Zachary's first stop was the old mechanic's. He had chosen the location to visit first partly because it would make a convenient route but also because it wasn't a multi-storeyed which would take time to climb and search. He managed to get there without any encounters, and he looked upon the dilapidated front of the mechanic's. The paint had peeled off, windows broken in to and doors forced open. He drove up to the garage door, which was still closed, so he got out to inspect it. Laying his hand on it, the door's workings assembled within his mind, showing him that it was locked by padlock. All it took to open it was moving the tumblers aside and pushing open the lock using his magnetic abilities, a skill he had used numerous times before while scavenging in the ruined city. He manually lifted the door up, drove his carriage through the opening, parked it inside and then closed the door behind him. The place was engulfed in darkness, which was soon broken when Zachary retrieved and turned on his torch. If he had been given the time to fully repair his carriage he would have been able to install headlights, but that had not been necessary to get it on the road.

It was not long before Zachary found a light switch and, mercifully, it still worked. Able to look around the garage, Zachary discovered that it was a mess, with tables overturned, drawers pulled onto the floor and tools and scrap all over the place. This was a clear sign of looting, but typically looters only took food, easy-to-use cores, functional (or near-functional) tools and weapons and sometimes clothes so Zachary felt confident that he would be able to find what he was looking for. It did not take much rummaging around to find a whole cache of heavy-duty metal springs. He picked a few which seemed to be the right size and placed them in his carriage. Before leaving he took another look over the place just in case he found anything else of use, and to his luck he discovered a radio which must have been used by the mechanic to listen to while working. With no means to transmit communications, and the absence of any radio stations which it could listen in on, the radio had gone untouched. Checking over it with his machine reading confirmed that it still had what he needed, although the battery had been taken. He placed the radio in his carriage as well.

Zachary departed from the mechanic's and headed towards the office building, checking the map for his route. However, as he headed down a road, a military squadron entered the road ahead of him. Immediately Zachary stopped and began to reverse to a street he could turn off on, but already he had been spotted and the military were shouting orders. "That's not one of ours." "Contact left!" "They've got carriages?" "Squadron Hotel to base, we've spotted a live non-military carriage on Whitely Road. It's attempting a retreat down Oak Street." Plasma bolts zipped past Zachary, and several tore through the thin metal walls of the carriage with little resistance. Zachary managed to get away before the bolts hit anything important, but he was still suitably panicked. He had heard and seen them speaking into their two-way radios, so more soldiers would be on their way soon. There is no way the military, with their iron rule over Sovereign, would tolerate someone getting their hands on a working carriage.

Zachary's mind was racing trying to find a solution while his carriage was racing to get him away. He realised that he would have to hide until the search waned, but the trouble would be finding a place he could hide a carriage. And he didn't have long. Zachary was searching frantically when Kaa'is spotted a place. [b][i]Over there![/i][/b] It was the entrance to an underground carpark for an apartment building. A slice off the top had crumbled down to the street but it looked as if the carpark was intact, but most importantly it was dark. Checking around for any watching military, and spotting none, he drove down through the entrance and in to the shadows. He stopped to pull out a torch, and then kept going. Through the small circle of vision which the torch provided he could see that it was not a very big carpark. There were still some carriages remaining, although they had been thrown against the walls by the flood during the cataclysm. A layer of water remained on the ground, which was of no hindrance to the levitating carriage, and the rest of the water must have drained away to somewhere. There was an elevator and concrete wall present as well, which provided Zachary a place to hide behind, hidden from view from any who peaked in from outside. He wasted no time in crawling over there in his carriage, checking that the water-covered ground was clear and stopped the engines. He then turned off the torch, engulfing him in darkness and leaving him to sit alone for however long he felt it would take for the military to deprioritise the search. It was going to be a long wait.