Aurora's Hidden Workshop – The Days That Followed
The machine stood like a question mark in metal and light. Half-formed. Half-understood. A skeleton of wires and hope, cradled in silence beneath Aurora's hidden workshop.
They worked in shifts. Hours passed like minutes. Meals forgotten. Sleep reduced to flickers behind blinking eyes.
Joshua had sectioned the walls with formulas. Each one stacked, folded, twisted like origami made of thought. Aurora had created containment layers—dimensional skins that would prevent the machine from collapsing the pocket space they worked in.
Still, they failed. A lot.
The first time they powered the core, it hummed, then screamed. One of the stabilizers cracked and turned to ash.
Aurora raised her hand. Froze the spatial collapse just before it reached the walls.
"Okay," Joshua muttered, coughing through the smoke, "maybe I overshot the frequency bias."
"You think?" Aurora said, dry as always.
But she didn't stop.
She never stopped.
