Rosie ‘Rustbucket’'s Arc

Chapter 15 of 16

Rosie carried the bag of substation parts back through the tunnel and emerged near Gary's scrapyard just after midnight. She had both units now — every component she needed to build a complete power station. The man's blueprint was folded in her pocket, and the lockdown sequence was holding at the old station. She found an old power plant on the west edge of town, its concrete walls cracked and overgrown with weeds. The building had been stripped years ago, but the foundation was solid and the main chamber was large enough to hold the assembled system. She worked through the night, connecting turbines to housings, routing pressure lines through regulators, and mounting the stabilizers in the sequence she'd learned from stolen diagrams. By dawn, the system was complete — two substations linked together with the main turbine at the center. She double-checked every connection, then pulled the activation lever. The turbine hummed to life, pressure gauges climbed to stable levels, and the lights in every building across Rust Creek flashed on for three seconds before she killed the power. She stood there in the silence that followed, understanding what she'd just proven. She could build working systems now, not just salvage broken parts. The Ravens could tunnel wherever they wanted — she'd already taken what mattered and assembled it somewhere they'd never find it. But the flash had been visible across town, and she'd just announced to everyone in Rust Creek that someone had restored power to the grid. She grabbed her tools and headed for the exit, knowing she had maybe an hour before people started asking questions she wasn't ready to answer.