Massive Disaster II-19 (Patreon)

The studio was too bright. Too clean. The kind of high-end corporate crispness that made her skin itch, like standing in a place built for people who didn’t sweat. The lights overhead hummed, hot, bright enough to burn out shadows, to flatten depth. The air had that processed, climate-controlled bite, cold enough to remind you someone paid too much money to make sure no one sweated under the lights.

Nina stood off-stage, arms crossed, weight shifting between her heels, watching Zedd settle into the guest chair like he belonged there. Like he hadn’t spent the last two hours pacing and ignoring half her prep notes. He had that unbothered sprawl going, one elbow braced on the chair’s arm, legs stretched like the interview was already boring him. The blue synth-leather coat stayed open, loose, but the tailored shirt underneath gave him that clean, put-together look. 

A half-compromise. The aviators stayed on, though. They always did. Nothing can get to him, he says, but still needs a shield from the world. She could already hear the headlines in her head. Arrogant? Or just that good?

Elai Winters, smooth-voiced and sharp-smiled, turned toward the camera. "Welcome back to Arkadia Outlook. I’m Elai Winters, and today we’re joined by the man whose name has been making waves across the colonies—Zedd Victors, founder and CEO of Victory Innovations."

Zedd barely moved. His head tilted, that slow, lazy way that made it clear he was listening, but only because he felt like it. His mouth curved just slightly, a fraction of a smirk.

"I keep hearing my name in the same sentence as ‘impossible,’” he said. “Getting old."

Nina exhaled sharply. Cocky little shit.

Elai laughed, easy, warm. Practiced. "Well, that’s what happens when you introduce non-eezo tech that outperforms the alternatives at a fraction of the cost." She leaned in slightly, eyes sharp under the charm. "People are curious. Skeptical. Some would even say... doubtful."

Zedd barely let a beat pass before answering. "They can say whatever they want. The tech speaks for itself."

Dev made a low sound beside her, muttering, “Cocky bastard.”

Nina nudged him with her elbow, watching Elai recalibrate. She was good. Kept the energy light, didn’t let Zedd take control of the pacing.

"Let’s talk about your latest innovation—the V.E.S.T. system. There’s been quite a bit of speculation."

Nina caught the almost-glance Zedd shot in her direction. That help me get through this without stabbing someone kind of look. He hated this part. Hated selling the thing when the work spoke for itself. Hated repeating himself.

Zedd pivoted instead, turning to the side stage. Nodded once. “Caleb.”

The doors slid open.

Caleb stepped out, the V.E.S.T. fitting snug to his frame, matte-gray with reinforced joints, the kind of thing that looked sleek and unassuming, but packed layers of tech under the surface. He moved, and the kinetics adjusted, amplifying just enough to make his steps feel too smooth, a little too effortless. Barely noticeable. Unless you were paying attention.

The audience was paying attention.

Nina saw the way shoulders shifted forward, how the murmurs started slow, picked up.

Zedd’s voice cut through it. "The Vital Environmental Safety Technology suit isn’t a weapon. It’s protection. Life support. Enhanced mobility. Everything colonial workers need when facing hazardous conditions."

Caleb tapped the control at his wrist. The helmet sealed over his head, forming seamlessly. Then he moved again, deliberate. Jumped. The kinesis field activated, smooth, the height clean, landing absorbed perfectly.

Even Elai faltered. Just for a second.

"Full atmospheric sealing," Zedd continued. "Integrated medical monitoring. Protection against toxins, radiation, impact. And it does all of that without element zero."

The without eezo part hit. Nina felt it hit. The shift in the room, the way Elai hesitated just a second too long before responding.

"That’s... impressive,” she admitted. "But surely there’s a catch. The cost—"

"A quarter the price of comparable eezo-based systems," Zedd cut in, smooth, no room for argument. "And manufactured right here on Arkadia IV, creating local jobs."

There it was.

Nina bit back a grin. They’d workshopped that line. Rehearsed it exactly like that. And sure enough—murmurs of approval. A slow ripple through the audience.

Elai didn’t let the shift knock her off course. "Mr. Victors, there are rumors that military contractors have approached you with substantial offers—"

"I’m not interested in military applications for now."

Flat. Absolute. No hesitation.

Victory Innovations builds tools, not weapons. Zedd had said that to her before. More than once. It wasn’t a PR line. It was fact. Until the Alliance focuses on humanity, I’m not building anything they can easily weaponize.

"Some might argue," Elai pushed, leaning in, "that your own background suggests otherwise. The New Abraham incident—"

"—was a tragedy that I responded to." Nothing in his voice changed. 

But Nina saw it.

The fraction of a shift in his shoulders. The way his fingers curled, briefly, before relaxing. He never let anything stick to him. Never let words bite deep enough to stay. But this one—this one was always a little different.

"I’m not in the business of repeating tragedies," Zedd said. "I’m in the business of preventing them." And just like that, the moment was gone.

He turned, gestured toward Caleb, who was now demonstrating the weight distribution system—lifting something that should have strained, but didn’t. The suit absorbed the force, redirected it, made the movement clean, natural.

"This is what Victory Innovations stands for," Zedd said. "Making life better, safer, and more affordable for colonial citizens."

His voice didn’t waver. His expression didn’t shift.

"That’s all."

Nina caught the slight edge in his voice. Most wouldn’t notice, not with how smooth he played it, how well-rehearsed he was now, but she knew him. Knew that barely-there edge whenever New Abraham got brought up, the sharp, irritated flicker that never lasted longer than a second. He’d trained himself out of reacting, out of snapping, out of making himself look like some damaged, volatile thing on camera—but she could see it. The way his fingers flexed slightly on the armrest, the way his body locked down so fast you’d think he’d never been tense in the first place.

He hated talking about it.

She couldn’t blame him.

The rest of the interview went smooth. Expansion plans, upcoming projects, the bullshit public-facing version of Victory Innovations’ mission. He played it off like it was nothing, like he wasn’t actively changing the entire power structure of colonial development, like his tech wasn’t the biggest shift since the fucking mass relay. The host ate it up. The audience did too. He’d gotten good at this.

Better than good.

By the time the studio lights dimmed and the ‘off-air’ signal flashed, Zedd barely looked tired. That was new. Usually, these things drained him, had him slipping back into his usual irritated silence the second the cameras were off. This time, though, he looked almost... recharged. Like the performance hadn’t worn him down for once.

Dev clapped a hand on Zedd’s shoulder as they moved toward the exit, grinning. “Damn, boss, you’re almost making it look like you actually enjoy this PR shit now.”

Zedd rolled his eyes behind the blue lenses. “Don’t get used to it.”

Nina fell into step beside him, shoulder brushing his. She didn’t say anything at first, just glanced at him through her lashes, watching the way he carried himself. Steady. Unbothered. Maybe even a little smug.

“You did good,” she murmured, voice low enough that only he’d hear.

His mouth twitched, but he didn’t answer, just kept walking.

Ahead of them, Kai Leng moved ahead, scanning the corridor with that same hyper-efficient, uncanny precision that still put her on edge. He was too still, too measured, like he was playing at being human instead of actually being one.

Nina exhaled, forcing herself to ignore it, turning her focus back to Zedd. “The military angle played well,” she noted. “Polling data shows colonial independence messaging is testing at 87% positive across all demographics.”

Zedd snorted. “You know I don’t give a shit about polls.”

“That’s why you have me,” she shot back, grinning. “Someone has to care about your public image.”

“Speaking of. bro,” Dev cut in, tapping at his omni-tool as they stepped through the private exit. “You’ve got three more interview requests just from this morning’s appearance. Extranet viewership is up 300% this week.”

“ADAM will filter the important ones,” Zedd muttered, already moving toward the waiting shuttle.

Nina caught his arm before he could step inside. “Actually, you told ADAM to stop blocking interviews last week.”

Zedd paused mid-step. Blinked. “Yeah. And I regret it every day.”

“Oh,” she drawled, tilting her head. “My poor baby.”

Zedd exhaled sharply, something half-annoyed, half-amused. “Right. Let’s get back to the compound. I want to check on the new shields.”

Nina just smirked, letting go of his arm as he climbed in.

 – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The Victory Innovations testing grounds stretched wide under the pale blue sky, the sun baking the reinforced barriers, throwing hard-edged shadows across the packed earth. A hot wind blew dust in spirals over the field, catching on the matte-black surfaces of the perimeter defenses, their edges absorbing the light like they were swallowing the sun itself. Above, a dozen automated drones hovered, silent but for the occasional electronic hum, their cameras fixed on the reinforced mannequin standing dead center like a sacrificial lamb.

Zedd stood at the edge of the field, arms crossed, the mirrored blue of his aviators throwing back the afternoon glare. Behind him, the steady cycling of the facility’s air filtration system whispered beneath the distant rush of wind turbines. Providence’s outskirts were dry, open, empty—good for testing. 

No onlookers, no stray eyes. Just the tech, the data, and the results.

Kai Leng stood just a step behind, posture rigid in that way that wasn’t stiff, just controlled. Calculated. His stillness was the kind that let you know he didn’t waste movement, that every shift, every breath, every muscle was measured for efficiency. He never looked at Zedd directly unless addressed, but his eyes tracked everything else.

“Target’s ready, boss,” called one of the techs, stepping back from the mannequin.

Zedd barely inclined his head, already feeling the edge of a sigh he wouldn’t let himself release. Running a business wasn’t the problem. It was the shit that came with it—the bureaucracy, the PR, the employees he actually had to keep around to sell the whole ‘job creator’ angle. He’d been fine when it was just him, ADAM, and the machines. But expansion meant more eyes, more mouths, more idiots.

At least ADAM had the vetting process locked down. The few corporate or government spies they’d let through wouldn’t find shit. Everything they had access to was already designed for public consumption.

“Run sequence alpha,” Zedd ordered.

The tech hesitated just long enough to be annoying before tapping his omni-tool. The drones shifted in formation, their targeting systems coming online with a sharp pulse of light. The mannequin at the center of the field flickered, its surrounding barrier activating—a faint, shimmering field of blue-white energy that bent the light just enough to distort the air around it.

“Firing in three… two… one.”

The drones fired in unison. A quick burst of simulated militia-grade rounds, the air cracking with the sharp percussion of impact.

The rounds hit the barrier and slowed. Not stopped, not deflected, but redirected—curved trajectories carrying them away like the laws of physics had rewritten themselves mid-air. They dropped harmlessly to the ground several feet from the mannequin, energy dissipated, threat neutralized.

Zedd’s lips curled, just slightly. “Again. Double the payload.”

The tech hesitated. “Sir, that exceeds safety protocols for—”

“Override,” Zedd cut in before the guy could finish, eyes locked on the field. “Authorization Victor-One-Alpha-Omega.”

The man swallowed, nodding quickly as he input the command. The drones recalibrated, their weapons cycling up to the next tier. The second burst came sharper, faster, the flash of impact brighter.

This time, the rounds pushed further into the field before they twisted off-course. A few made it deeper before dropping, but none reached the mannequin.

Behind him, Kai Leng finally spoke. “Impressive. Not standard kinetic barrier tech.”

Zedd didn’t look at him. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

Leng shifted, watching the test site with that same unsettling stillness. “How does it work?”

Now Zedd turned, just slightly, the movement slow, measured. “Conventional barriers create a rigid energy field that repels incoming objects. This creates localized differentials in zero-point energy. Basically makes space itself more resistant to penetration on specific vectors.”

Leng’s expression barely moved, but there was a flicker of something in his gaze. “Zero-point energy?” The former soldier blinked. “That’s—”

“Theoretical physics?” Zedd said, tapping his omni-tool to pull up the diagnostic readouts. “Not anymore. The kinesis-based systems I’ve been using in the V-line of tech operate on the same principle, creating gradients in the quantum vacuum’s energy state. This is just a more advanced application.”

Leng watched as the techs reset the experiment, his expression unreadable. "Military applications?"

"Countless," Zedd admitted with a soft laugh. "Which is why we're keeping it in-house for now."

“They won’t understand what you’re doing.” Leng studied the barrier still crackling with residual lightning from former hits as the drones prepared for another test. "You really don't like playing fair, huh?"

Zedd's grin sharpened to a point. "Fair fights are for idiots."

Leng's mouth twitched in what might have been amusement. "No argument there." The man continued to observe it all with that same calculating gaze, occasionally asking questions that revealed a level of weapons understandign that didn’t surprise Zedd coming from someone with N7 training.

By late afternoon, as the sun began to dip toward the horizon, Zedd finally called an end to the testing. The techs began powering down the equipment, the drones returning to their docking stations.

"I'd like a full report by morning," Zedd instructed the lead technician. "Focus on the energy consumption rates for the scaled-down kinesis resonators. I don’t expect anything revolutionary but if I want to scale up production, I need to simplify the methods of the design."

The tech nodded, making notes on his omni-tool before heading back toward the main facility.

Kai Leng remained, watching Zedd with an unreadable expression.

"Something on your mind?" Zedd asked without looking at him.

Leng hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "These technologies... they don't align with anything in current development pipelines. Not Alliance, not Turian, not even Salarian. And you’re attempting to simplify it."

Zedd finally turned to face him. "Your point?"

"My point is that innovations like these…” Leng remained still. “They should stay as hard to decipher as possible. You wouldn’t want them to… spread."

"They’re still pretty complicated even after that. I'm just that good," Zedd said, the edge of a smirk playing at his lips.

Leng didn't smile back. "That seems to be fact.”

For a long moment, neither man spoke. 

Finally, Zedd's omni-tool pinged, breaking the silence. He glanced at it, then nodded toward the shuttle. "We're done here for today. Tomorrow we test the personal shield variants."

Leng nodded once, then moved ahead to secure the shuttle, his movements economical and precise.

Zedd watched him go, expression thoughtful behind the blue lenses. Leng was a dangerous guy, far more dangerous than his file suggested. He was observant, for one. 

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The lab was humming again. Faint, constant, low-grade like a second heartbeat—cooling fans whirring under the floor, pulse of machines thrumming through the table under his hands. The blue-white glow of the holotable bled into his vision, burned against his retinas in a way he’d stopped noticing. It was always there.

The tiny bit of gray powder swarmed in the display. Looked like dust, moved like smoke. But it wasn’t. 

Not even close.

"Iteration 217," ADAM’s voice cut in, smooth, clipped, confident. Not bored, but close enough.

Zedd exhaled through his nose, barely blinking as the projection shifted. The magnification tightened, rendering each microscopic machine in sharp relief; tiny, angular, moving in patterns that shouldn’t exist. No fixed structure, no programmed response. They weren’t behaving like static nanotech, weren’t even behaving like a network. They adapted. 

Shifted in real-time. 

Learned.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes under the blue lenses. “Show me the bonding sim again.”

ADAM complied instantly. The display flickered—metal, polymers, ceramics—each shifting, reacting, bending at molecular levels that shouldn’t have been possible. Some structures strengthened. Others became brittle, unstable. No consistency. No predictability.

Zedd’s fingers drummed against the table, fast, restless. "It's not a hive mind," he said, mostly to himself. "Not an AI."

"Current evidence suggests—"

"—they're reactive, not sentient. Yeah, I got it." He ran his tongue over his teeth. His jaw felt tight. “Like, muscle memory without the muscle.”

"Good analogy." ADAM’s voice was too even. 

Zedd ignored that. Focused on the display again. The way the swarm moved, the way it hesitated in some simulations before adapting faster the next round. No way that was a coincidence.

“They’re remembering.”

"Correct."

Zedd inhaled sharply through his nose, fingers twitching toward his tools before stopping. He needed control first. Direct application. Something small.

His gaze flicked to the aviators sitting beside the holotable. Stripped down. Circuitry exposed. Conductive material latticed into the blue lenses like veins. The frame reinforced, tweaked, rebuilt three times over. Yeah. That’d do.

He swept them up, flipping them in his hands—adjusted a wire here, tightened a connection there. The balance was different now, weight sitting closer to the temples. Subtle, but he felt it. 

"We ready?"

"As ready as ever, boss." ADAM’s voice wasn’t quite a smirk, but close. "Neural interface is stable. Power’s solid. No catastrophic failures predicted." He paused. "Yet."

Zedd huffed a short laugh. "Good enough for me."

The lenses caught the light, flashing blue as he slipped them on. The weight sat different now, pressing behind his ears, a fraction heavier across the bridge of his nose. Familiar. But not.

For half a second, nothing.

Zedd tapped the right temple twice, quick, sharp.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Zedd exhaled through his nose, rolling the module between his fingers, feeling the weight shift like it might tell him something if he held it long enough. The workbench was a mess. Worse than usual. Gutted prototypes, cracked casings, wires coiled like veins spilling out of metal corpses. He knew what was wrong. He knew it, but every time he reached for the solution, his brain skipped past it like a corrupted holovid.

“I had this,” he muttered, not even sure if he was talking to himself or ADAM. Probably both. “Six months ago. I had it.”

No response.

ADAM knew when to let him spiral.

The holotable hummed, blue light flickering over his hands. Schematics for a palm-sized device hung mid-air, its guts on full display—field generators, resonance cores, the core framework of the only thing he’d ever built that should have worked but failed him completely. Where the kinesis modules created spatial gradients in zero-point energy, this was attempting something much more complex.

Stasis.

He’d shelved it for a reason. The containment breach had nearly turned his entire lab into a crater. Fields collapsed, feedback loops shredded through energy shielding like it wasn’t even there. While he could figure out and rebuild the kinesis module by heart after half a month of attempts, the stasis module… it fought him. Hard. And yet, the problem came back today, Kai Leng’s words setting something off in his brain. The unfinished math crawled through his head at night, looping back whenever he tried to focus on literally anything else.

“Previous failure point—” ADAM finally spoke up, clipped, even. “—was temporal field instability. ZPE resonators couldn’t hold coherence.”

“Yeah,” Zedd muttered, tapping his aviators against the table, slipping them back on. The HUD synced in immediately, the model bending to his focus. Calculations flickered at the edges of his vision.. 

Smoother. It helped. 

He could think better like this.

Or at least faster.

“What if,” he started, fingers already reshaping the model mid-air, moving faster than he could verbalize. His mind running ahead, tripping over itself, but the interface kept up. “What if we’re coming at this backwards?”

No interruption.

ADAM knew better.

“Kinesis works by bending ZPE gradients in space,” Zedd kept going, words tumbling out as fast as the thought came. “But time—time isn't slowing. It’s resistance. Temporal density. What if stasis isn’t stopping time but making it harder to move through?”

Hands moved faster. His pulse had picked up. He could feel it now, feel the shape of the problem coming together in the back of his head, like a lock picking itself open.

"Interesting hypothesis," ADAM finally said, voice unreadable. "Simulating now."

Numbers flickered. The holotable shifted, recalibrating in real time, models breaking apart and snapping back together at speeds that had been unthinkable just months ago.

Zedd didn’t blink. He was in it. Fully in it.

His chest was tight—not with nerves. With momentum.

ADAM barely paused before responding. "Simulation complete. Theoretical stability index: Eighty-nine percent."

Zedd stilled.

His fingers hovered over the display. His brain struggled to catch up to what had just happened.

Eighty-nine.

His voice came out flat. “That’s not real.”

“Correct,” ADAM said dryly. “Everything is a lie. Nothing is real. The numbers, however, are still eighty-nine percent.”

Zedd let out a slow breath, hand dragging through his hair. His grin hit slow.

Yeah. Yeah, okay.

The workshop felt smaller when he was deep in it like this, the walls closing in, the hum of equipment fading into background static, everything narrowing down to just this— hands moving, brain racing, pieces falling into place like they were meant to. He wasn’t working off memory, wasn’t trying to force old ideas into new shapes. This time, it was intuitive, like sculpting something out of a block of stone, carving away what wasn’t needed until the truth of it revealed itself.

This time, it felt right.

Hours bled together. He worked in silence, half-aware of the low whirr of drones shifting in and out of his periphery, fetching tools before he asked, lighting up data streams when he twitched a glance at them. He knew ADAM was watching—always was—but the AI wasn’t chiming in, wasn’t analyzing the way it usually did. Just letting him work.

When he finally leaned back, flexing his fingers, his pulse was steady. Mind still sharp. No exhaustion dragging at him, no post-focus crash waiting to blindside him. Just clarity.

The module sat on the workbench, sleek, compact, built for precision. Smaller than the kinesis module, but denser, its internal matrix webbed with layered fields instead of a single, brute-force push. The first real prototype. Not a salvage job. Not a best guess.

He rolled his shoulders, shaking out the tension in his hands, and exhaled through his nose. “Alright. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

The drones responded before the words even finished leaving his mouth. AY-U drifted to position, stabilizers humming as it hovered at the exact center of the testing floor. Zedd didn’t bother counting down. Just lifted his arm, adjusted the angle, and activated the module.

Light coalesced.

Not the harsh, sparking energy of the kinesis fields—this was different. Smoother, more fluid, wrapping AY-U like water settling over stone. And then, impossibly, it slowed.

Zedd exhaled through his teeth, circling the drone, watching how the field warped space around it.

Not frozen. 

Still moving. Just… off. The low tilt of its body, the slow-motion pulse of its status lights, the way its lens adjusted frame-by-snail-like-frame instead of fluid motion. Even the flickering blue of its indicator lights dimmed..

Zedd lifted his hand, waved it through the air between him and the drone. No resistance. No physical pushback. But he felt it. Something brushing against his nerves, a faint tingling pressure along his fingers, like moving through air that didn’t quite belong to the same moment.

“Stasis field stable,” ADAM confirmed, voice smooth, but carrying the barest thread of something close to impressed. “Target temporal flow reduced to approximately 12% of normal rate. Power consumption within expected parameters.”

Zedd let out a low ha of satisfaction, shifting his weight onto his heels. “Perfect.”

Then something changed.

A prickle. Static against his palm, the same off-feeling as before, but different this time—stronger, something dragging at the edges of his awareness like a shape forming in the dark.

He blinked.

There was something in his hand.

He hadn’t reached for anything. Hadn’t moved. But he could feel the weight of it, cool glass against his fingers. He pulled his hand up, squinting at the vial that hadn’t been there a second ago.

Bright thick liquid. Royal blue, as it caught the light.

Zedd stared at it for a second longer, then exhaled, pressing his tongue against his teeth.

“At least this one’s in my color?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

5k Words (100 FP)ROLL: Technical Expertise (100 FP) [Generic Cyberpunk] {Knowledge - Abilities and Skills}: "People use technology every day, but that doesn't mean they understand or are skilled with it. You're not one of them. You're a deft hand at working with and understanding technology and machines, picking up anything you need to know to use and work with them easily.

Given anything more than just a passing familiarity, you'll be a whiz with it—able to work magic when you get your hands on the inner workings of whatever you're dealing with. Whether that's peeling apart computers and piecing hardware back together to make a much better system, tweaking software in ways that make it run like a dream, or working magic in a garage with vehicles that have seen better days, nobody can deny you have the talent."

ROLL: Strange Formula (100 FP) [Marvel Cinematic Universe Vol. 1] {Database - Mundane}: "This chemical formula is the brainchild of the German scientist Dr. Erskine, and is directly responsible for the creation of Captain America. As is, this is only the formula, and you must make it yourself… but as a result, it could possibly let you modify the serum for other uses.

Beware its tendencies to amplify the personality traits of the user, or be prepared to find a way to fix that fact."

Forge Points: 500