The first six hours, I didn’t do anything.

  I just sat there.

  Back against the wall. Suit half-peeled off. Breathing.

  The exhaustion hit all at once—not just physical, though my body felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Mental. The kind that comes from running on adrenaline for forty-eight hours straight and suddenly having nowhere left to run.

  The hangar was quiet.

  Not silent. The storm outside was a constant presence—a low roar that penetrated even through meters of rock and the sealed door. But it was muffled. Distant. The kind of noise you could almost ignore if you tried.

  The animals had settled.

  The chickens roosted in their coop, occasionally clucking to each other in soft, conversational tones that suggested they were unimpressed with recent accommodations but willing to tolerate them.

  The goats lay in their pen. Problem watched me with those unnerving horizontal pupils, chewing cud, judging.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “Status.”

  “Hangar integrity remains stable. Door seal is holding. Atmospheric pressure inside is nominal. Power reserves at sixty-eight percent. Life support is functioning. No structural failures detected.”

  “The storm?”

  “Sustained winds are now one hundred forty-five miles per hour. Gusts to one hundred seventy-three. Barometric pressure outside has dropped to nine hundred forty-eight millibars. This event has been upgraded to category five equivalent.”

  I closed my eyes.

  Category five.

  The kind of storm that erases coastlines on Earth.

  And we were sitting inside a mountain, listening to it try to claw its way in.

  “How long will it last?” I asked.

  “Unknown. Weather patterns suggest a minimum of thirty-six hours. Possibly longer.”

  Thirty-six hours.

  A day and a half of sitting in a cave, waiting for the world outside to calm down.

  I could work with that.

  By hour eight, I’d recovered enough to move.

  I stood—joints protesting—and walked the perimeter of the hangar.

  Checked the door seal. Ran my hands along the edges, feeling for air movement. Found a few spots where the compound had compressed slightly under pressure. Not leaking. Just… settling.

  I applied another layer. Let it cure.

  Checked the structural supports. The titanium beams held steady. No bending. No stress cracks.

  Checked the containers. All secured. Straps tight.

  Checked the vehicles. The Windwalker sat where I’d left it, wings folded, tie-downs taut. The wrecker and hybrid were anchored properly.

  Everything was fine.

  Everything was holding.

  I should have felt relief.

  Instead, I felt… restless.

  Like I’d forgotten something. Like there was still work to do and I just couldn’t see it yet.

  “RIKU,” I said. “What’s my heart rate?”

  “Elevated. Ninety-two beats per minute.”

  “I’m sitting still.”

  “Yes. Your sympathetic nervous system remains activated. This is normal following sustained high-stress activity. Your body has not yet registered that the immediate threat has passed.”

  “So I’m stuck in fight-or-flight mode.”

  “Essentially.”

  I laughed once. Short.

  “Great. How do I turn it off?”

  “You do not. It will deactivate naturally over the next several hours as your threat assessment mechanisms recalibrate. In the meantime, I recommend low-intensity activity. Routine tasks. Familiar patterns.”

  “Like what?”

  “Feed the animals. Eat. Rest. Hydration is also important—you have not consumed adequate fluids in the past twelve hours.”

  Right.

  I grabbed a water bottle from the supply container and drank half of it in one pull.

  Then I walked over to the goat pen.

  Problem looked up when I approached.

  She didn’t stand. Didn’t move. Just… watched.

  The other two goats—I’d mentally named them Chaos and Entropy because they seemed determined to live up to the theme—barely acknowledged me.

  But Problem tracked my every movement.

  “You know,” I said quietly, crouching beside the pen, “you’re kind of unsettling.”

  She blinked. Once. Slow.

  “I’m trying to keep you alive. You could show a little appreciation.”

  She went back to chewing cud.

  I reached through the bars and scratched behind her ears.

  She allowed it. Didn’t lean into it the way a dog would, but she didn’t pull away either.

  “You’re smart, aren’t you?” I said. “Smarter than you let on.”

  Her ear twitched.

  “You figured out the gate latch in under a minute. You tested the pen reinforcement. You watched me work and learned how things connect.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I pulled my hand back and studied her.

  “RIKU. What do we know about goats? Cognitively, I mean.”

  “Goats possess problem-solving abilities comparable to dogs. They demonstrate social learning, memory retention, and situational adaptability. They are also highly curious and motivated by food acquisition.”

  “So Problem isn’t just being difficult. She’s actually intelligent.”

  “Correct. The behavior you interpret as stubbornness is likely exploratory learning.”

  I looked at Problem.

  She looked back.

  “Okay,” I said. “I respect that.”

  I stood and checked their feeder. Filled their water. Made sure they had enough hay to last through the storm.

  Chaos tried to eat my glove.

  “No,” I said, pulling it away.

  She tried again.

  “Still no.”

  Entropy ignored the entire interaction and went to sleep.

  I smiled despite myself.

  “RIKU. I think the goats are keeping me sane.”

  “Livestock care provides routine structure and purposeful activity. This is beneficial for psychological stability during isolation.”

  “That’s a fancy way of saying they give me something to do.”

  “Yes.”

  Hour sixteen, I made tea.

  Not the emergency rations. Valraion’s tea.

  I set up the crystal vessel carefully. Heated the water to the precise temperature the instructions specified. Measured the leaves. Let them steep for exactly four minutes.

  The scent filled the hangar—jasmine, plumeria, hibiscus, smoke.

  I poured a cup and sat on the ramp of the Anchorhold.

  The first sip was just as transcendent as I remembered.

  Complex. Layered. The floral notes bright and alive, the smoke grounding everything, the hibiscus adding just enough tartness to keep it from being too sweet.

  I closed my eyes and let it settle.

  “RIKU,” I said. “What do you think Valraion meant when he said this would bring clarity?”

  “I believe he was suggesting that moments of reflection—structured pauses in otherwise chaotic circumstances—allow for better decision-making.”

  “So… slow down and think.”

  “Essentially.”

  I took another sip.

  “What should I be thinking about?”

  “What comes next.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “The storm ends. We assess damage. We continue building.”

  “Yes. But there is more.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like whether this world is survivable long-term. Like whether our current infrastructure is adequate for category five storms. Like what resources exist beyond this island that we have not yet discovered.”

  I set the cup down.

  “You think we need to expand operations.”

  “I think we need to understand our environment before it kills us. We are reactive. We respond to threats as they appear. That is survival. But it is not stabilization.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We map the ocean. We analyze the ecosystem. We determine what this world offers beyond rock and salt water. And we build accordingly.”

  I picked up the cup again.

  Drank.

  Let the tea remind me that somewhere, people built things because they were beautiful, not just because they were necessary.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “Do you think we’ll ever get to that point? Where we build for beauty instead of survival?”

  “I do not know. But I believe the attempt is worthwhile.”

  I smiled.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Hour twenty-four, I slept.

  Not because I wanted to. Because my body finally shut down and stopped giving me a choice.

  I climbed into the Anchorhold’s bunk, set an alarm for six hours, and closed my eyes.

  The storm raged outside.

  Inside, the hangar held.

  And for the first time since the hypernode activation, since learning about the sabotage, since discovering I was Earth’s only SSS pioneer on the wrong planet—

  I felt something close to peace.

  Not safety.

  Not certainty.

  Just… acceptance.

  This was my life now.

  This rock. This storm. This mountain.

  And I was going to make it work.

  I woke to RIKU’s voice.

  Urgent. Sharp.

  “Taylor. Wake up.”

  I sat up, disoriented, reaching for my boots.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The storm. It changed.”

  “Changed how?”

  “Wind speeds are increasing. Barometric pressure is dropping faster than models predicted.”

  I grabbed the tablet and checked the weather station data.

  WIND: 187 MPH. PRESSURE: 921 MB. FALLING.

  My stomach dropped.

  “RIKU. What category is that?”

  A pause.

  “That is category six. Possibly higher. Taylor—this storm exceeds Earth’s classification system.”

  I stared at the numbers.

  At wind speeds that could strip flesh from bone.

  At pressure readings that suggested the atmosphere itself was collapsing.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “Will the door hold?”

  Another pause.

  Longer this time.

  “I do not know.”

  I stood.

  Pulled on my suit.

  And walked to the door.

  Outside, something that had stopped being a storm and started being an apocalypse was trying to get in.

  “All right,” I said. “Then we reinforce it.”