The tires of the black SUV screeched as Catrin took a sharp corner into the city’s deserted industrial district.
In the rearview mirror, Nico was happily kicking his feet, completely engrossed in a cartoon playing on his iPad. He didn’t have a care in the world.
Catrin’s Bluetooth earpiece beeped.
"Briar, you need to turn around," Graves said. His gruff voice was tight with panic. "The feds brought a whole convoy. They locked down the main access road to Hangar 7. There are armed guards on the perimeter."
"I see them," Catrin said calmly.
A quarter-mile down the road, two heavy armored transport trucks were parked diagonally, blocking the street. Men in black tactical gear and windbreakers were setting up concrete barricades.
"I’m sitting in an alley two blocks east," Graves hissed over the line. "The deal is a bust. If they catch us anywhere near that prototype, we’re doing twenty years for corporate espionage."
"Graves, do I sound like a woman who walks away from a three-billion-dollar investment?" Catrin asked.
"You sound like a woman who is about to get shot!"
Catrin ignored him. She pulled the SUV into the narrow alleyway behind a dilapidated brick warehouse and threw it into park. Graves, a scarred, burly man wearing a faded leather jacket, stepped out of the shadows. He looked terrified.
Catrin rolled the window down. "Get in the driver’s seat."
"What? No! I’m leaving!"
"You’re going to sit in this car, keep the engine running, and watch my son," Catrin ordered. Her voice left absolutely no room for debate. Her green eyes pinned him to the spot. "If anyone approaches this vehicle, you drive. If my son gets so much as a papercut while I am gone, I will make sure the feds are the least of your problems. Do we understand each other?"
Graves swallowed hard. He looked at the fierce, terrifying aura radiating from this woman in a designer blazer, then looked at the chubby toddler watching cartoons in the back seat.
"You’re insane," Graves muttered, but he walked around and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Catrin grabbed a sleek leather briefcase from the passenger side, stepped out of the SUV, and smoothed the wrinkles from her forest-green blazer.
"Mommy will be right back, baby," she called out softly.
"Okay, Mommy!" Nico chirped, not looking away from his screen.
Catrin turned on her heel and walked straight toward the military blockade. She didn’t sneak through the shadows. She didn’t hide behind dumpsters. She walked right down the center of the street, the sharp click of her heels echoing against the concrete.
As she approached the barricades, three federal agents instantly raised their rifles.
"Ma’am! Halt right there!" the lead agent barked, shining a high-beam flashlight directly into her face. "This is a restricted federal zone. Turn around."
Catrin didn’t stop until she was inches from the barricade. She raised a hand to block the glare, looking completely unimpressed.
"Lower the weapon before I have your pension revoked," Catrin said coldly. "Who is the commanding officer here?"
The agent blinked, thrown off by her absolute arrogance. Before he could respond, a tall, gray-haired man in a tactical vest stepped forward, lowering the agent’s rifle.
"I’m Special Agent Miller," he said, eyeing her up and down. "And you are trespassing. Who are you?"
"Catrin Vance," she lied smoothly, using the name she had shed just hours ago. "Senior Liquidator and shadow CEO for Vance Holdings. I assume you are here to seize Asset 409 in Hangar 7 due to the sudden liquidation of my ex-husband’s accounts."
Miller narrowed his eyes. "How did you know about the seizure?"
"Because I’m the one who tipped off the SEC about Julian’s embezzled funds," Catrin replied without missing a beat. "I’m also the one who knows you are about to make a catastrophic mistake."
"We have a federal warrant for the Project Ark prototype," Miller said firmly. "Your marital issues aren’t my problem, Mrs. Vance."
"My problem is that you brought plasma cutters," Catrin said, pointing at the heavy equipment the tactical team was unloading from a truck. "Project Ark isn’t a standard vehicle. It’s a fully automated, self-sustaining mecha-fortress powered by an experimental quantum core. If you breach those hangar doors and attempt a forced physical override, the base’s automated defense grid will assume it’s under hostile attack."
Miller frowned, glancing back at the massive steel doors of Hangar 7. "We have tech experts to bypass the locks."
"Julian Vance’s tech experts couldn’t even keep Halcyon Hotel Group’s servers online last week," Catrin scoffed, crossing her arms. "The Ark’s internal security was designed by a paranoid AI. If you cut that door, the core will trigger a self-destruct protocol. It will level this entire industrial block, and you will be the man who blew up a three-billion-dollar federal contract."
Silence hung heavily in the air.
Miller looked at his men, then back at Catrin. "You’re saying we can’t secure the asset?"
"I’m saying you need me to disarm it," Catrin said smoothly, tapping her leather briefcase. "I have the master decryption keys. Escort me inside, let me shut down the core, and then you can tow it away safely. Or, you can take a blowtorch to it and hope I’m bluffing. Your call, Agent Miller."
Miller stared at her for a long, tense moment. He pressed a hand to his earpiece, listening to an unheard voice. Finally, he nodded.
"You and me," Miller said. "Nobody else. You try anything stupid, and I’ll arrest you for obstruction."
"Lead the way," Catrin said, her face a mask of perfect boredom.
Inside, her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was improvising on a razor’s edge. If this failed, she would lose her safe zone and end up in federal prison while the apocalypse started.
Miller led her past the barricades, swiping a keycard to unlock the heavy side door of Hangar 7.
Catrin stepped into the cavernous, dimly lit space. Her breath hitched.
Sitting in the center of the hangar was Project Ark.
It was a masterpiece. A towering, three-story-high cube of pitch-black titanium and sleek, reinforced glass. It sat on massive, heavy-duty transport treads, designed to be mobile. It didn’t look like a bunker; it looked like a dormant, high-tech mountain. It was beautiful.
"Alright, Vance," Miller said, resting his hand on his holstered weapon. "Shut it down."
Catrin walked slowly toward the massive machine, her heels echoing in the massive space. She stopped right at the base of the left transport tread.
"The main control panel is on the rear thruster block," Catrin said, pointing toward the back of the massive mecha-fortress. "Agent Miller, I need you to verify the manual override switch is flipped to the ’neutral’ position before I plug in the decryption key. If it’s on ’active,’ the drive will fry."
Miller looked annoyed, but he didn’t want to risk blowing up a city block. He turned his back on her and started walking the fifty feet toward the rear of the machine, his flashlight sweeping the dark metal.
"It’s back here?" Miller called out, his voice echoing.
Catrin didn’t answer.
She took off her designer leather glove. She reached out and pressed her bare palm against the freezing cold titanium hull of the fortress.
This is going to drain me, she thought wildly.
Store!
Nothing happened.
Catrin gritted her teeth. The mecha-fortress was massive. It weighed thousands of tons. She pushed harder, digging deep into that humming warmth in her chest, demanding the space to open wider. She poured every ounce of her willpower into the connection.
STORE!
WHOOSH.
The displacement of air was violent. A massive gust of wind whipped through the hangar, knocking over a rack of tools and blowing Catrin’s reddish-brown hair wildly around her face.
In a fraction of a second, the towering, three-story black titanium fortress completely vanished.
Catrin stumbled forward, gasping for air. Her head spun dizzily, black spots dancing in her vision. The energy drain was intense, but it had worked. The hangar was completely, utterly empty.
"Hey!" Miller yelled from the back of the room.
He froze. He dropped his flashlight. It clattered loudly against the concrete floor.
He stared at the empty space where a three-billion-dollar, multi-ton mecha-fortress had been sitting three seconds ago. He looked up at the ceiling. He looked at the walls. His brain simply could not process what his eyes were seeing.
"What..." Miller choked out, his face turning pale. "Where is it? Where did it go?!"
Catrin didn’t stick around to explain physics to him.
She spun on her heel and bolted out the side door they had just come through.
"Hey! Stop!" Miller screamed, finally snapping out of his shock.
Catrin sprinted down the side of the building, her heels clicking frantically against the pavement. She turned the corner, ducking into the dark alley just as the federal agents at the barricade started yelling in confusion.
She reached the black SUV and yanked the passenger door open, throwing herself inside.
"Drive!" she gasped, clutching her chest.
Graves didn’t ask questions. He slammed his foot on the gas. The SUV tore out of the alley, tires squealing as they merged onto the main road, putting blocks between them and Sector 4 before the feds even realized they had lost the prize.
"Did you get it?" Graves asked, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror.
"I got it," Catrin breathed.
She leaned her head back against the leather seat and closed her eyes. She pictured the infinite white grid in her mind. Sitting right next to her iced coffee and eighty pallets of supplies was a sleek, black mecha-fortress. The quantum core was humming, safely isolated outside of time.
BZZZT.
Catrin opened her eyes. The SUV’s radio violently cut out, replaced by a blast of harsh static.
"What the hell?" Graves muttered, slapping the dashboard.
In the back seat, Nico’s cartoon froze. The iPad screen flickered, distorted by jagged lines of interference, before turning pitch black.
"Mommy, it broke," Nico pouted.
Catrin frowned. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her encrypted burner phone.
The screen was glitching wildly. Notifications were flooding in so fast they blurred together.
BREAKING NEWS: Global meteorological agencies report sudden, massive collapse in atmospheric pressure.
URGENT: NASA Observatory detects unprecedented cosmic energy ripple.
LIVE UPDATE: Unnatural auroras spotted in daytime skies across the northern hemisphere.
Catrin looked up. Through the tinted window of the SUV, the perfectly blue morning sky was... wrong. A faint, sickeningly violet aurora was bleeding across the clouds.
It was the Spore Aurora. The warning sign of the meteorites.
Catrin’s blood ran completely cold. The phone slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the floor mat.
In her past life, that violet light didn’t appear for another twenty-nine days. The timeline had shifted.
The quantum core, she realized, her heart slamming against her ribs.
By forcefully absorbing the mecha-fortress and its experimental energy core into her spatial dimension, she had sent a massive quantum ripple into the atmosphere. She hadn’t just stolen a bunker. She had accidentally set off a beacon.
The universe had noticed her. And the alien vanguard was accelerating its arrival.
She didn’t have thirty days.
Catrin did the brutal, terrifying math in her head. The timeline had fractured. The sky wasn’t going to burn in a month.
It was going to burn in fourteen days.
"Mommy, look!" Nico pointed a chubby finger at the violet sky, completely innocent to the death sentence hanging over them. "Pretty colors!"
Catrin swallowed the rising panic. She forced her expression to remain perfectly calm. She was not a victim anymore. If the universe wanted to cut her time in half, she was just going to have to spend her billions twice as fast.
"Graves," Catrin said, her voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm. "We’re out of time. Reroute us to the financial district. I need to buy a private security firm."