A subterranean pulse shattered the rural quiet. Like the lag time between injury and pain, a single sleeping field nestled among a dark landscape of similar plots erupted in a fountain of flaming debris.

The giant, smoldering crater, lanced with the twisted remains of the building beneath, caused a great deal of commotion until the head of the local police received a phone call from a man named Vihaan Dhar.

No one knew the facility existed. Perhaps no one would have ever found out.

CHAPTER ONE – LARKSPUR

An hour past midnight, Heather Knight heard a car pull up the driveway.

She jolted up from the couch and climbed onto her knees, shoving the curtains back and peering out the window behind. Her dad’s car sat in front of the garage, idling. Then the engine turned off, and the silhouette of its driver sat in darkness.

Long night just got longer, read the last text her mom had received from him two hours ago. Don’t wait up.

But Su-Wei had, and Heather had woken up to see light from the living room still seeping under her bedroom door, so even though it was a school night, she had waited too.

“Is it him?” Su-Wei asked from the adjacent couch.

Heather stared, eyes narrowed. “Yeah, he’s just sitting there.” She perked up. “No, wait, he’s getting out.”

He wandered up the walk, idly kneading his shoulder. The porch lights caught the edge of his glasses, first glinting off a jagged crack in the lens and then blooming across a bloody, bruising scrape on his face.

Heather pitched back. Her foot caught in the cushions and she nearly fell off the couch in her haste to get to the door. She unlocked the bolt and threw it open. “Dad, what happened?”

Richard balked in the doorway. He ran a hand through his short black hair. Stray pieces of dirt and grass fluttered to the doormat.

He stepped into the house, tried to put his keys in his pocket, but he kept missing. He squeezed them in his hand instead. Tightly. “Su, can we talk in the bedroom?”

Su glanced from him to Heather’s growing dismay, then shifted toward the hallway with an apprehensive nod. Richard sidestepped his daughter and ducked into the hallway as well, leaving Heather standing alone, aghast and betrayed.

Heather crossed her arms and leaned back against the front door.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she muttered to the empty entryway.

She waited for the muffled voices to start up, and then crept forward. She tucked herself into the nearby doorway of her bedroom, close enough to barely make out what her parents were saying.

“Please just tell me what happened,” her mother said.

A heavy sigh. Then, her father’s voice, hoarse and frazzled, “Larkspur exploded. Can you believe that?” He was further from the door. She heard the faucet turn on in their bathroom.

“Exploded?” Su gasped. “How?”

“Something happened with our generator prototype. We didn’t get a chance to figure out what before we had to evacuate.”

“Everyone got out safely?”

“Yeah. Just a few scrapes.”

“Scrapes from what?”

“Flying debris, but it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Look at that wound on your face. Your glasses! You mean you were that close to—what? An explosion? Was radiation involved?”

“I wasn’t that close—”

“I swear to god, Richard, stop downplaying this.”

“Well what am I supposed to do?” Richard cried. “Be brutally honest? Worry you even more?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it happened to you!”

Heather held her breath. Her heart pounded so hard she worried it would give her away.

Her parents never fought. Her mom swore when provoked, but Heather couldn’t remember ever seeing her dad upset. He never showed her that part of himself.

Unsettled, Heather stepped away from the doorframe. As she turned, she heard Su say, almost too quietly for her to make out, “Heather will piece this together by herself at this rate, and I don’t want her taking this into her own hands. I think our time’s run out.”

“I’ll tell her tonight.”

“She can do with a promise tonight. You need a minute to gather your nerves, at least.”

“It’ll be all over the news by morning.”

“Fuck.”

She heard movement behind the door, and Heather hastily took that as her cue to head back up the hallway and pretend she wasn’t a brazen eavesdropper. She couldn’t believe what was happening.

They were finally going to tell her.

+

James Siles stuck his hand into the darkness of his apartment, clumsily searching for the light switch.

Every muscle in his body hurt.

He thrust the door shut with his foot and kicked off his shoes. He smelled like smoke and earth. He was starting to feel the scrapes and bruises too, now that the panic was wearing off. His hip especially smarted.

He had never been good at running.

He dropped his lean frame onto the couch with a grunt and frowned up at the ceiling fan, watching its sluggish revolutions as he gently kneaded the pain in his upper arm.

His work was gone. His equipment, prototypes, the better portion of his most recent projects that had yet to undergo routine backups… The sketchbook he kept with him at all times had perished as well, along with his laptop, which he had been diligently upgrading and enhancing since the first day of graduate school.

Everything. Burned and buried.

James stretched his arms behind his head, wincing.

The matter-to-energy conversion generator had been electrochemically stable, and supplying ample, clean power to the entire underground building. That night was supposed to be the final vigil to see if their efforts to smooth minor snags in the design would hold true. It would have revolutionized the future of electrical infrastructure, if it had survived.

James had been calculating and recalculating the variables, but nothing about that night was adding up. The generator wasn't supposed to be explosive. The failure of the thermoregulatory system on its own was extremely unlikely, and under normal circumstances, the generator would have simply shorted itself out. Maybe a few lightbulbs and subsidiary circuits would have been blown out in the process, but certainly not anything near the annihilation of a ten thousand square foot facility.

The cooling system had to have been sabotaged, right? Along with a volatile foreign contaminant introduced to the generator's sensitive core. He had no proof, of course, but he knew it. What else could it have been?

Larkspur didn't seem to him the type of company to attract enemies. As part of his work contract, he had to keep details about his clandestine workplace to himself, but that was just protocol. Nothing about the organization or the other engineers had raised any red flags. James certainly hadn't worked there long enough to hear any dark secrets about why the lab was so far removed from the public eye—or why it was literally underground. He hadn't thought it important before.

Maybe Eve could lend some insight, as soon as Richard got a hold of her. James knew her as one of the engineering team, but she had co-founded Larkspur many years before, and had even been the director before Richard. If anyone knew if Larkspur was under fire, it would be her.

James dragged himself to his feet and stalked to the small kitchen to brew some tea. Listening to the electric kettle creak as it heated, he massaged his temple and contemplated his cache of herbs in the nearby cabinet.

Definitely peppermint.

+