Plans For The New Weapon

The cabin wasn't simply a bedroom anymore… It was the nerve center of a mad genius.

Every flat surface was buried in drafting sheets and glowing projection wafers, and the walls were covered from baseboard to ceiling in sprawling webs of equations and stress formulas scrawled in black drafting grease, layered three deep over the metal plates.

In the middle of the bed, on an insulated anti-static mat, sat the skull-sized cluster of black-and-blue ore, surrounded by gutted sensor leads and stripped capacitor coils.

Elena stood in the center of the chaos with her chest heaving against her rumpled shirt and her knuckles white around the stylus.