The hovercraft skirts the forest edge, until you break through the
tree line and suddenly the world opens up.
You reach the Cerulean Peninsula -
Miles of solar arrays spread across coastal cliffs in geometric patterns,
while towering wind turbines turn in slow unison.
“Welcome to the Xenos Industrial Energy Farm” Xeno says
leaning into his headset mic, imitating a captain
“You live here?” Cyan asks, wincing as she peels her jacket
from her shoulder.
“Full-time caretaker,” he says.
“It’s mostly run by AI now. I just make sure everything runs smoothly.”
A silo swells on the horizon.
​
CERULEAN is painted down its side in letters the size of a building.
“Home sweet home,” Xeno says. He sets the hovercraft down beside an old crop-drone hangar patched with sheet metal.
By the time they touch down, the sun is high-nearly noon.
​
You realize you’ve been awake all night, nerves running on fumes.
Xeno waves you inside the hangar, takes the fragments without ceremony, and dives straight into his workbench setup.
His workshop is a cathedral of machines and monitors glowing with maps of orbits and weather systems.
He loads the fragments, sliding each stone
into a cradle wired to an acoustic scanner.
First your meteorite, then the observatory fragment
and cyan’s remarkably unscathed knife.
The speakers hum.
Tones braid together.
Your fragment’s melody pours through the room.
​
Cyan’s knife, when he holds it near a contact mic,
adds a faint harmonic, like a ghost singing harmony
from the back row along with the chorus of the Observatory fragment.
“They synchronize perfectly with MEGA,” Xeno murmurs, half to you, half to his machines. “Together they give me an exact lock.”
“For what?” you ask.
He points out the hangar window to the silo.
A 3D model of the structure rotates on a monitor,
skin peeling back in layers: grain elevators becoming fuel tanks,
access ladders becoming conduits,
a conical cap resolving into a command module.
“You turned a silo into a rocket,” you say, barely surprised.
“Reverse-engineered,” he corrects, but he’s smiling. “The goal here is to ram MEGA with the silo before it crosses into the dense atmosphere.”
“And if we don’t?” Cyan asks, expression flat.
Without saying a word, he swivels a screen toward you.
A simulation runs: a bluish-pink meteor with a tail falls
into the earth like a lit-match into gasoline.
Xeno rubs at the corner of his eye, suddenly looking older.
“Plan A was deflectors. Failed every simulation test. Plan B is the Silo Rocket. Built the override in case the targeting goes stupid.”
“Goes stupid?” you echo.
“Computers are unpredictable” he says. He taps a key. The scanner pings softly as it writes the fragments’ melodies into a targeting profile. “Good news: the lock quality is clean. Bad news: dawn comes fast.”
He straightens. “Get some rest guys.
Nothing more we can do tonight. We launch at first light.”
You glance at Cyan. She’s already nodding off,
her graceful demeanour giving in to ordinary human fatigue.
You want to argue for staying awake,
but your legs make the decision for you.
~
The barracks are quiet on the far side of the compound,
lined with rows of sleep pods glowing with a soft, amber light.
​
“Wake me if the world ends,” Cyan yawns as she climbs in.
“Sure,” you whisper back, too tired to laugh.
The hum of machinery fades as the pod seals around you.
Within moments, sleep drags you under.
