Free Up The Tower by J.P. Lantern Page B

partner?”
    Samson’s room was larger than most others on the floor but still smaller than he wanted it to be. The ideal would be a whole floor, maybe, or even a whole building. Just some cave of a warehouse where he could build whatever he wanted with no interruptions. If he could have an entire floor, man. He would have whole assembly lines set up, and working ones too, not like that junk down in the slums. Weapon after weapon, armor after armor, and Crash would never get hit by anything nor worry about anything neither.
    But he had a room, layered and layered again with circuitry and with parts, with jars full of free-floating nanos eating away at each other and reproducing like mad. Nanos were the lifeblood of tech, all its uses. The way it integrated with the human body, the way that it could rebuild and adapt.
    Long systems of pipes and vacuum tubes ran across the ceiling—Samson needed cooling, heating, freezing, boiling at different intervals and all of it immediate. The room next to his produced climate creation for the entire floor, but eighty percent of its usage was dedicated to Samson’s work.
    Long tables, all of them loaded down with metal scrap and organizing bins of nuts and bolts and screws and so on, bordered the walls. He loathed that he had to have space for a toilet.
    He did not have a bed. He did not want one. Most of the time he slept on the floor, clearing away whatever rubbish was beneath him. Crash could die while Samson slept, so why risk enjoying sleep? He might do it too often.
    Samson had been sleeping, after all, when the men came in and killed his parents.
    No sooner had Samson closed the door than did someone knock at it—slammed, really, demanding entry with physicality. Directly after entering, Samson had piled junk in front of the door to make room for Partner. Now he had to move it aside again.
    Crash. It would only ever be Crash at Samson’s door.
    Jackson Crash was the type of man who filled every room he entered, even one already overfilled like Samson’s. In a crowd of hundreds, he would be noted by nearly everyone as the most important person present—this even if no one knew who he was. In a one-on-one conversation, he elevated himself to something like an avatar, a deity, a demigod—knowing and handling. Seen it all, done it all. Show me what you got. His charisma wrapped others in his wake.
    His nose was just slightly too big for his face, hanging down like the edge of an executioner’s axe. The rest of his face—his jaw and eyes—seemed streamlined in toward the middle, angling out his head. He had a tall, wiry frame, covered over in an expensive suit that looked made of silk. Samson knew it was really all tech—knew that in an instant, the silk appearance could alter into a series of interlocking plates that offered Crash complete protection.
    It was a one-of-a-kind item, and because it was the first of its kind, it had so far broken down often. So many moving pieces couldn’t help but get in the way of one another sometimes. The suit required updates and maintenance almost every day, but that was okay by Samson. He liked the work, and it kept him useful to Crash. It kept Crash alive.
    “You need to clean this mess, baby.” Crash kicked at the junk still piling over the door entrance. “You gonna get buried in here.”
    “It’s all right. I’ve got plans for all of it.”
    “I can hire someone for you, baby. Someone good with this. Someone careful.”
    “It’s all right.”
    Crash frowned. He disapproved, but it was not a topic where he was willing to exercise his will. He had enough on his mind without worrying about Samson’s mess.
    “My hand’s locking up again. You’re gonna fix it for me.”
    “Sure, Crash.”
    Clearing a table off, metal clanking and dinging, he put Crash’s hand down. It was half-formed into a long, piercing blade. This had been a problem in the past. As armor, it was almost flawless, but Crash had wanted to weaponize it as