~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For 20 advanced chapters, visit my Patreon:
Patreon - Twilight_scribe1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When the last UNICEF field report was finally filed, both Audrey Hepburn and Henry let out a long, collective sigh of relief.
Since late January, they had been on the road nonstop—three and a half months of back-to-back trips, endless inspections, press conferences, and relief missions. By the ti May rolled around, even Hepburn was ordered to take a mandatory break.
Not because she wanted it, but because the UN had hit its limit. Peacekeeping forces were stretched too thin. Unless the Security Council approved more troops—a political impossibility just for a humanitarian mission—there was simply no one left to escort them.
Troop deploynt wasn't charity; it ca out of UN budgets, not UNICEF's. And UN money didn't fall from the sky. Every soldier ant more bills footed by mber states. Nobody was about to greenlight extra forces just so Hepburn could keep her schedule running like a Swiss watch.
So the ssage was clear: two weeks off. Non-negotiable.
The choice was hers—stay in New York and keep milking billionaires at galas, or head back to Switzerland and actually rest. The answer was obvious.
Which was why Henry now found himself sitting in the first-class cabin of a transatlantic flight, beside Hepburn, bound for Zurich. This ti, she was footing the bill herself.
The attendants were attentive, the seats wide enough to swallow him whole, and for once, Henry didn't mind slowing down.
Sure, with super-speed he could cram days of work into hours. But that didn't an downti was worthless. Quite the opposite: the luxury of wasting ti felt precious. For once, he wasn't sprinting ahead of everyone else. He was just… sitting. Reading. Breathing.
The direct flight would take about seven and a half hours. Henry spent most of it with his nose buried in a book, occasionally scribbling notes into a battered notebook—half-baked ideas for improving Linux functions.
Online, he didn't have much ti to socialize, but under the handle CK, he'd already carved out a reputation among the open-source community as a serious contributor. Linus Torvalds himself had even dropped an olive branch once, offering collaboration on a ssage board.
Henry hadn't taken it. He didn't need to. Why chase the spotlight? Not every rebel wanted an imperial pardon; sotis it was better to stay in the shadows, like a bandit who never intends to surrender.
Today, though, his focus wasn't code—it was Russian literature.
In his hands: a first-edition, Russian-language copy of War and Peace, Volu IV, complete with Tolstoy's own signature. Audrey's private collection. She owned the whole signed set, and unlike most collectors, she believed books were ant to be read, not locked in climate-controlled vaults.
So, when Henry had asked, she'd encouraged him to borrow it. She couldn't read Russian herself, and she thought it was a sha to let the volus sit silent.
Now he was deep into Tolstoy's philosophical tangents on Moscow's fall to Napoleon, wondering just how many layers of self-indulgent despair the nobleman protagonist was supposed to represent, when a ripple of noise spread through the cabin.
Passengers leaned toward the windows, murmuring in excitent.
Henry glanced up. They were cruising high, above the cloudline, where the world outside was usually nothing but velvet-black sky, a moon, and stars. But tonight, sothing else was out there.
A fire.
A swirling, orange fla floated in the heavens, tendrils lashing outward like living strears, shifting shape every second.
"Is that the aurora?" soone asked.
"No way. Auroras have symtry, structure. This… this is different. Beautiful, but chaotic."
"So what the hell is it?"
"No idea. But it's moving."
The chatter carried easily to Henry's ears. Even Hepburn looked up from her book, peering out through the oval window.
"Henry," she said softly, "what do you think that is?"
He followed her gaze through another window, brow furrowed. The sight nagged at him—familiar, yet hard to place. Sothing from history? Or from the future he half-rembered?
Still, most cosmic radiation never made it through the ozone layer. And the phenonon wasn't descending toward Earth. Whatever it was, it didn't seem like an imdiate threat.
"I don't know," he admitted.
Hepburn smiled at him, amused. "Now that is rare."
He spread his hands. "The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know. Ask any real scholar—they'll tell you the sa thing."
She tilted her head. "Think you can get a picture of it?"
Henry reached overhead, pulled down a cara case, and swapped in a low-light lens. His own photography skills were amateur at best, so he passed the cara to her and started blocking out the cabin light with a blanket, leaving only the lens pressed against the glass.
"Reflections are the enemy. Kill the extra light, and you might actually get sothing."
She snapped a test shot, adjusted the settings with a careful hand, and took a few more. They wouldn't know if anything ca out until the film was developed, but that wasn't the point. Hepburn, ever the romantic, wanted to rember it with her own eyes anyway.
Henry, though, kept watching. His vision pierced the atmosphere with inhuman clarity.
And he saw it.
A shuttle, gliding too close to the firestorm in the sky. One mont it was moving freely. The next—it was caught. Snared by the roiling energy. Engines sputtered, and then… silence.
The craft hung there in the heavens, suspended like a fly in amber.
Henry's stomach tightened.
This wasn't just a pretty light show.
Sothing—soone—was here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
🎉 Power Stone Goal Announcent! 🎉
🔥 Let's reach 2500 Power Stones, and I'll drop 5 BONUS CHAPTERS!
Or,
I'll release one bonus chapter for every 500 Power Stones we hit!"
Let know what should I do
Your support ans everything—let's crush these goals together! Keep voting, and let the stones pile up! 🚀
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
User Comments
0 comments from readers