“Stop messing with it,” a familiar voice—his sister’s?—piped up. “You’re gonna break it!”

“I’m not gonna break it,” he heard himself snap back, his own tone carrying a little edge.

“Holo’s acting funny already,” another voice cut in. His dad. rough but steady, with that low timbre that always shut down the room without him raising it… and frightened everyone when he did. “If it fries, we're getting a new car. I'm tired of this one.”

There was a flicker of annoyance in his mom’s face. Lips pressed tighter, and her knuckles whitened slightly on the steering wheel.

“Not right now,” she muttered.

Barely loud enough to hear, but Zedd caught it.

His sister leaned forward, sunlight catching the beads in her braids as she adjusted the display with a touch that was way too skilled for her age. Zedd opened his mouth, probably to tell her off for showing him up, but then—

Something shifted.

The hum in the car went deeper, lower, vibrating against his skin.

“Mom?” his voice sounded strange. Thick.

The air sharpened with static, prickling at the edges of his senses.

“Hold on,” dad said sharply, but the words barely registered before it happened.

A surge of blue exploded outward, swallowing everything before he could bli—

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

His breath caught as he jolted upright, pulse hammering against his ribs as lightning lit his cabin from the single window. His fingers clenched reflexively at the fabric under them, pulling it taut. The rumble of distant thunder pressed against his ears, low and steady, grounding him back in the dark room.

Even with two suns, this planet managed to have long nights.

He dragged in a shaky breath, wiping at his face, damp with sweat.

Dreams. Always like that. Ever since he had woken up in this weird low-rent Star Trek future.

But the blue...the energy...that part stuck.

It always stuck.

Weird. Both lives, so much time in hospitals. He turned over on the bed, the hum of the colony seeped back into his awareness, thrumming in his bones. The teenager exhaled, leaning back against the cold wall.

No point in thinking about it. The memories wouldn’t come anyway. He didn’t want them to. His heart pounded like it wanted out. Stupid storm.

His breath hitched, shallow and fast, before he forced it deeper, slower.

In, out. Focus.

The low hum of the colony's systems vibrated faintly in his bones, but something about it felt...off.

The rhythm wasn’t right.

It hit wrong—too uneven, too tense, like it had somewhere else to be. It wasn’t just the storm; no way. This was something else. His pulse didn’t let up, though, pounding against his ribs as thunder grumbled through the prefab walls.

A sharp, shrill beep cut through the room like a knife, shattering the moment. His omnitool lit up on the table next to his bed, the faint glow spilling across his knuckles as he reached for it and slid the band across his wrist.

Call: Elias Colburn.

Thumb swipe.

The channel opened with a crackle, interference doing it’s part. “Victors. Get to the main generator hub. Now.” Even still, Colburn’s voice came through clipped, sharp.

No hello, no explanation. Just orders.

The edge in his tone crawled under Zedd’s skin. Not good.

He clicked his tongue. Fuck.

“On my way,” he muttered, his voice low, groggy. His legs swung off the cot almost by reflex, bare feet hitting the cold floor with a soft thud. For half a second, his brain refused to catch up. Then the pieces started falling into place, rough but functional.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, the scrape of calloused skin against his smooth jaw grounding him, anchoring him in the here and now. The storm outside threw flashes of light across the prefab walls, uneven and harsh.

Static crawled at the edges of his awareness, sticking to his skin like a bad idea.

His jacket was already slung over the back of the chair by the door. He grabbed it on the way out, shoving his arms into the sleeves without breaking stride as the door whirred and locked shut behind him. The air hit him hard as soon as he stepped outside—sharp, cold, alive. The storm had the colony streets in its grip, whipping debris along the ground and shaking anything that wasn’t bolted down. The wind yanked at his jacket as he zipped it up, clawing at the fabric like it was trying to peel him bare.

The transport hovered nearby, its lights barely cutting through the haze of rain and wind. Zedd jogged toward it, boots splashing against the slick pavement, and ducked into the vehicle before the door slid shut behind him. He barely had time to grab the nearest handrail before it lurched forward, the sudden acceleration pressing him back against the seat.

The prefab rooftops blurred past as the vehicle picked up speed, the lights flickering unevenly in the distance. Lightning danced along the horizon, illuminating the storm-wracked colony for split seconds that felt too long and too short at the same time. The air inside the transport buzzed faintly, filled with the low hum of the engine and the steady drumming of rain against the metal shell.

He gripped the rail tighter, fingers flexing unconsciously. The dream still clung to him, thick and sticky, like trying to shake off a spider web.

Doesn’t matter. Not now.

The thought stuck, echoing louder than the storm outside.

He’d figure it out later. Always later.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The transport groaned to a halt, doors shuddering open as Zedd stepped out into the storm, wind slicing past him sharp enough to sting. Rain was still holding back, but the air carried that metallic tang it always did, like it was teasing. Clouds twisted above, lightning carving bright lines into the dark, their light flickering against the prefab buildings.

The generator hub crouched ahead, wide and squat like someone had dumped a giant steel junction box in the middle of the colony.

Zedd’s fingers tightened around his toolkit. His pulse was quick, not panicked but pushing, matching the distant grumble of thunder rolling across the skyline.

Focus. No time for anything else.

His boots scuffed against wet pavement as he walked to the sliding doors, the storm tugging at his jacket like it was trying to pull him back. The doors hissed open just before he reached them, a sound way too clean for the dirt streaked across their frame as the wind picked up.

He stepped inside, and the noise hit like a wall.

Alarms screamed, so loud they felt physical, pressing against his skull. Red emergency lights pulsed in a rhythm that didn’t match anything—too fast, too uneven. His eyes adjusted quick, locking on the scene: workers rushing between consoles, voices overlapping as they barked half-finished orders or just plain shouted over the chaos.

The air was heavy, thick with ozone and the tang of machinery on the edge of giving out.

His eyes snapped to the far wall, where a bank of massive monitors lined up in neat, angry rows. Diagnostics scrolled across the screens, sharp numbers that glowed hot red against the black.

Fast.

Too fast.

He caught flickers—spikes, dips, fluctuations—but none of it lined up.

Something’s wrong. No, worse than wrong.

“Victors!”

The voice cut through the noise as Zedd’s head jerked toward it, spotting Elias near the main console. The man looked like he hadn’t slept in a week—broad shoulders hunched, lines carved deep into his face, the tension in his posture obvious even from across the room.

Zedd moved toward him, threading through the chaos with quick, sure steps. He almost collided with a guy hauling a crate of equipment, but the guy shifted at the last second, muttering something that Zedd didn’t catch.

“What's going on?” he asked as he reached the console.

Elias glanced up, barely sparing him a second before turning back to the monitor. “Backup systems are failing,” he said, the words leaving his mouth like a dog biting at air. “Main generator’s output’s all over the place. Half our subsystems about to go off like a faulty eezo core.”

Zedd’s mouth turned down into a deeper frown, leaning closer to the console as he screened all of the data in front of him: jagged patterns, spiking and crashing with no rhythm. Like a heart monitor on an arrhythmia patient.

He frowned a half-second later, memories of his dad coming back. Really, a doctor in both lives, huh? Is the multiverse lazy?

The old man shook his head, jaw tight as he spoke through gritted teeth. “Arkadia’s got a fast rotation, high axial tilt, semi-volatle orbit and a patchy magnetic field what with the two fucking suns doing their bull shit.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Zedd blinked, the factors locking down in his head almost immediately. “Oh…”

Elias let out a sigh. “Yeah… not exactly the biggest thing we tell new colonists, because it usually ain’t that big a deal. But electrical storms are a bitch to deal with and this is a motherfuck of a biggun’. Storm’s frying everything. if we don’t stabilize soon...” He didn’t finish, didn’t need to.

Zedd fought the urge to snort. Not the time.

Instead, the teenager clicked his teeth again, the one tic he allowed himself showing out. “...so, we’re fucked, huh?”

Elias let out a laugh that held as much humor as his face showed. “Yeah… if we don’t pull off a fix. We’re fucked.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The generator’s hum shifted, dropping into a low, guttural vibration that hit Zedd square in the chest. The sound wasn’t just noise; it was pressure, the kind you felt more than heard. It reminded him of the way a building creaked before it gave out, heavy and wrong.

Then came the first alarm.

Sharp. Shrill.

Cutting through the control room’s chaos like it wanted to make things worse. Red emergency lights strobed, painting the cramped space in quick, uneven flashes. Shadows stretched and twisted across the walls and the workers’ faces, making the tension in the room feel alive.

“That's bad,” someone muttered, their voice too quiet to pin down.

Understatement of the year.

Zedd’s eyes snapped to the central monitor, yellow text flashing against the black: UNSTABLE SYSTEM FUNCTION DETECTED. INABILITY TO COMPENSATE. CONDUIT OVERLOAD LIKELIHOOD… It flickered, just for a second, before going red.

Bright, angry red.

IMMINENT.

…fuck.

Another alarm joined the first as well as the one going off in his head as Zedd felt his eye twitch from the thought of going up in the biggest of booms not even two full Earth months after leaving the fucking planet in the first place. What else could go wrong?

Just like that, the room tilted into chaos like someone had flipped a switch.

Crew scattered, hands flying across consoles, tools clattering against the metal floor as someone knocked over a kit. Boices tangled together—status reports, orders, cursing—and Zedd caught maybe half of it.

“Full system imbalance!” one of the techs yelled, loud enough to cut through the mess.

Elias moved fast, his boots slamming against the floor, his whole frame radiating this barely-contained fury. “Damn it,” he growled, slamming his fist down on the console hard enough to rattle it. “If we can't get this down,” he snapped, not looking at anyone, “the whole grid’s going down. Nina, where’s my backup status?”

The comm crackled before a woman’s voice—Nina, definitely, he’d remember that voice anywhere by now—cut in. “Auxiliary’s online, but it’s barely holding. Power’s surging across multiple lines. We need stabilization now.”

Zedd’s hand tightened around the strap of his toolkit, his knuckles going white. The monitors screamed instability, rows of numbers jumping in ways that didn’t make sense. He tracked them, quick, instinctively tracing the patterns as they spiked and crashed, but they didn’t line up with a simple surge.

Not a regular one, anyway.

Something was off. Wait…

“The conduits aren’t the problem,” he said before he even realized he was speaking. His voice wasn’t loud, but it landed, enough to make Elias stop and look at him.

The older man’s eyes were sharp, cutting, like he was daring Zedd to waste his time.

Zedd's stomach went cold as his brain and gut met. “The regulator,” he said, his voice firming up. “It's failing.”

Elias didn’t blink, but the tension in his jaw ratcheted up a notch. “You sure about that, spacer?”

Zedd hesitated. not because he doubted himself, but because the answer wasn’t all the way there yet. His jaw clenched, matching the old man as his eyes darted to the monitor and back. They didn’t give him the answer, not exactly, but then again… they didn’t need to.

“Sure as I can be,” he said finally, the words pushing their way out like they didn’t care about the pressure on his chest. His jaw tightened as he looked back at Elias. “We don’t bypass the system handling it, overload’s gonna cascade through the grid.”

Elias didn’t say a word, just stared at him with that deep, pin-you-down kind of look that could make most people crack. His jaw shifted, grinding through whatever debate was spinning in his head.

Zedd didn’t look away. Come on, old man.

Finally, Elias jabbed a finger toward the auxiliary panel. “Fine. If you can get the system to switch and reroute through the auxiliary lines, fuckin’ do it. But you’ve been here, what? a couple months, Victors? Don’t fuck us over.”

Not even six weeks, boss man. Zedd didn’t bother with a response.

A nod was all he gave as his feet carried him across the room, his toolkit smacking his hip in time with every step. The air got heavier the closer he got to the panel, hot and sticky with the heat bleeding off the overworked systems as it clung to his skin, prickling at the back of his neck.

He came to a harsh stop in front of the auxiliary board, the comp-rubber of his workboots squeaking as he skid across the ground. It looked rough, scarred up from years of patch jobs and quick fixes. The readouts flickered faintly in the chaos, their light barely visible under the strobing red.

Zedd leaned in, scanning the data.

It didn’t take long for the patterns to settle in his head.

The regulator wasn’t just dying. No, if that’s all it was, this would be an easier fix. The regulator was taking everything down with it in the most suicidal way. Hell, the conduits were barely holding the way everything was yo-yo-ing; the numbers told him that much. Something doesn’t change fast, shit’s going to gve in a big fuckin’ way.

“Come on,” he muttered, more to himself than anything. His fingers brushed the edge of the panel, his mind already trying to snap together all the pieces of the problem.

Unused connections caught his eye, clustered at the side of the board. They weren’t glowing like the others—probably because no one had touched them in years—but the layout clicked into place somewhere in the back of his brain.

He turned, shouting to Elias, his voice barely cutting through the noise. “We can bypass the regulator! I’ll get the system to reroute through the connections, it’ll take the load off the conduits long enough to stabilize the grid.”

Elias followed his gesture, brows pulling tight as he stared at the board. “You’re improvising.”

Zedd shrugged, wiping a slick line of sweat off his temple. “Look, pops, either that or we let the whole thing keep going and we all get bombed to blue hell. I think biotics are cool but I don’t think you wanna gift the whole next generation of the planet with them.”

Elias’s hesitation stretched just long enough to feel dangerous.

Then he nodded, sharp and sure. “Do it. Fast.”

Zedd didn’t waste a second. His hands were already moving, popping the panel open to reveal the tangled mess of wires and circuits beneath.

The heat hit him first, rolling out like someone had opened an oven door. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, but he didn’t stop as his tools came out quick, familiar in his grip. A pair of pliers, a cutter, and a spool of insulating tape he’d already used too much of this week.

“Nina,” Elias barked into his omnitool comm, his voice rough and clipped, “Get on deck, ready to reroute power. Victors is setting up the bypass now.”

“Copy that,” came the reply, the short woman’s usually bubbly tone sharp but steady. “Standing by.”

Zedd barely registered the exchange. His focus narrowed to the mess of wires in front of him, his brain sketching out connections faster than his hands could follow.

The cables were a nightmare. Half-fucked, what kind of shit pipe colony is this? Some were frayed, their insulation peeling away to expose the copper beneath. Others looked like they’d been patched a dozen times already, the repairs overlapping until the original wire was almost gone. Do these people not do their jobs?

“Figures,” he muttered, his voice low, more habit than anything. “Half-fried and they’re still holding on.”

His fingers worked fast, stripping the worst wires and patching them with whatever scraps he had left, as he worked to get the system to accept a new pathway that would hold for long enough to do the real work.

The bypass started to take shape, a cluster of rerouted connections that wasn’t pretty but would hold. At least for now.

“Five minutes, alright, alright,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. More a promise, less an estimate. “Five. Minutes.”

The air clung heavy and thick, the kind of heat that felt like it was squeezing the room tighter with every passing second. Zedd’s hands moved fast, slick with sweat as he twisted the frayed cable into place, the faint whiff of burned plastic stinging his nose. The auxiliary panel buzzed faintly under his palms, trembling like it wasn’t sure how much more it could take.

“Victors, move it!” Elias’s shout came from somewhere behind him, sharp and biting, cutting clean through the alarms.

“I’m working on it!” Zedd shouted back, barely loud enough to carry over all the chaos.

The cables didn’t fit right—half of them bent weird or too short to make a clean connection. But he worked around it, bridging gaps with what he had, hands moving faster than his thoughts.

Every twist, every connection felt like...instinct, like the kind of muscle memory he couldn’t remember learning. No time.

His brain tracked the power flow, almost on its own, the way it surged and stumbled through the system like water through a cracked pipe. There wasn’t time to think too much about the how or the why.

“Nina, the reroute ready?” Elias snapped into his comm.

“Just say when,” Nina shot back, her voice tight, like she was holding the whole thing together with sheer will.

“Good.” Elias’s boots thudded closer, and Zedd felt the weight of his stare. “You done yet?”

“Almost.” Zedd didn’t even glance up. No time.

His hands reached for a dusty circuit board someone had left on a nearby workstation, the edges crusted with grime. Made 2172? Jesus, the fuck is this doing here? It wasn’t pretty, but it’d work.

He slotted the board into the panel, the fit rough, the click faint but solid.

The alarms shifted then, their pitch dropping, just barely. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to take the edge off the panic chewing at the edges of his focus.

“Reroute it now!” Elias’s voice cracked against the tension like a pistol shot.

The hum of the generator dipped, stuttering once-twice-a third time before settling into a deep, steady rhythm. Zedd’s shoulders dropped a fraction, the relief sinking in slow, like his brain didn’t believe it yet.

The monitors flared amber, the red warnings blinking out one by one.

“Stabilizing,” Nina reported, her voice crackling through the comm. This time, it carried something else.

Relief.

“Good. Stay on it,” Elias said, but his tone had softened, just barely.

Zedd stepped back from the panel, dragging a forearm across his face to wipe the sweat before it could drip into his eyes. His hands were shaking, just a little, the adrenaline buzzing under his skin.

He exhaled slow, trying to pull the tension out of his chest.

It’s gonna hold. For now.

It wasn’t clean, and it sure as hell wasn’t long-term, but the system was limping along, and that was good enough.

“Nice work,” Elias muttered, stepping up beside him. It wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t much, but coming from the old man, it felt like a damn trophy.

Zedd nodded, his mouth too dry to manage words right away. The room was settling, a good bit of fearful stress bleeding away. Workers moved slower, steadier, their shouts tapering into murmurs. The tension hadn’t gone, not entirely, but it was loosening, like a rubber band finally letting up after being stretched too far.

He caught a few glances from the crew, quick and sharp, their faces unreadable.

Curiosity, maybe. Or…

“...never seen a rookie pull something like that…”

“...just got lucky, probably…”

“...doesn’t sit right, y’know?”

Suspicion.

“Hey, Spacer.” The voice came from Connor, leaning against a console like he hadn’t just been rushing around like the rest of them. His smirk was faint but pointed. “That looked a little too easy for a first-timer.”

First timer? He allowed himself a slight smirk. Ignoring the fact that almost half a dozen more had landed to the colony and chosen to work at the hub since he had joined up, he didn’t miss the use of ‘Spacer’ instead of his name all of a sudden. A month or so of work ain’t that long enough, I guess. Zedd shrugged, forcing his tone to stay casual. “Just common sense.”

Connor didn’t push. Just smiled, sharp and hollow. “Lucky guess.”

A hand — Elias's, by the smell of synth-caf— clapped Zedd’s shoulder in a brief, heavy gesture. It wasn’t exactly warm, but it wasn’t cold, either. "Don't get too cocky, kid."

Zedd rolled his shoulders under the weight, lips twitching into something close to a grin. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

The generator’s hum filled the room now, steady and low, a backdrop to the slower movements of the crew. Zedd turned back to the auxiliary panel, his eyes tracing the patched connections one more time.

Still holding.

“Victors, cleanup duty,” Elias barked over his shoulder as he moved toward the other workers, already back to business.

Zedd snorted faintly as the generator thrummed.

Still holding.