Life gets simpler when sleep is more common. At least, that’s how Damien felt on the morning before his final check with the Arcane Council. All his mind could gear towards was a successful demonstration of his latest pet project. It felt like, no matter how many 28 minute naps he took, he just couldn’t recover that last bit of himself he needed to feel like he was in any kind of control. Problem was, the BruceCorp R&D research was coming to a head. After nearly 4 years of dedicated effort, R&D was finally going to earn their place in the big leagues. Even in this state, there was only one thing he seemed able to focus on.

  Damien bent over slightly and listened closely. Each noise of the machine was a report of the functionality. Every clack, tick, and hum was a log of the running effectiveness of the grand design. That said, the intermittent hiss-scrape of the back of the motor cowl wasn’t a noise Damien was expecting to report back to him. As he sat there anticipating, he held his hand up to the operator.

  ”How’s it looking, kiddo?” Came the grizzled workman’s voice of Garret, the senior operator. Damien always valued his dark-haired middle aged friend for his easy demeanor, calm assessment, and simple yet professional approach to the problems their many projects together always seemed to have.

  ”Give it… another thirty minutes to warm up, Garret. It still doesn’t sound like it should.” Damien said to the great displeasure of the entire department.

  “For fuck’s sweet sake, Mister Damien! We’ve been waiting here to see this big development you people keep talking about…”

  The complaint bounced off the concrete chamber walls, thin with impatience.

  Damien didn’t look up from the open rail assembly. One knee braced against the metal frame while he leaned deep into the exposed housing, tightening a coupling with slow, deliberate pressure. The wrench gave a dull metallic click as the fitting settled.

  Above him, the observation gallery stretched along the chamber wall — a clean ribbon of glass and polished steel. Board members and inspectors leaned along the railing like spectators waiting for a performance to begin.

  The Director’s voice carried easily through the chamber speakers.

  “Patience,” he said mildly. “Bruce demonstrations have always preferred a dramatic entrance.”

  A ripple of restrained laughter passed through the gallery.

  Damien wiped his hand on the rag tucked into his belt and reached for the probe without acknowledging the balcony.

  Damien tried to ignore the observation deck, walking over to his tool chest. As he rifled through the drawers, he could feel the building tension as the employees around him watched in exasperated impatience. He knew this machine, and he knew it well. The aft housing was dwarven-forged — conservative tolerances, overbuilt to the point of insult, and therefore the only component in the assembly he trusted implicitly. Still… That noise wasn’t normal, and worse yet, THEY knew it too. He refused to be left out to dry this time. He went through the drawers one at a time.

  First, electronic instruments. multimeter, wattmeter, megohm meter, oscilloscope. Nope.

  Second, sockets, wrenches, taps and dies; all sized for the project. Not yet, at least.

  Third, the hinge tools. Slip-joint, strippers, crimpers, and needle nose neatly arrayed. No again.

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  Fourth, the binding tools. A Bag Torch, soldering iron, braising torch, rose bud, Arcanum joiner, flux, aether flux. Nah.

  Fifth, the thaumic measuring equipment. Flux wrench, resonance probe, aether compensator and repeater, and thaumic calibrator. All finely shined and “Orion instruments” labels facing up. Hmmm.

  Sixth, Damien got all the way to his manuals and schematics before he closed the drawer and went back to the drawer above and pulled out the resonance probe and leads. As he did, he heard the blond gentleman in the advisors mezzanine grumbling something to VP of Operations about “excessive risk mitigation.”

  Garret’s voice crackled in Damien’s headset.

  “Probe’s steady,” the older technician said quietly. “Ignore them. Half the board thinks the Bruce kid walks in here once a week and collects a miracle.”

  Damien slid the probe into the housing port and watched the instrument needle settle.

  “Voltage stable,” he said.

  “Good work, boss,” Garret replied, obviously relieved. “Because that balcony thinks you’re about to pull a rabbit out of the machine.”

  ”I don’t know what to tell you, sir, Thaumotechnology isn’t very forgiving when you throw caution to the wind and just ‘test’ equipment with possible flaws like this. I’d appreciate it if you let us do our jobs unimpeded.”

  “Easy, kid. That’s the new Director of Compliance and Regulatory Oversight. Maybe don’t start fires with him before you’re even introduced” came Garret’s voice in the headset hanging around Damien’s neck.

  “One… last check, Garrett. I want to make sure the thaumic core is still copesthetic. That rasp has me really worried. You KNOW it wasn’t there last night.”

  ”I get it, son. It’s smart to be cautious, but just make sure you’re keeping a paper trail of this stuff. If this goes tits up, you don’t want them to think they can even begin to point a finger at you.”

  Damien nodded, leaned into the Thaumic pad, pressed the release on the dust cover and opened the lid. After screwing the leads onto the aether and vortex points of the test pad, he turned on the probe. Waiting, he watched a small blue sigil begin pulsing in the display window. One one-thousand two one-thousand three one-thousand… The pulse was right except one lull in the middle left section of the sigil.The Director’s voice returned, calm and conversational.

  “Just remember, Mister Damien,” he said. “Today we’re demonstrating controlled progress.”

  A small pause followed.

  “Not proving a point.”

  Another murmur moved through the gallery.

  Damien finally stood, wiping his hands once more before stepping back from the rail assembly. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms, grease faintly staining the cuffs.

  He gave the machine one last look.

  Not the observers.

  “Let’s run it.”

  Garret chuckled softly in Damien’s ear.

  “Now that sounds like the Damien I know.”

  The railgun roared to life.

  Energy flooded the chamber rails in a rising metallic scream, the containment field flaring pale gold along the firing channel. Instruments across the control board sprang into motion, needles climbing through their calibrated arcs.

  The observation gallery leaned forward behind the glass.

  Garret’s voice sounded sharp in Damien’s headset.

  “Charge climbing. Thirty percent.”

  Damien watched the diagnostic panel.

  Thirty-two.

  Thirty-four.

  The numbers were perfect.

  Too perfect.

  A faint tremor ran through the rail assembly beneath his hand — not violent, not unstable. Just… wrong. The vibration carried a rhythm the diagnostic suite wasn’t reporting.

  Damien glanced at the waveform monitor.

  The line was clean.

  Cleaner than it should have been.

  Garret spoke again.

  “Forty percent.”

  The diagnostics said everything was stable.

  Damien’s gut said they were lying.

  Above him, the Director’s voice carried lightly through the chamber.

  “Excellent progress, Mister Damien.”

  A few of the board members nodded approvingly.

  The machine screamed louder.

  For a single heartbeat Damien hesitated.

  If he stopped the test now, the board would crucify him.

  If he didn’t—

  The vibration hit again.

  Decision made.

  Damien reached for the lever.

  Garret noticed first.

  “Damien—?”

  Damien pulled it.

  The railgun died instantly.

  The chamber fell into a silence so abrupt it rang in the ears.