The vault beneath Garrett Automotive had become a war room, a chapel, and a darkroom all at once.

Reed hadn’t slept in forty-one hours. The only light came from the arc-reactors humming in their new cage of frost-forged steel and dragon-scale, and from the holographic editing bay he’d salvaged from the university film department. Rolls of 70 mm film lay coiled like sleeping serpents beside hard drives that glowed with captured magic.

He was cutting the documentary in real ...