The Burrower mandibles were sickle-shaped, roughly palm-length, and not particularly sharp to the touch — but channel Activity into them and they could cut steel, given enough force behind the swing. He’d confirmed that much through testing.

Lucky the Burrower hadn’t figured that out when it bit the hook.

Sooner or later, though, mutated creatures were going to start using Activity instinctively. The smarter ones, or the ones that survived long enough to develop the habit, would become significantly harder to deal with. He filed that concern for later.

The mandibles themselves didn’t fit neatly into any weapon concept. Too short for a proper blade, redundant as a knife when he already had the fang-knives. He set them aside.

The Gnawrat incisors were more interesting geometrically — straight, slightly flattened, with a noticeable cutting edge near the tip, roughly a finger and a half long. The shape suggested a military spike, but the material wasn’t as dense as the Fangwolf fangs. Less ideal.

A small pick would work though.

Not an urgent need. He set those aside too.

That left eleven Fangwolf fangs, which were by far the best raw material he had. Dense, hard, took Activity well. He’d already proven the fang-knife concept — that application worked. But he didn’t need more knives. What he needed was something with reach.

Javelins.

The thought arrived with immediate clarity. A javelin thrown with one and a half bull’s worth of strength, tipped with an Activity-infused core — even the prehistoric crocodile would feel that. He needed weapons that could threaten things at range before they got close enough to do what the crocodile had done to Vajra.

The fangs had a slight curve to them, which was a problem for throwing weapons. A curved tip created drag, and drag made the flight path unpredictable. He’d need to grind down the curved front section and reshape it into a straight point.

He measured against a ruler. About two knuckle-lengths of material to remove from each tip.

Those two knuckle-lengths aren’t wasted — they can become arrowheads. Activity-core arrowheads on crossbow bolts and composite arrows.

He worked out the numbers. Eight javelins, eight arrowheads. That consumed eight fangs cleanly. The remaining three he’d hold back for the Optimus 1.0 upgrade — adding more cores to the armor would extend its Active duration further, and the suit needed refinement anyway. The 1.0 designation had always implied future versions. This was how 1.1 started.

He put on the eye protection and picked up the angle grinder.

Six years of metalwork meant his hands didn’t shake. The cutting line was marked, the grinder was running, and the first fang started giving up its tip in a slow shower of fine particles. Without Activity infusion, the material hardness sat around high-carbon steel — tough, but manageable for a good grinding wheel.

The shaping came next. Grinding a proper point — the kind that would hold true through impact rather than deflect — was the sort of skill that only came from years of repetition. Shen Cong had the years. The point emerged cleanly: tapered, symmetrical, polished smooth, then the base split along the centerline to mate with the shaft.

The shaft was steel rebar, front end split to match, fitted together with the tip, locked with wire, the wire melted down into a continuous steel wrap by the welding torch. One javelin, rough form complete. Still needed fine calibration, balance adjustment, and ideally a pair of blood grooves cut along the shaft for additional damage — but the basic construction was sound.

He checked the time. His one-hour break had run out.

He set the javelin down, rolled his shoulders, and went back to Vajra’s repair work.

Nine hours a day. Everything else was secondary until the truck moved under its own power again.

July 23rd, 2022.

The day started like all the others — until the rabbit became a problem.

It began with circling. The Plastic Rabbit had always been calm in its cage as long as it was fed — placid to the point of suggesting a domestic origin, some hutch-bred house rabbit that had wandered into the range of the meteor shower and come out changed. But that morning it was moving in tight loops and making sounds it hadn’t made before. Low, rapid, agitated.

Shen Cong tossed in a piece of Gnawrat meat — the standard response — and went back to work.

The rabbit ignored the meat entirely.

Huh.

He watched it for a minute. The circling was intensifying, and the vocalizations had gotten louder. He considered the obvious explanation.

In heat?

He observed for a few more minutes and didn’t find much to support or refute it. His knowledge of rabbit reproductive behavior was limited, and his knowledge of mutated rabbit reproductive behavior was essentially zero. He wrote a brief note, left the rabbit to its agitation, and moved on.

By afternoon he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

The Plastic Rabbit had stopped circling and started throwing itself against the cage. Head-first, repeatedly, targeting the steel bars with its teeth between impacts. Nothing in a week of captivity had produced this behavior — given adequate food and water, it had been entirely docile. Now it was frantic.

Heat doesn’t explain this level of response.

He watched it for three minutes before the pattern became obvious.

The rabbit was hitting the same section of cage every time. The face of the cage closest to the cargo wall — specifically, the wall on the northwest side of the vehicle.

Shen Cong picked up the cage and rotated it ninety degrees.

The rabbit recalibrated for a moment, misjudged by a fraction, then resumed throwing itself at what was now a different face of the cage — but still the one closest to northwest.

He rotated it again.

Same result.

He tried four different orientations over the next few minutes. Each time, after a brief pause, the rabbit reoriented and resumed attacking the face of the cage that faced northwest. Its head had already taken enough impacts to split the skin above its eyes, blood matting the fur, but it showed no interest in stopping.

Something in the northwest was calling to it.

Something strong enough that a small, not-particularly-aggressive mutated rabbit was trying to beat its way through steel bars to get there.

Shen Cong set the cage down and looked at the northwest wall of the cargo container for a moment.

Then he looked at the rabbit.

What are you trying to reach?

(End of Chapter 15)