(TAYLOR HEBERT) CHAPTER THIRTY

Rubber rounds cracked through the training room in controlled bursts, ricocheting off barriers and chewing into the concrete floor hard enough to leave pale scars across the surface.

Yet, not one round touched Taylor Hebert.

One moment she crouched behind cover, and the next she blurred into motion in a streak of blue-black light that crossed half the room before the gunfire could properly track her. She reverted an instant later, boots skidding across the floor as she slid behind another barrier while the delayed thunder of gunfire followed after her.

“Target relocated,” one of the technicians barked over comms.

“Too slow.” The words were already out before the system finished registering her last position.

Armsmaster watched from the observation platform above the floor, arms folded behind his back as data streamed across the inside of his visor: heart rate fluctuations, acceleration curves, reaction timing, and energy spikes from the transformation itself. The watch on Miss Hebert’s wrist remained frustratingly unreadable despite every scan he had managed to slip into the room over the past few hours.

That alone irritated him more than he cared to admit.

Miss Hebert peeked around cover, spotted the incoming flank, then hit the watch again.

This time the transformation came with a burst of a high-pitched screech. Her body condensed downward into something smaller, blue, and wirier before launching forward at impossible speed, claws digging into the wall as she ran across it sideways to avoid another stream of rubber bullets.

One of the troopers swore loudly as she dropped onto his shoulders, flipped over him, and slapped the emergency release on his training rifle before darting away again.

The exercise buzzer sounded a second later.

“Team Three eliminated,” the overhead system announced.

Miss Hebert shifted back almost immediately afterward, slightly hunched as she caught her breath.

Armsmaster’s gaze lingered on the watch.

Every transformation so far had been immediate, without visible mechanical or performance degradation, thermal stress, or even the sort of efficiency decay that plagued most advanced systems after repeated use. By all appearances, the device simply functioned perfectly every time.

He hated how much that bothered him, especially since he knew there ought to be some malfunctioning. He just couldn't catch any.

He sighed. 

His own armor had taken years of iteration, sleepless nights and constant refinement to reach the level it had before the Simurgh fight. Even then, it still required upkeep bordering on obsession, and without fail, every improvement came with three new complications—or ways of improvement—attached.

That watch ignored complications entirely, evolving according to circumstances with a flexibility he could scarcely replicate even in theory.

Miss Hebert laughed down below as one of the troopers complained about her ‘cheating,’ and for a brief moment Armsmaster found himself staring at the device with something dangerously close to resentment.

The sheer unfairness of it galled him.

A child had stumbled into possession of technology generations beyond anything on Earth Bet, and she wielded all the recklessness of someone too young to understand what she possessed, without the training or restraint someone like him would expect

A tick wound its way up his jaw. 

There had been a moment after his hospitalization, shortly after he had finally seen what had become of his armor laid out across his workshop table, changed almost beyond recognition, where darker thoughts had crept in. Brief, though they might have been.

He had looked at the watch and understood immediately that he could do more with it than the girl ever could. He possessed the training, the discipline, and the technical understanding necessary to unlock its full potential. In his hands, it could become something truly transformative.

The thought of simply taking it had followed naturally after that.

It still disgusted him to remember because no matter how he rationalized it, no matter how many practical arguments his mind could construct around efficiency or capability, the truth remained the same. Taylor Hebert was a child, one trying to help people with what she had been given, and murdering or even maiming her for a tool would make him no better than the criminals he had spent his life fighting.

Worse still, it would offend something deeper in him: 

His pride.

If he needed to steal another man’s work, or a child’s possession, to surpass them, then what was the point of any of it?

So no, Taylor Hebert could keep the watch.

He would study it, learn from it, and draw inspiration from every impossible function packed into that deceptively small frame. And then, he would build something greater with his own hands.

That was the only outcome he would accept.