Massive Disaster II-1

  The shuttle juddered under Nina's hands as she brought it down, stabilizers kicking up enough dust to coat half the landing pad. Piece of shit rental. Her fingers moved across the controls without much thought - muscle memory from too many supply runs to count. The lake stretched out ahead of her like some extranet tourism ad, waves smashing against the cliff face hard enough to send spray thirty feet up.

  The house sat there like a slap in the face.

  Sharp angles. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Some architect's wet dream of what "modern living" looked like three hundred light years from Earth. The kind of place that screamed money loud enough to make her teeth hurt.

  The thrusters died with a wheeze that didn't sound healthy, leaving behind the kind of silence that made her skin crawl. Providence sprawled out in the distance, a joke of a city compared to New Abraham.

  Half the people, none of the energy.

  No militia patrols with their boots hitting metal walkways, no market crowds yelling prices in three different languages, no constant hum of actual colony life. Just wind whipping off the water and the distant rumble of farm equipment pushing through fields.

  Nina unstrapped herself, boots hitting the pad with enough force to rattle her teeth. The walk to the front door felt like it took forever, each step giving her more time to hate everything about this place.

  The whole building gleamed in the sunset like it was fresh off the assembly line, perched on the edge of the cliff like it was daring gravity to try something. Two stories of sharp angles and pristine white composite that probably cost more than her family would see in three generations. The windows were everywhere, stretching from floor to ceiling, but the smart-glass was tinted dark enough that she couldn't see shit inside.

  Typical. Even his house had to play keep-away.

  Two months since they'd handed him the keys to this place - their idea of a "reward" for saving the colony. But Nina knew exactly what it really was.

  Zedd knew what it was.

  That blue-eyed puta who kept hovering around him like a lost puppy probably knew what it was too.

  A bribe.

  Their way of keeping the "hero" where they could see him. Where he couldn't make waves.

  Nina tugged at her collar as she walked, the synthetic fabric catching on her work-rough fingers. Her eyes traced over the building again, taking in how the composite walls reflected everything like a mirror. Too perfect, too polished against the raw rock underneath. Just like him - one second you thought you could see straight through, the next all you got was your own face staring back.

  Governor Shen-Abraham wasn't stupid, Nina had to give her that much. New Abraham had been this close to looking completely inept. The militia hadn't totally failed but... ?A quién enga?amos? Stuck downtown with dead comms, skeleton crew at home base, barely getting their shit together before it all ended? Not a good look.

  Not their fault exactly, but it looked real bad when some pendejo riding combat stims took out half the raiders by himself.

  So now Zedd was their Hero of New Abraham.

  Or that's what the governor wanted everyone calling him. Too bad the colony feeds and every news outlet from here to Earth had picked something else.

  Engineer of Death.

  Nina had seen the footage like everyone else, hand pressed against her mouth, eyes wide enough they felt like they'd pop out of her head. She couldn't say the name didn't fit. Mierda, she wished it didn't. But after watching him turn half a street into scrap metal and the other half into a graveyard...

  She forced out a breath, shoulders tight as she reached the door. Before she could even touch the handle, the system scanned her face, lock clicking open with a soft whir that reminded her too much of service drones.

  "Welcome, Nina Herra," the VI's empty voice greeted her, accent-neutral and hollow.

  She'd never stepped foot in here before. Not once since he got the place, too busy with all the extra work at the Hub. Because of course the bosses were suddenly interested in expanding the systems and it’s capacity, and of course, putting down new fucking shielding. Because yeah, do that after the raid, idiots!

  Still, the security system knew her face, had her name ready to go like she belonged here or something.

  Nina walked in.

  And blinked.

  Yeah. This is exactly the kind of place he'd pick.

  Too big. Way too big for just one person.

  But isolated.

  Far enough from Providence that people couldn't stare. Couldn't whisper. Couldn't try to thank him while looking anywhere but his face.

  The entry opened up into nothing but space and air, living room bleeding straight into the horizon. Ocean spread out everywhere she looked, deep and endless. The silence pressed in from all sides, making her ears ring.

  Nina flexed her fingers at her side, feeling like a kid lost in the Arcology again.

  The air hit cold enough to make her shiver - climate control keeping everything perfect and sterile like a hospital room. Probably used to that after a month and a half on his ass in one of those beds. Her boots barely made noise on the floors as she walked, polished surface eating the sound.

  No mess anywhere. No half-finished cans of Silas-Cola scattered around, no spare parts dumped next to takeout containers, no actual signs of life. Wasn't like Zedd was messy exactly - his chaos always had a point, work scattered around like he was solving some giant puzzle only he could see. But this place...

  This was just empty.

  Not lived-in. Just... existing.

  "Zedd!" Her voice bounced back at her, sharp against all the nothing.

  Silence.

  She blew out a breath, already rolling her eyes as she picked up on the bass vibrations coming from below. Should've known.

  Of course the weirdo was hiding in his workshop like some kind of tech hermit. Place had two whole floors of actual living space, a lounge that caught the sunset, balcony view rich people would murder for. But Zedd - absolute maniac that he was - had to be underground in that massive basement, probably covered in grease and doing who knows what with whatever pile of parts he'd gotten his hands on this time.

  Nina moved quick down the stairs, boots hitting metal as the soundproofing started to crack. Whatever he was blasting down there was old.

  Like, pre-War old.

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  She caught the end of some drum sequence before the next track hit, almost tripping as the sound wave hit her ears wrong. No neural pulse running through it, no mass effect harmonics - just raw sound hitting her ears like she was listening through ancient tech.

  The voices kicked in and Nina's steps slowed. No emotion-sync processing, not even basic VI enhancement.

  Just human voices, raw and animal, chanting about having a "good night" like it was the most important thing in the universe. No haptic feedback, no spatial elements - just pure Earth celebration from back when humanity thought the sky was the limit. Guy's basically a grandpa sometimes, I swear.

  Nina didn't bother knocking as she finally hit the bottom of the stairs and walked up to the tinted glass. If the front door recognized me...

  Nina slapped her hand on the panel. It whirred open just like before.

  She blinked.

  The lab hit her like a slap in the face - everything the sterile house above wasn't trying to be.

  Workbenches everywhere, cables hanging off chairs like dead snakes, machines torn open with their guts spilled across every surface. Holo-screens flickered in the dim light, endless streams of diagnostics scrolling by faster than she could track. The air tasted like burned metal and ozone, that distinct fried-circuit smell that meant someone was pushing tech way past what it was meant to handle. Reminded her of the maintenance tunnels back in Miami, where the techs would jerry-rig colony hand-me-downs until they screamed.

  And there in the middle of it all, hunched over a worktable like some tech-obsessed goblin - her man.

  A month. Not even two. Nina's eyes swept the controlled chaos, catching on what looked like half a mining mech's arm mounted on some kind of test rig. How the hell did he get all this stuff down here?

  New goggles, sleeker than his old pair, pushed up on his head. Sleeves shoved past his elbows, hands moving quick and sure over something that looked important. His omni-tool cast everything in harsh blue light, interface flickering as he adjusted whatever device had captured his attention this time.

  Some kind of compact module. Didn't look like any tech she recognized, which was saying something considering she fixed half the colony's equipment on a good day.

  "Jesus Christ, Zedd. You ever check your messages?"

  Nothing. Not even a twitch.

  She narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms. "Hey. King Dick of Junk Mountain. Your assistant's been trying to reach you all morning. Could be important."

  Still radio silence. He just kept working, head tilted like he was listening to something only he could hear. The music drowned everything else out, distorted beats setting her teeth on edge.

  Alright, enough.

  Nina walked up and slapped her hand down on the console. The music cut mid-riff, silence rushing in like a physical thing.

  Zedd finally looked up, blinking slow like she'd yanked him out of cryo-stasis sleep. Something about his eyes seemed distant, like his brain was still halfway into whatever problem he'd been solving.

  "Wow," she drawled. "It actually knows how to move."

  The eighteen-year-old pushed his goggles up, running fingers through that dark mess he called hair. Dios mío, when was the last time he even looked at a brush?

  "You know me." His voice came out rough, like he hadn't used it in hours. Probably hadn't. "Like it quiet when I work."

  "Yeah?" Nina pushed off from the doorframe. "Know what else is quiet? Your damn omni-tool. What if your assistant needed something actually important?"

  His mouth twitched up into that smirk she knew too well. "Then she can leave a message with my girlfriend."

  Nina leveled him with a dead stare, picking her way around what looked like a dissected shuttle engine. "What if both your assistant and your girlfriend wanna kick your ass right about now?"

  "Then," Zedd grinned wider, eyes glinting with something that was a perfect mix between mischief and pure ego, "they're both gonna miss out on all this."

  "Pendejo." Nina snorted, fighting down a smile as she caught sight of more cobbled-together tech. Her eyes landed on something that looked suspiciously like a gutted mining laser crossed with... with… she didn’t even know? "Lucky you're cute enough to get away with it."

  "That's my line, short stuff."

  She rolled her eyes but let herself smirk, perching on the edge of a mostly-clear workbench. A datapad slid off onto the floor with a clatter. "So what's the big project got you hiding down here today? Better be good considering you're ghosting everyone."

  Something flickered across his face - that cold, analytical look he got when he was calculating how much to dumb things down. Like he had to translate genius into normal people speak. Then it vanished under his usual confident mask, buried so quick she almost missed it.

  "Alternative applications for kinetic barriers."

  "Right." Nina kicked her legs, deliberately bumping a pile of scrap. "And without being a vague weirdo about it?"

  Zedd's shoulders rolled back, barely containing his need to show off. That familiar light hit his eyes, the one that meant he was about to go full nerd on her. "Okay, so - you know how space isn't actually empty, right?” He paused, shooting her a glance to make sure they were on the same page here.

  Nina bit down the words on the tip of her tongue. How stupid does he think I am? We worked the same job. “Yeah, I passed bridge core at 13, just like everyone else.”

  He nodded, not seeming to notice the edge in her tone as he went right back into his explanation with a slight grin. “Great! So there’s vacuum energy, background fluctuations, quantum stuff everywhere. What I'm doing - what I think I'm doing 'cause nobody's really mapped this out - is dampening those fluctuations in specific spots. Creating controlled differences in zero-point energy density. Which, in practical terms, means it’s basically soft-shaping vacuum into something with structure, something that can push and pull without actually touching anything. Still with me?"

  Nina opened her mouth. Shut it again. What did he just...

  Zedd caught her confusion and started pacing, practically bouncing on his feet as he moved. The way his hands flew around while he talked reminded her way too much of those ancient vids of crazy scientists. "Okay, look - you know how air pressure works, right? High always moves to low, basic shit. This works the same way, but with quantum vacuum states instead. When I suppress vacuum energy in one spot, it creates this natural gradient that stuff just wants to follow. No weird exotic matter, no graviton generators, none of that theoretical physics crap people waste time on. Just local differences in the quantum vacuum's zero-point energy at the smallest scale I can manage."

  He spun back to face her, eyes lit up. "The module makes these 'hills' and 'valleys' in the vacuum energy field. Anything caught inside either rolls or stays put, depending on how I set it up."

  What the actual fuck is he even...

  Nina's eye twitched. Her brain felt like it was trying to process algebra in Spanish - technically possible but painful as hell.

  "Here, watch -" He made this rolling motion with his hands like he was mimicking the waves outside his balcony. The excitement practically radiated off him with tangible force. "Right now I'm doing it the simple way - brute force, caveman style. Can't fine-tune it perfect yet, no fancy dynamic field shaping, but the basic function works fine. Push things, pull things, keep them still. Like a water tap, except instead of controlling water pressure, I'm redirecting the quantum substrate that literally everything in the universe sits on. Simple."

  The silence stretched between them like someone had hit pause on reality.

  Zedd finally looked up from his hands, that manic energy faltering as he caught her expression.

  Nina just stared at him, brow scrunched up tight, mouth hanging open slightly as her brain tried its best to restart.

  "Okay, maybe not that simple," he admitted, scratching the back of his head. His other hand tapped nervously on the workbench, creating this weird rhythm against the metal.

  "Ya think?" She shook her head at him, fighting down a laugh that was half confusion, half hysteria. "Babe, I’m a junior tech. I patch up wires and monitor panels all day. We can't all be crazy genius boys playing mad scientist in basement labs."

  He sighed, all dramatic like some actor in those old vids he loved, but scooted his chair back anyway so she could see what he'd been hunched over this whole time. "Fine, fine. Meet the Gravitational Resonance Induction Projector. GRIP for short. Figured that sounded better than … fucking ‘kinesis module’."

  The device sitting on his workbench looked tiny - could've fit in her jumpsuit pocket with room to spare. Nothing bigger than her palm. But when he flicked it on, it let out this soft hum that made her teeth vibrate, followed by crackling blue-white energy that danced across the surface like lightning in miniature.

  Nina raised an eyebrow. "It looks pr-"

  Then Zedd picked it up and twisted his wrist.

  And the metal sheet in front of him - just some random scrap he'd been using for tests - lifted straight off the table and hung there in the air like someone had forgotten to tell it about gravity.

  No element zero. No mass effect fields. Just... floating.

  Nina's stomach dropped straight through the floor.

  Zedd's grin stretched wide enough to split his face in half.

  "Anti-grav tech," he said, somehow managing to sound even more smug than usual. "No mass effect fields. No eezo. No biotic bullshit needed."

  The sheet of metal just stayed there, hanging steady in mid-air like gravity had decided to take a coffee break.

  Nina's mouth opened. Closed.

  She blinked hard.

  "What the hell?"