For the first time since he arrived in Pine Hollow, Wendell Hayes smiled like a man who had found not just an invention, but a war he was finally willing to fight.
But before he could speak, his laptop chimed from the dark kitchen table.
The screen lit up on backup power.
A new email had arrived from Mara.
Subject: YOU NEED TO SEE THIS BEFORE MORNING.
Attached was a video file.
Wendell clicked play.
The grainy footage showed the Georgia test site four years earlier. Men in hard hats. A battery room. A warning alarm. Caleb Tate standing in front of a control panel, shouting for the test to stop.
Then the camera angle shifted.
A younger Elliot Lawson stepped into frame.
Beside him stood another man.
Wendell leaned closer.
The blood drained from his face.
Because the man standing next to Lawson, watching Caleb Tate beg them to shut the system down, was Wendell’s own younger brother.
And in the video, his brother was smiling.
