Leo Valdez's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Leo wiped the sweat from his forehead and studied the toolkit spread across his workbench. The self-heating mechanism was almost finished — just a few more adjustments to the temperature control. His friends would never know he made it. They'd never asked for it, but that was the point. Someone pounded on the workshop door. Leo nearly dropped his soldering iron. Nobody came out here. Not unless they were lost. He opened the door to find a woman clutching a worn leather journal to her chest. Her eyes were red. Her hands shook. She thrust the journal at him before he could say anything. Water stains covered the pages. The handwriting was frantic, desperate. Something about a missing child. A machine that could track heat signatures through the caves beneath the old district. She needed it in three days or the search teams would give up. Leo looked at the journal, then at his workbench. The toolkit sat there, half-wrapped in cloth, waiting for friends who might never notice it was gone. He could finish it tonight. Or he could build something that might actually save a life. The woman stared at him. Waiting. He set the journal down on top of the toolkit and reached for a clean sheet of drafting paper. The design came fast. Heat sensors weren't complicated if you knew what you were doing, and Leo did. He sketched out the tracker while the woman explained the cave system, the cold spots where searchers got turned around, the places a small body could slip through. Her voice cracked when she said the child's name. Leo drew faster. The toolkit caught his eye from under the journal. He'd spent two weeks on the heating coils alone, getting them perfect so the metal would stay warm enough to work clean in winter. His friends would have loved it. Would love it. If he ever finished. But the woman was still standing there, and the caves were cold, and three days wasn't much time. Leo folded the sketches and looked at her. He told her to come back tomorrow. He'd have a prototype ready. She thanked him six times before she left. The door clicked shut. Leo turned back to his workbench and pushed the toolkit to the side. The cloth fell away from the heating compartments. They gleamed in the lamplight, almost done. He covered them back up and cleared space for the new project. The tracker wouldn't build itself.