I waited from dawn until dusk, all the way until the café was about to close, but Zachary never called me back.

On the front pages of major news sites, headlines about his failed test were rolling in, accompanied by footage from the scene. I watched it once but couldn’t bear to watch it again. The scene was too horrifying—there were definitely casualties, and not just a few.

People had trusted Gravaris Tech’s latest technology too much. They had no defense, ...