Enoch stared out the window, age-spotted hands clutching the sill. He barely saw dusk gilding the science commune's rooftops and the hills and river beyond. Excitement pulsed through his veins. This was it. His life's work about to be realised.

Anticipation bubbling, he swung back to his workbench—only to stop, the smile on his face falling into confusion. He'd put the prototype beside the target material, ready for testing.

He swore he had.

Fear whispered, a familiar unwelcome ghost. Was he losing that most precious to him: his mind? No. He shook off the thought; hurriedly searched the gleaming silver benches and shelves of his workroom. A little forgetfulness was expected at his age—and after the recent all-nighters he'd pulled.

But forgetting where one put one's slippers wasn't the same as losing a one-of-a-kind atomic-density augmenter potentially worth trillions to the weight-loss industry. Taking a microgram of food, with its minuscule calories, and temporarily expanding the space between atomic particles to turn it into what looked to be a full meal would be ground breaking. Meal-size perception was a huge part of the satiation experience.

It wasn't there.

Sleek and clean as his lab was, it was easy to confirm the prototype was not in the room.

Stolen. The possibility he'd been resisting with cold sweaty determination broke free, flooding him with panic. AtoMech Corp. owned that tech—owned him. If their investment in his vision came to nothing ... there'd be nothing to leave his daughter.

Pandora—Pan. The love of his life, a late gift a man in his eighties had never believed he'd receive. At age four, she was a miracle of musical giggles, guilty-eyed 'oopsy daisies', and jam-smeared dimples. Just a few minutes ago, she'd run in full beam to deliver him a plate of Snood-Bubble biscuits for supper, her favourite snack. She didn't want him falling asleep again in the middle of story time and sugar made her 'bounce'.

Enoch's blood ran cold. Pan.

He ran for the door, heart hammering. Pan loved pink. Guilty about the time his work took from her and inspired by her enthusiasm for the shade, he'd made the prototype's casing vivid fuchsia.

He broke out of the lab—and into bedlam. Darkness—not typical of dusk. Screams and people running.

A flurry of activity caught his eye across the road. Dr. Little, historian and avid restorer of ancient transport tech, lay trapped under a collapsed wooden cart, one of its spoke wheels missing.

Pan stood just a few steps away, a tiny figure in unicorn pyjamas holding a trillion-dollar prototype.

Enoch rushed to her—and spotted the cart's missing wheel.

Thousands of metres high, a monster of weathered wood and rust that blocked the setting sun.

Enoch's heart leapt even as his stomach plummeted at the screams rising around him.

It had worked.

Too well.

Cataclysmically well.

Pan turned to him, chocolate-drop eyes wide, lower lip trembling. "Oops!"