The sky was iron-grey as Riven stepped into the street.
TOOLHAND v1 was strapped to his forearm—wires tucked, plating bolted down, humming faintly.
It wasn't polished.But it worked.
"Let's see if you're more than just theory."
He headed for Scrap Mile, an open-air tech slum where back-alley builders, junk pirates, and rogue engineers sold parts to survive.
On the way, he passed a broken hover-bike being kicked by a mechanic. Sparks flew, curses louder.
"Need that power core to stop overheating!" the guy barked.
Riven paused. Walked over.Scanned the mess in seconds.
He knelt, flicked open TOOLHAND's wire-stitcher, and bridged the feedback loop with two arcs of metal.
Bzzt—the hum shifted.
The hover-bike blinked back to life.
The mechanic blinked at Riven like he was a ghost.
"What the hell is that thing?""Toolhand," Riven replied."It fixes problems."
He walked off before the guy could ask more.
By midday, he'd fixed a dozen things:
a scav drone with dead sensors
a coffee bot that screamed in binary
a prosthetic limb refusing neural sync
No one paid him.
But they noticed.
By nightfall, word had spread:
"Some guy with a weird glove is fixing everything."
And that's all Riven needed.
Not cash. Not clout.
Just attention.
Because attention meant opportunity.
And opportunity was the currency of builders.