🎧 13. Lightning Without Sound
Previously, on What Thunder Left Behind…

Jeff’s phone blinks at 1:14 a.m., a square of cold light in a quiet room. The text reads like pulp and still tightens his chest: “Sublevel 3. Stairwell behind Killian. Come alone.” He paces, then chooses motion. Hoodie. Side gate. Night that tastes of wet metal.

The service stair breathes warmth from the old bones of the building. At the base, a rust-flecked door waits with a keypad that hums blue. Six digits rise through his fingers. The lock clicks on the last number. Air shifts across his face.

Inside, a narrow corridor extends beneath low pipes and silent server racks. Fluorescents hum an uneven rhythm. Heat gathers along his spine. A warped EXIT sign struggles to hold its color.

They wait at the junction.

Elena Vos sits on a steel crate, posture calm, a black folder balanced on her wrist. Her pale blouse keeps its cool in the heavy air. Beside her stands Dax, broad and still, chewing slow, eyes steady.

Jeff tries a joke about boiler rooms. Elena lifts her chin a breath and opens the folder. A translucent sheet catches light. Gold-thread circuits sketch resonant structures, feedback harmonics, bandwidth curves that echo Lily’s work.

He claims ignorance. Elena names architecture over object: a harmonic compiler, a recursive loop that brings signal into line with thought. Jeff says the names anyway. Steven. Lily.

Elena calls it extraordinary and inevitable. Omex wants the specifications first, complete and silent. Digital. Clean. Untraced. Jeff says they would notice. Elena speaks to the bruise he hides: years without spotlight, Lily at Steven’s side, his skill measured from the margins. Recognition carries weight. Integrity without witness fades.

Dax drops an envelope. Betting slips. Screenshots. A photo from Encore in Everett. Debt breathes in the heat.

Elena slides a matte black keycard within reach. One upload. One secure channel. No vows. Only access.

They leave. The EXIT sign sputters and goes dark. Jeff stands with the keycard warming in his palm and the envelope whispering against the crate. Choice presses close while the stairwell holds its heavy air.

Five days of silence. One kiss that won’t stop echoing.
Lily tries to code through the fallout while Steven keeps his distance—until the lab stops working, and Professor Hachette forces a reckoning. What starts as an “experiment” becomes something deeper, riskier, and far less theoretical.
Because some data can't be debugged. And some kisses can’t be undone.

✨This episode is part of the book "What Thunder Left Behind", for the full pulse begin with Chapter 1 “Solve for X.”

Book available on Amazon. Get your copy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://a.co/d/2jOGEOR⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Thanks for listening—visit me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sites.google.com/view/dtmartin/home⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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