Consciousness slammed into Tian Wei like molten lead. Every nerve screamed as if his body had been reforged in a furnace.
He gasped, dragging in the bitter air of the ruined lab.
His cracked chronometer flickered on his wrist, digits half-dead but still alive enough to sting him with the truth.
06:23 AM.
Thirty-six minutes since the catastrophe.
The laboratory was no longer a sanctum of science. It was a battlefield.
Sparks hissed across the floor, cables writhing like dying serpents. Twisted beams jutted out like the broken bones of a titan. Screens that once carried the delicate dance of quantum equations now glowed with nothing but static and blood-red errors. The air reeked of ozone, metal, and burned circuitry—every breath sharp and heavy with the stench of failure.
Beside him, Elena stirred. Her cheek was swollen, bruised from the blast. Her eyes, unfocused at first, slowly sharpened into fear, then disbelief.
Kai dragged himself up, one arm clutching his ribs, his eyes already darting over the debris. He moved like an engineer first, a human second—cataloging damage, filing failures into silent lists. His jaw was tight, but the silence in his gaze betrayed despair.
Amara reached for her neural crown out of instinct. The device slipped into her palm in two fractured pieces. She stared at it, lips trembling, unable to speak. Two years of delicate modifications—sacrifices of time, pain, and humanity itself—reduced to shards.
And there, looming in judgment, was the PEC1R.
Cracked. Silent. Its once-flawless surface was jagged, scarred. The machine that symbolized three years of relentless struggle stood like a monument of mockery, a corpse that reminded them of their hubris.
The ERF-7 lay cleaved in two, its crystalline heart still glowing faintly, pulsing like the dying breath of a star.
But the worst devastation was not visible.It bled from the trembling displays still flickering with faint reports:
Fusion reactor offline. Only 30% emergency power left.
Hyperloop transport dead. The arteries of the complex severed.
Communications degraded. Transmission lines flickering between silence and static.
Containment fields failing. Dozens of volatile experiments now held at barely 40%, each threatening to unravel and consume them all.
Every number was a blade. Every report an accusation.
The walk back toward the residential sector was not a retreat. It was a funeral march.
The emergency lights bled red across the corridors, turning every shadow into an omen. Walls they had passed a thousand times seemed foreign, harsh, cruel. Holoscreens stuttered alive with fragments of error codes in dozens of languages—flashes of doom no one could stop.
No one spoke. Words would have shattered the fragile thread keeping them moving forward.
When the blast doors opened to the central atrium, silence awaited them.
Not relief. Judgment.
One hundred eighty-five faces turned as one.
Fear lined some eyes. Anger burned in others. But worst of all—betrayal.
Four others were missing—fighting for life in the med-bay, their survival uncertain because of Tian Wei's midnight gamble.
The four scientists sat in the center like defendants before a tribunal. The adaptive sofa shifted beneath their weight, but the comfort only mocked them. The air grew heavy, pressing down, as though the atrium itself conspired against them.
It was Marcus Torres who broke the silence. His broad shoulders filled the space, his voice gravel and fire, each word soaked with fury.
"What the hell happened down there? The entire complex shook like the Earth itself was cracking! Billions in equipment—gone! My daughter woke up screaming, Tian! Do you understand that? My little girl thought the world was ending!"
His voice thundered, echoing into every corner.
The dam cracked.
Voices surged.
"You risked all our lives!"
"Children were crying in the dark!"
"My patients in cryo nearly died when the power dipped!"
"Do you even know what you've done?"
The accusations merged into a storm. Every shout carried grief, anger, fear—years of trust unraveling in seconds.
Elena could not hold herself back. She surged to her feet, her face pale but her eyes blazing with fury.
"You conducted an unauthorized experiment! You bypassed every single safety protocol we built! Three years, Tian! Three years of trust—and you risked all of it!"
Her voice cracked, but she didn't falter.
Kai's words followed, colder than steel, precise as a scalpel.
"Seventeen safety protocols overridden. 2.4 terawatts forced through unrated systems. Magnetic fields peaking at 847 tesla."
A flick of his wrist brought up cold holographic numbers, the damage reports swirling like execution orders in the air.
"Tell me, Tian… are you insane?"
Amara's voice was softer, but sharper than both. She lifted the shattered crown in her hand, its broken lines catching the light like veins of betrayal.
"Probability of success: 0.0003%. Probability of catastrophic failure: 87.4%." Her voice did not tremble. "You gambled with our lives… for less than a coin toss."
The atrium erupted.
"Reckless!"
"Dangerous!"
"Criminal negligence!"
"Monster!"
The words clawed at him, each syllable heavier than the last.
Tian Wei—once their leader, their visionary, the one who carried their hope—now stood as the eye of their storm.
Three years of partnership. Three years of trust. Three years of sacrifice.
All erased in thirty-six minutes.
Elena's voice returned, but it had changed. The fire was gone, replaced by something colder, more merciless.
Disappointment.
"We were partners, Tian. I trusted you."
The words landed harder than the quantum shockwave itself.
Tian's throat burned. His chest ached. He wanted to explain. To tell them of the Archive's hidden files. Of the ERF-7's promise. Of the impossible glimpse of 99.7% coherence.
To scream that, for a moment, they had stood on the edge of eternity. That humanity had touched perfection.
His lips trembled. His voice cracked.
"Elena, I—"
She cut him off before he could take another breath. Her eyes, once warm with faith, now cut him with ice.
"No. Don't. Just… don't."
Silence followed.
Not the silence of peace.The silence of judgment.Of something sacred broken, never to be restored.
Even the failing systems seemed to hold their breath, red warning lights pulsing like a heartbeat above the gathering.
And in that silence, Tian Wei understood.
He had reached for the stars. And grasped only ashes.