David crouched in front of the panel, fingers hovering over but not quite touching the access port.Tampering. Professional grade. Hidden in the routing protocols so it wouldn’t show up on standard diagnostics.
Nick felt his stomach drop.Sabotage?
Worse.David’s mental voice was grim. He pulled open the panel, revealing the maze of wiring within. And there—Nick didn’t need David’s expertise to recognize the device zip-tied to the main bus bar, its components foreign and wrong among the standard electrical infrastructure.
Bomb,Nick sent, the word sharp in both their minds.
Yeah.David was pulling up schematics on his tablet, cross-referencing what he was seeing physically with the digital architecture.But not just structural damage. Look at the placement.
Nick moved closer, careful not to disturb anything. The device was small, almost elegant in its simplicity, attached directly to the lines that fed power throughout the resort’s main building.If this goes off?—
Cascading electrical failure,David confirmed.The bomb itself would cause a fire, some structural damage. But the way it’s positioned? It’ll send a surge through the entire power grid. Overload everything connected to it.
“Which is everything.” Nick’s mind was already running calculations, mapping infrastructure in his head. “Main building, staff quarters, all the cottages?—”
They’re linked.David’s telepathic voice was carefully controlled, but Nick felt the tension underneath.Backup power routing, generator load balancing, data redundancy. We designed it that way for stability. But it means the surge won’t stop at this building.
“The staff building.” Nick’s hands clenched. Emma was there. Half their security team. People who trusted them to keep them safe.
The backup generators there would take the surge. Could blow the fuel lines. Start a fire.David was still scanning, his consciousness split between the physical device and the digital systems.During a fucking hurricane.
The lights flickered overhead, a reminder that they were already operating on borrowed stability. The storm was intensifying, wind screaming against the building’s exterior. Through the telepathic link, Nick felt David’s laser focus as he began isolating pathways, tracing the bomb’s integration into their power systems.
“Can you disarm it?” Nick asked.
I have to, or we’re all dead.David’s mental voice held no room for alternative outcomes.Give me a minute to assess.
Nick positioned himself between David and the door—big brother instinct, even though no physical threat was likely to come through it. His role here was clear: protect David while he worked. Monitor the systems he could access through conventional means. Be the anchor while his brother dove deep into the machine.
The static Nick had felt earlier was louder now, sharper, like standing too close to a live wire. He pushed it aside, focusing on his tablet. Security feeds showed empty corridors, shuttered windows, the compound locked down tight. Power consumption was elevated but within acceptable parameters. The backup generator building showed normal operation, its systems balancing the load exactly as designed.
Everything looked fine.
Except for the bomb that could kill them all.
David had gone still, that peculiar vacancy that meant he wasn’t just reading the systems anymore but had plunged fully into them. His eyes were open but unseeing, fingers resting lightly on the panel’s surface. To anyone else, he might have looked catatonic. Nick knew better. David wasn’t looking at the system anymore. He was inside it.
Nick stood guard while David’s consciousness roamed elsewhere.
The wind hammered the building, and somewhere above them, something metallic shrieked. The lights flickered again, steadied. Nick checked the generator diagnostics—holding steady. The backup systems were doing their job, compensating for the failing main power from the mainland.
Found the trigger,David sent, the thought crystallizing through the static.It’s rigged to the load balancer. When we hit a specified draw?—
It blows.Nick finished the thought.How long?
Hard to say.David’s physical eyes refocused slightly, though most of his attention remained on the system.Storm’s intensifying faster than projected. Could be an hour. Could be twenty minutes.
What do you need from me?
Time.David’s hands moved to the panel, fingers tracing wiring paths with the confidence of someone who could feel the electricity flowing through them.And if I screw this up, you need to get everyone out of the staff building.
To where? There’s nowhere unconnected. Shit. Let me see what I can shut down to reduce draw.
Don’t worry. I won’t screw it up. Just buy me some time.
Nick felt a smile tug at his mouth despite the situation. David’s confidence wasn’t arrogance—it was competence, earned over years and sharpened by a gift that made him more machine than man when it mattered.
The generator’s pitch dropped, compensating for a surge in demand. Nick checked his tablet—someone in the staff building had activated additional climate control, probably trying to keep a server room stable. Normal operation, but it added to the load. Added to the pressure on a system David was trying to carefully, delicately, separate from a bomb.
