusted her discretion. Plus, she spent a lot of time doing illegal activities herself, so it would only open scrutiny on her own business dealings.

No, the best option would be to take apart the droid and put it back together. She’d need to scrap some more screws, as there was no way the ones inside would hold through the process. 

“I’ll need a day.”

Fenix rocked forward on his heels, as if he was going to hug her but stopped himself. “Thank you. This means more than you know.”

“We’ll meet at the V-Mar tomorrow for the swap. Bring a brown rucksack to swap with the payment in it. And for stars’ sake, buy one off the help or something so it at least looks used.”

Fenix nodded, fighting a smile with relief in his eyes. “Absolutely. No problem. I’ll be there. Thank you, Nym.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she muttered, pulling her long dark hair back into a ponytail. “Thank me when the work is done.”