Location:Seven Peaks — Formation Workshop, Training Arena, Command Center
Date/Time:TC1853.11.17-18 (Days 2-3 of 14)
The relay communicator screamed, caught fire, and died.
Marcus stared at the smoking device on the workbench, formation nodes still flickering with residual energy, and felt nothing. Not frustration, not surprise, not even disappointment. He'd been awake for thirty-one hours, fueled by spiritual-energy-enhanced coffee and the slow, grinding certainty that if he didn't solve this problem, people would die in silence.
"Thermal runaway," Silas said from across the workshop, not looking up from the formation arrays he was calibrating. The older man had been working just as long but showed it less — four decades of formation mastery had taught him to conserve energy the way young engineers burned through it. "The signal amplification draws more power than the node can sustain. Past thirty-five kilometers, the decay curve exceeds the refresh rate."
