He moved to the main console and pulled up the HVAC controls, initiating an override, shutting down all the systems except the primary that kept the control rooms cool. The staff could sweat.
Talk to me,Nick sent, keeping his mental voice calm.What are you seeing?
Beautiful work, actually.There was a thread of dark appreciation in David’s thought.Whoever designed this understands systems architecture. Knew exactly where to place it for maximum damage. The bombitself is almost secondary—it’s the electrical cascade that’s the real weapon.
David’s fingers hovered over a cluster of wires, not touching but mapping their connections through the tech-mage sense that let him feel voltage and current as naturally as Nick felt minds.There. That’s the primary trigger. Connected to the load monitor. When we hit ninety-five percent capacity?—
The building shuddered, a deep groan of stressed metal and concrete. The lights didn’t flicker this time, but the generators surged, feeding more power into the system. The load climbed—eighty-two percent, eighty-five.
We’re running out of time,Nick observed.Can we shut down the generators completely?
No. There’s a secondary trigger here that will blow if a generator shutdown is initiated.
Fabulous.
Yeah.David pulled a multi-tool from his pocket, extending a small wire cutter. His hands were perfectly steady.I need to isolate the trigger circuit. Sever it from the load monitor without disrupting the power flow to the rest of the building.
Can you do that?
About to find out.
David’s consciousness split—part of him still deep in the system’s digital architecture, while his physical hands worked with delicate precision. Nick watched, helpless to do anything but maintain the telepathic link and be ready to act if everything went sideways.
Through the link, he felt David’s absolute focus on the whisper-thin wire that connected the bomb’s trigger to the load monitor. Too much pressure and the wire would complete acircuit that would kill them all. Not enough and it wouldn’t sever cleanly.
David positioned the wire cutters, adjusting the angle by millimeters.On three,he sent.One…
The generator pitch changed. Load at eighty-eight percent.
Two…
Nick’s hands clenched on his tablet. Through the security feeds, he could see the storm intensifying, palm trees fully horizontal now, debris flying past cameras. The hurricane was at their doorstep.
Three.
The cutter closed with a soft snip that seemed impossibly loud in Nick’s ears.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then David pulled back, physically and mentally, his consciousness surfacing from the system’s depths.Got it. Trigger’s isolated.
The bomb?—
Still live, but it can’t detonate now. Not automatically, unless we shut down the generators. I still need to disrupt that trigger.David was already opening a different panel, hands moving with renewed confidence.I need to discharge the capacitor, make it completely safe. But the hard part’s done.
Nick's shoulders loosened. He pulled up diagnostics on his tablet again, checking systems. Everything was stable—or as stable as it could be with a Category Four hurricane trying to tear the building apart. Generator building operating normally. Main building secure. Staff building?—
His frown deepened. “Power consumption in the staff building is higher than projected.”
How much higher?
“Ten, maybe fifteen percent. Could just be climate control running harder against the storm, but—” It nagged at him. Another wrong note in a day full of them.
David worked in silence for another two minutes, his movements precise and unhurried now that the ticking clock had been stopped. Finally, he sat back on his heels and closed the panel.
“Done,” he said aloud, the first spoken words since Nick had arrived. “Bomb’s inert. We should still treat it like active ordnance until we can get it properly disposed of, but it’s not going to blow.”Yo, Zach.
“Good work.” Nick meant it. David had just saved everyone on the island.
