Day After the Theft — Conversion and First Run
Atlanta, Georgia
The HEMTT smelled like diesel and old coffee. In the damp predawn calm I sat in the driver's seat with the cab warm from the engine and let the silence settle around me like a cloak. Outside, the city was still breathing shallowly—sirens in the distance, a radio muttering about traffic, but nothing close enough to notice a hulking truck idling under a tarp-cover of shadow.
We'd taken the truck cleanly; luck had been part of it and planning the rest. Now the real work began.
I ran my hands over the dash, feeling the familiar ridges of travel-worn knobs and the soft give of rubber that had kept roads from shredding underweight. The Protocol ticked the status quietly in the background of my thoughts.
[Zephyr Ward]Skills: Firearms Handling Lv.1 | Maintenance Lv.2 | Physical Conditioning Lv.2 | Planning Lv.1 | Stealth Lv.1 | TACTICIAN Lv.2
First order: turn the cargo bay into a workshop. The idea was simple—workbench, power, secure storage, and a modular rig to let me reconfigure kits fast. I'd sketched layouts in traffic, at stoplights, during the two-steps-before-sleep that had become my life. Now I'd build them.
I killed the engine and cracked the bay doors. The night air crept in, smelling like oil and rain. I set to work like a man who'd spent years turning theory into practicality—bolting frames, uncoiling straps, setting tie-downs. The tradeoff between speed and permanence was constant: make something solid and it takes time; make it fast and it takes work to fix later. For now, I wanted speed that held.
From the inventory I pulled my welding kit, clamps, and the folding workbench I'd nabbed from the depot tool cage. The Protocol's storage made the build seamless: a thought, a shimmer, and the tool was in my hands as if I'd always carried it. I mounted the bench along the starboard wall and bolted a fold-down vice into the reinforced floor track.
I set up the generator in the lower cavity, chained to the frame, and routed the inverter through the electrical access. Lights came alive in a soft strip, a humble constellation across the work surface. Folding solar panels I'd purchased earlier slid up onto the HEMTT's roof and angle brackets latched into place. Within an hour the truck had a skeleton of autonomy: the generator would run longer with battery banks, and the panels would keep the small systems alive during daylight.
As I worked, my hands did more than move tools. They trained. Small muscle patterns—spool turns, weld bead arcs, test taps—registered with the Protocol and nudged out new learning. When I pulled a corroded bolt free and jury-rigged a replacement link, the system recorded the motion and integrated it into a motor map.
[Skill Gained: Vehicle Operation Lv.1][Skill Gained: Fabrication Lv.1]
The Protocol's presence was not loud. It didn't crow. It simply logged and then nudged the next useful step: brace the floor for heavy loads, fabricate tie-down points over the mid-axle zone, and weld a shallow rack for tool storage. I obeyed, and the truck turned from a bare shell into a working shop that smelled less like theft and more like possibility.
When the rack was in place I tested pivot points and clamped a drill into the vice. The feeling of design moving under my hands was small, practical, near-religious. This was what preparation felt like—front-loading effort for future quiet.
By mid-morning the HEMTT had changed. The cargo bay wore bolt-on lights, a lidded tool chest, a fold-out bench, and a secured safe where I could lock firearms and anything volatile. I installed a pair of racks for fuel cans and strapped a water bladder into a reinforced cradle. The bed had become a half-dozen functional zones: power, fabrication, storage, and sleeping. It would do for now. It would do for a very long time if I kept working.
The Protocol chimed again, quieter than an out-loud ping.
[SYSTEM NOTICE — Operator Protocol]Related Skill Cluster Detected: MAINTENANCE Lv.2 / VEHICLE OPERATION Lv.1 / FABRICATION Lv.1Composite Skill Created: MECHANICComposite Level Calculated: Lv.2Effect: MECHANIC Lv.2 established permanently. Sub-skills absorbed.Stat Bonus: +1 % boost to DEX.Training Efficiency Bonus: +10% to mechanical/vehicle tasks.
The consolidation landed like a new tool added to my belt. Maintenance, Vehicle Operation and Fabrication blinked out of view—no more micromanaging those three. MECHANIC Lv.2 cooled in my mind like a practical machine. I felt the added dexterity as a subtle steadiness in my fingers; the decade of small mechanical gestures became cleaner, faster. This was precisely the kind of optimization I'd designed my life around.
I adjusted the grips on a rivet gun and smiled without meaning to. The Protocol had taken what had been a cluster of chores and turned them into leverage. That +10% efficiency mattered. It would chop minutes off tasks that, later, meant the difference between being ready and being desperate.
With the HEMTT functionally converted, the next step was to stock it. I had the truck for hauling now—real capacity to move gear without juggling backpacks and caches. The day had one remaining precious commodity: daylight.
I drove the HEMTT low and careful to the construction yard where I'd earlier cached a small fuel pickup. The engine grumbled under the weight, and the suspension settled as the tires swallowed the gravel. At the yard the workers had left early in the string of scares, leaving equipment and a scatter of things worth taking: heavy diesel drums, wrapped scaffolding planks, a pallet of pneumatic hoses.
I loaded what I could—fuel drums into the rack, spare plywood tied to the side rails, a generator hoisted into the rear cradle while the Protocol managed the weight distribution. Everything went into the internal storage in a shimmer except the bulky pieces; I tied them down physically and labeled them mentally for later transfer.
The HEMTT made me a different kind of scavenger. Before, I'd been a man with a duffel scooping crumbs from an intact store. Now I could take whole pallets without drawing notice—purchase a cushioned distance between me and the inevitable crowd that would later push for everything.
Throughout the day I made methodical runs: a pawn shop (quiet purchase of a used drill press), a small hardware wholesaler (decent deals if you buy in modest bulk), and a closed industrial rental depot where a padlock proved less of an obstacle than a conversation and a small, well-placed bribe to a half-sleeping night clerk. In every case I paid cash or traded in plausible explanations—"equipment pickup, emergency works"—and in every case the Protocol reversed my purchases into stored inventory the moment I was out of sight.
People still moved through the city like nothing had happened. That would change. For now, I moved like a man who was simply a bit more prepared than his neighbors.
Late in the afternoon I took stock. The HEMTT measured in quiet metrics: fuel reserves, battery banks, water storage, tool inventory, and safe counts. The cargo bay was half full and organized. I had a plan for the rest: more solar panels tomorrow, armor plating scavenged over the next two days, and an internal partition that could lock down the rear if I needed to sleep while mobile.
The Protocol summarized the day, crisp and unemotional: workshop established, MECHANIC skill consolidates to Lv.2, generator online, fuel secured, storage organized. My unassigned stats now sat the same, but DEX had increased from the composite bonus so the cab felt that little bit tighter when I handled tools.
I crawled into the bunk that evening with a wrench in one hand and a field manual in the other, the HEMTT breathing softly around me. Outside, the city's noises carried—a scuffle two blocks over, an argument about gasoline price at a station. The collapse was coming. It still wasn't here. For now, I had shelter that moved, a workbench with daylight and power, and the ability to turn raw parts into functional things.
Tomorrow I would push for more: a quiet run to the armory district for hardened steel plates and a route to a small marina where a water pump waited. For now, I let the Protocol file the day as progress and let the truck's diesel hum lull me into a short, guarded sleep.
[End of Day Report — Systems Stable | MECHANIC Lv.2 Active | Readiness: 62%]
I slept like a man who had built the first room of his future.
(To be continued...)