The next morning, the Ark smelled like fresh cinnamon rolls.
Catrin pulled a steaming tray out of her spatial dimension and set it on the marble kitchen island. She was exhausted. She hadn’t slept a wink after seeing the floating block in Nico’s room. Every time she closed her eyes, she pictured her four-year-old accidentally tearing the fortress apart in his sleep.
But her face showed none of it. Her expression was a perfectly smooth, unbothered mask.
The elevator pinged.
Quinn dragged herself into the living room, yawning loudly. She was wearing mismatched socks and a giant, fuzzy blanket draped over her shoulders like a cape.
"Is that sugar I smell?" Quinn mumbled, shuffling toward the island.
"Eat," Catrin ordered, sliding a plate toward her. "You have roof duty in an hour."
Quinn groaned but shoved a warm cinnamon roll into her mouth anyway. "Marry me, Catrin."
Graves was already in the kitchen, leaning against the stainless-steel fridge. He was methodically stripping and cleaning his heavy sidearm. He looked up, his scarred face serious.
"Morning, Boss," Graves said, snapping a clean magazine into his gun. "Jax has the perimeter. The temperature dropped another ten degrees last night. If any scavengers were thinking about hiking up here, the frostbite changed their minds."
"Good," Catrin said, pouring a cup of tea. "Where is Elias?"
"Right here!"
Elias practically tripped out of the stairwell, holding a tangle of wires and a half-eaten protein bar. He looked like he hadn’t slept either.
"I managed to bypass the fried grid in the maintenance corridor," Elias reported, dropping the wires on the floor. "But Boss, we have a tiny problem. The power surge knocked out a handful of the internal security cameras on Level Three. The old storage sectors are completely blind right now."
Catrin’s green eyes flashed. It was exactly what she needed.
"Leave them off," Catrin said smoothly.
Elias blinked. "Leave them off? But what about internal security?"
"Nobody goes down to Level Three anyway," Catrin reasoned, her voice calm and authoritative. "I want to turn Sector B into a private gym and meditation space. I don’t need you or Jax watching me do yoga on the monitors."
Graves chuckled low in his chest, holstering his gun. "Give the woman some privacy, Elias."
"Okay, okay, I get it," Elias held his hands up in surrender. "Sector B cameras will stay offline. Just don’t trip and break an ankle down there, because I won’t be able to see it."
"I don’t trip," Catrin said. She wiped her hands on a towel. "Graves, secure the main elevator. Keep everyone on this floor. I’m taking Nico downstairs for a bit."
"You got it, Boss," Graves nodded, stepping into the hallway to stand guard.
Thirty minutes later, Catrin and Nico took the elevator down to Level Three.
It was a massive, empty storage sector. The walls were bare titanium, and the floor was polished steel. There was absolutely nothing in the room except a few empty metal crates stacked in the corner.
Most importantly, the little red light on the ceiling camera was dead. They were completely alone.
"Mommy, where are the toys?" Nico asked, his voice echoing in the large room.
"We didn’t bring toys down here," Catrin said. She walked to the center of the room and sat cross-legged on the cold floor. She patted the spot in front of her. "Come sit with me."
Nico waddled over and plopped down, looking up at her with his big, innocent green eyes. The brown touch-up spray in his hair was holding strong.
Catrin took a deep breath. She had spent the entire night thinking about how to handle this. She needed to know what he could do, and more importantly, she needed to teach him how to hide it.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, heavy iron bolt she had grabbed from Elias’s workbench. She placed it on the floor between them.
"Nico," Catrin started gently. "I know a secret about you. I know you can make things move without touching them."
Nico stared at the iron bolt. He looked back up at Catrin, a little unsure. "I can?"
"I saw you do it," she smiled warmly, keeping her voice safe. "When Papa was here. You used magic."
Nico’s eyes widened. Four-year-olds loved magic. "Like a superhero?"
"Exactly like a superhero," Catrin agreed. "But superheroes have to practice. I want you to try and move this piece of metal. Just look at it, and tell it to float. Try to control it."
Nico leaned forward. He stared intensely at the iron bolt. He scrunched his face up, taking a deep breath and puffing his cheeks out. He pointed his chubby little fingers at it.
Nothing happened.
"It’s not moving," Nico pouted, crossing his arms.
"Try again," Catrin encouraged. "Focus on it."
Nico grunted. His face turned a little red. He was trying so hard, getting visibly frustrated that he couldn’t do the "magic" on command.
CRUNCH.
Catrin jumped.
The heavy iron bolt didn’t float. Instead, the polished steel floor directly underneath the bolt suddenly warped. It caved inward, groaning under a sudden, massive spike of invisible gravity.
"Mommy, I can’t do it!" Nico whined, his frustration peaking.
The gravity spike violently expanded. The heavy metal crates in the corner of the room crumpled like soda cans. Catrin felt her own chest tighten, struggling to pull air into her lungs as the air pressure in the room became agonizingly heavy.
"Nico, stop! Stop, it’s okay!" Catrin gasped, reaching out to grab his hands.
The second she touched him and offered comfort, the crushing pressure vanished. The room returned to normal.
Catrin coughed, rubbing her chest. She looked at the crushed crates, her heart pounding.
He can’t control it, she realized, a cold wave of dread washing over her.
She had thought she could teach him to turn it on and off, like flexing a muscle. But this wasn’t a human muscle. This was an alien reactor. She was a human mother trying to teach a bird how to fly when she didn’t even have wings herself. She had absolutely no idea how his biology worked.
"I’m sorry," Nico sniffled, tears welling up in his eyes. "I broke the boxes."
"No, baby, don’t cry," Catrin said quickly.
She needed a new theory. If frustration caused crushing gravity, what caused the floating blocks in his bedroom?
"Let’s try something else," Catrin said. She reached out and lightly tickled his sides.
Nico instantly burst into a fit of high-pitched giggles, squirming away from her fingers. "No, Mommy! Stop! It tickles!"
Catrin tickled him more, getting his adrenaline and joy spiking.
Nico laughed so hard he fell backward onto the floor. As he gasped for breath through his giggles, a sudden, joyful surge of energy rippled out of him.
The heavy iron bolt didn’t crush the floor this time. It shot straight up into the air like a rocket, slamming into the thirty-foot ceiling with a loud CLANG.
Catrin looked around. It wasn’t just the bolt.
The crushed metal crates were floating. A loose wrench on a far table was floating. Even Catrin felt her own hair lifting off her shoulders as the room lost its gravity entirely. It was beautiful, chaotic, and completely uncontrollable.
Nico sat up, giggling as he watched a loose screw drift past his nose.
Catrin watched the chaos, the final puzzle piece clicking into place.
She couldn’t train him. She couldn’t teach him to aim it, suppress it, or turn it off. His power was a raw nerve, entirely tethered to his emotional state.
Fear and Anger = Crushing Gravity.
Joy and Excitement = Zero Gravity.
The only way to keep the power dormant was to keep Nico completely, perfectly emotionally flat. He couldn’t throw tantrums. He couldn’t have wild fits of excitement. She had to manage his mood 24/7 if she wanted to hide him from the world.
Suddenly, the floating crates dropped. They slammed into the floor with a massive, echoing boom.
Nico slumped forward, his giggles cutting off as he yawned loudly. Using the power, even accidentally, drained his tiny body incredibly fast.
"I’m tired, Mommy," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
"I know, baby," Catrin said, scooping him up into her arms. He rested his head on her shoulder, his eyes already drooping shut. "You did great."
Catrin carried her sleeping son out of the ruined storage room. She locked the heavy titanium door behind her. She felt completely helpless. She was a billionaire who had prepared for everything, but she had no blueprint for this.
When the elevator doors slid open on the main residential floor, Graves and Quinn were standing there waiting for her.
Graves had his hand resting on his holstered gun, his posture rigid. Quinn was holding her modified rifle, and her face was deathly pale.
"Catrin," Quinn said, her voice tight and completely devoid of her usual sarcasm. "You need to hand Nico to Graves and come to the security hub right now. Jax and Elias are already in there."
"What’s wrong?" Catrin asked, tightening her grip on Nico. "Did Silas’s people come back?"
"No," Graves said, his deep voice grim. "It’s not scavengers."
"Elias just picked up a radio transmission," Quinn explained, pushing the door to the security hub open. "It’s a broadcast on an old military frequency."
"The grid is dead," Catrin frowned, stepping into the hub. "There are no military broadcasts."
"That’s the problem," Quinn said, pointing at the blinking console where Elias was desperately trying to clean up the static. "They aren’t speaking English. And whatever language it is... they’re broadcasting a direct coordinate ping for the Ark."