Chapter 35 #2
David’s fingers hovered over a cluster of wires, not touching but mapping their connections through the tech-mage sense that let him feel voltage and current as naturally as Nick felt minds. There. That’s the primary trigger. Connected to the load monitor. When we hit ninety-five percent capacity—
The building shuddered, a deep groan of stressed metal and concrete. The lights didn’t flicker this time, but the generators surged, feeding more power into the system. The load climbed—eighty-two percent, eighty-five.
We’re running out of time, Nick observed. Can we shut down the generators completely?
No. There’s a secondary trigger here that will blow if a generator shutdown is initiated.
Fabulous.
Yeah. David pulled a multi-tool from his pocket, extending a small wire cutter. His hands were perfectly steady. I need to isolate the trigger circuit. Sever it from the load monitor without disrupting the power flow to the rest of the building.
Can you do that?
About to find out.
David’s consciousness split—part of him still deep in the system’s digital architecture, while his physical hands worked with delicate precision. Nick watched, helpless to do anything but maintain the telepathic link and be ready to act if everything went sideways.
Through the link, he felt David’s absolute focus on the whisper-thin wire that connected the bomb’s trigger to the load monitor. Too much pressure and the wire would complete a circuit that would kill them all. Not enough and it wouldn’t sever cleanly.
David positioned the wire cutters, adjusting the angle by millimeters. On three, he sent. One…
The generator pitch changed. Load at eighty-eight percent.
Two…
Nick’s hands clenched on his tablet. Through the security feeds, he could see the storm intensifying, palm trees fully horizontal now, debris flying past cameras. The hurricane was at their doorstep.
Three.
The cutter closed with a soft snip that seemed impossibly loud in Nick’s ears.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then David pulled back, physically and mentally, his consciousness surfacing from the system’s depths. Got it. Trigger’s isolated.
The bomb—
Still live, but it can’t detonate now. Not automatically, unless we shut down the generators.
I still need to disrupt that trigger. David was already opening a different panel, hands moving with renewed confidence.
I need to discharge the capacitor, make it completely safe. But the hard part’s done.
Nick's shoulders loosened. He pulled up diagnostics on his tablet again, checking systems. Everything was stable—or as stable as it could be with a Category Four hurricane trying to tear the building apart. Generator building operating normally. Main building secure. Staff building—
His frown deepened. “Power consumption in the staff building is higher than projected.”
How much higher?
“Ten, maybe fifteen percent. Could just be climate control running harder against the storm, but—” It nagged at him. Another wrong note in a day full of them.
David worked in silence for another two minutes, his movements precise and unhurried now that the ticking clock had been stopped. Finally, he sat back on his heels and closed the panel.
“Done,” he said aloud, the first spoken words since Nick had arrived. “Bomb’s inert. We should still treat it like active ordnance until we can get it properly disposed of, but it’s not going to blow.” Yo, Zach.
“Good work.” Nick meant it. David had just saved everyone on the island.
“Yeah, well.” David stood, wiping his hands on his pants. “Can’t let Marcus win that easily.”
Marcus. The name settled into the room like a cold weight. This wasn’t random sabotage—it was targeted, personal. An attempt to destroy not just the resort but the people Nick and his brothers cared about.
The lights flickered again, stronger this time, and stayed dim for a few seconds before recovering. The storm was still intensifying, still pressing against their defenses. They’d solved one crisis, but the hurricane itself remained.
And underneath it all, that static. That sharp, insistent pressure pushing at the edges of his telepathic awareness.
Now that the immediate crisis with the bomb had passed, Nick could feel it more clearly.
Something was reaching out, trying to communicate but making no sense.
White noise and razor edges and something old—so old it made his teeth ache.
You feel that? David asked telepathically, picking up on Nick’s attention shift.
Yeah. Been feeling it since before you called. Don’t know what it is.
Feedback from the power grid?
No. Nick shook his head slowly. This is… different. It’s not electrical. It’s—
He didn’t have words for it. The feeling was both foreign and familiar, like a language he’d once known but forgotten. Not a voice. Not even really a presence. Just noise, static, pressure.
“Doesn’t matter right now,” Nick said aloud, pushing the sensation aside. “We need to secure this site, document everything for evidence, and check the rest of the system for additional surprises.”
Already on it. David had his tablet out again, running deep scans of the electrical infrastructure. If there’s one bomb, there might be more. Yo, Zach, I’ll let you handle bomb disposal.
The thought made Nick’s blood run cold, but it was the right call. They’d been lucky to find this one before it detonated. Luck wasn’t a plan.
Zach didn’t respond.
They worked in focused silence, David scanning systems while Nick documented the physical bomb, taking careful photos and notes that would eventually become evidence in whatever legal and extralegal response came next.
The hurricane pressed harder against the building, the generator room’s reinforced walls muting but not eliminating the storm’s roar.
Twenty minutes later, David straightened. Clean. Rest of the system’s clear.
“You’re sure?”
As sure as I can be without physically inspecting every panel in both buildings. David’s mental voice carried absolute confidence. And that’s not happening during a hurricane. But the digital architecture reads clean. Nothing else is rigged the way that bomb was.
Nick nodded, accepting it. David’s gift made him virtually infallible when it came to system security. If he said it was clean, it was clean.
The lights steadied overhead, the generators finding their rhythm.
Through the security feeds, Nick could see the storm reaching its peak—wind speeds that would tear an unprepared building apart, rain so heavy the cameras could barely penetrate it.
But their buildings held. The shutters held.
The infrastructure they’d spent months designing and installing was doing its job.
They’d survived Marcus’s attempt to destroy them.
David would fix the linkage problem, so they couldn’t be threatened that way again.
Absence.
He stilled—just for a fraction of a second, his mind rejecting it.
Then it hit.
A sudden, hollow silence where presence should be. His telepathic awareness swept the compound automatically, cataloging minds: security personnel, staff, David right here beside him.
No Emma. No Zach…
“Where’s Zach?” Nick’s voice was carefully controlled, but ice was spreading through his chest. “When did you last hear from him?”
The question hung between them.
“Before you called me down here,” David said slowly. “He checked in maybe… ninety minutes ago? When he handled the groundskeeper.”
Ninety minutes.
Nick had shut everything else out the moment David pulled him into the system. That was how they worked—total focus, no distractions.
It meant nothing else got through.
Nick’s hands clenched on his tablet. “He didn’t say anything during—” He gestured at the electrical panel, the now-inert bomb. “During all of that.”
He should have. The thought arrived simultaneously from both of them, sharp with growing alarm.
Zach didn’t miss things like this. Didn’t stay silent during a live threat. Didn’t let other people handle a situation he should be controlling.
Nick had kept the telepathic channel open the entire time—he always did when he worked with one of his brothers.
It was automatic, instinctive, like breathing.
Zach knew that. If Zach had been aware, if he’d been monitoring their conversation, he would have responded.
Would have offered tactical assessment, demanded updates, insisted on being part of the solution.
Maybe he was in the field. Out of range.
The thought lasted less than a second.
Zach didn’t go dark. Not during a crisis. Not during a freaking hurricane.
The silence was wrong. All wrong.
“Try his phone,” Nick said, already knowing what David would find.
David pulled up the communication interface, fingers flying. The call connected—Nick could see the status indicator on David’s screen—but no one answered. It rang once, twice, three times, then went to voicemail.
Zach never let calls go to voicemail. Not during a crisis.
Nick was already moving toward the door, his mind racing through possibilities. Injury? Structural damage? Had Marcus’s plan been more complex than just the bomb, had there been a physical attack component they’d missed?
The assassin. Zach said the groundskeeper wasn’t the crossbow assassin. There’s someone else on the island.
Nick’s mind was already reaching out, trying to find Zach’s presence anywhere on the island. His brother’s consciousness was as familiar as his own—sharp, controlled, always alert. But there was nothing. Just that strange static, stabbing into his mind now, and an absence where Zach should be.
Zach, Nick sent, pushing the thought out with all the force he could muster. If you can hear this, respond.
Nothing.
Nick stretched his telepathic sense as far as it would go, searching for any hint of Zach’s presence. Still nothing. Just that static, that pressure, and now—
A flash of something. Not thought, not consciousness, but… sensation. Pain. Determination. Fear.
Zach, Nick sent, pouring every ounce of power into the thought. Where are you?
For just a moment, he thought he felt a response. A flicker of recognition, there and gone so fast he couldn’t be sure it was real.
The static crashed back in, louder than before, drowning everything.