Phantom Scythe - Shards of Aether: Book 1

Chapter 4

The refinery was alive with the ruckus of machinery. Evan twiddled his pencil in between his fingers, casting glances out the operator room window to make sure nobody was coming. He knew doing homework during work hours was frowned upon, but he wanted to have time to work on his hoverboard when he got home.

The circuitry of the power module was driving him crazy. He would almost have to break the laws of physics to get enough thrust to hover, let alone get propulsion for forward momentum. It was far too late to redesign it to a lighter version; This one had been in the works for months.

He shook his head and brought his attention back to his homework assignment. He sighed. World History was the most boring class. Once he learned the history of one country, he knew the history of all countries. Each one had their own form of government that would last for a couple hundred years, or a couple millennia if they were lucky. Eventually the people would realize how broken the system was, which led to revolution, downfall, and the rise of something new that would inevitably repeat the same process. All this happened while warring with other countries over land, religion, or politics. Evan was left wondering whether the history would eventually come up with something interesting or original to talk about.

A blaring alarm sounded from inside the machine room. Evan startled in his seat. Red lights flashed on the control panel. He dropped his pencil. The alert on the screen read, "Critical Failure – Emergency Stop".

He stood out of the chair, staring at the screen. He was the only one here; It was after normal work hours. What was he supposed to do? He couldn't see much beyond the dirty operator room windows. He tapped the screen a few times to see where the machine had failed. One of the main conveyor belts was jammed because of a motor failure. Curiously, he wasn't able to see any of the specific details of the motor. It was dead.

Evan squinted at the screen, confused. It was a brand-new machine just installed a couple months ago. It should have lasted several years before showing signs of age. He called up his manager on his wrist pad.

The call was answered immediately and an elderly male voice spoke. "Hey kid, you know you're not supposed to be calling me at a time like this."

Evan scrunched his face in shame. "Yeah, sorry, but something happened with the sorting machine. One of the conveyor belts broke."

"Did you try to restart it?"

"No, it was a critical failure. You said not to try anything if that happened."

"Dammit," the guy moaned. "Well, do what you can to investigate what happened and write up a report so the guys can take care of it tomorrow."

"Yes sir," Evan said.

"And for future reference, you don't have to call me if something like this happens. Just report on what happened."

"Yes sir. Sorry, sir."

"Good night." He hung up before Evan could reply.

Evan let his arm dangle by his side. Something wasn't right. He brought up the security panel on the screen and scrolled through all the camera feeds until he found one that included the broken motor. There was a faint red glow coming from the other side of the conveyor belt. He switched to a better view. What he saw made him do a double-take.

An Aether crystal was protruding from the side of the motor. Its light was fainter than most of the other crystals in the sorting bin. Evan's hands grew sweaty. Someone was here. They had to be.

He rolled back the footage a few minutes to see what had happened. Everything was running fine for a while. This particular belt carried bigger crystals and dumped them into a container where they were going to be processed and refined further. Then, one of them levitated off the belt, wandered off to the side, spun a few times, and slammed deep into the motor. A red pulse shot out the other end of the motor, then it jammed. The glow of the crystal diminished to what he had seen originally.