Max towered above the suit's skeletal form, his hands steady but his thoughts agitated. The last few days had been a haze of late nights and caffeine-fueled marathons. The room was filled with tools, rejected designs, and stacks of notes. But the more he worked, the more defined his mission became. He wasn't merely completing his father's project anymore—he was building something monumental.

  The initial tests had gone well. The suit had turned on with ease, the energy core pulsing with a weak light. But Max realized that it was not enough. The energy distribution system, while working, was inefficient. If he was going to safeguard the power of the meteorite, the suit had to be refined, made more precise, more dynamic.

  Max tweaked the central components with experienced fingers, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. His father's scribbled notes were all he had, and each line of written text was like a puzzle he had to decipher. When he hooked up the final wires, a burst of electricity coursed through the circuits, sending him leaping back for an instant. "I have to watch out," he muttered, wiping a droplet of sweat from his forehead.

  In spite of the failures, there was a spark of enthusiasm in him. "A few more adjustments, and this will be something amazing." He was not certain if he was referring to the suit or himself anymore. With every enhancement, he felt that he was becoming part of the design, his uncertainties yielding to purpose.

  Max stopped, massaging his eyes. He took his father's journal from where he had left it on the floor and began to flip through pages detailing the finding of the meteorite, its characteristics, and its potential. Max had read those pages hundreds of times before, but today was different. His comprehension was different. He sensed a relationship with the power his father had been attempting to capture—a relationship he could not define, but he sensed its gravity.

  He stopped at one of the less familiar sections, where his father had spoken of the "boundless energy" of the meteorite. "This power. it could change everything." The words struck him with force. Was his father truly onto something so vast, so perilous? Max had always realized the meteorite was something special, but now it was coming clear that its full potential had the capability to tip the balance of global power.

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  But when the realization dawned, so did the fallout. The government was after this—his father's research, the suit, the meteorite itself. Max shivered at the prospect. Already he had felt the government's prying eyes on him. That agent who'd come to visit him. the warning about the meteorite's potential. It wasn't a question of national security—it was more than that.

  He reclined in his chair, pushing a hand through his unruly hair. "If the government's after this, what do they actually plan to do with it?" he breathed, the words suspended between them. They had already demonstrated how far they would go to command this power. And Max realized he couldn't allow them to have it—not like this, not for themselves.

  The internal struggle ate away at him. Was he simply a piece in their game? Or was he at the edge of something much more sinister? "I want to believe they'll do good with it," he muttered to himself, though the statement sounded insubstantial. "But what if I'm not? What if they just want to control it? I have to stop them. I have to protect it."

  Max's head whirled. The suit could safeguard the meteorite. It could safeguard humanity from the sinister effects of its power being accessed by the wrong people. But could he honestly trust anyone else to comprehend what he was attempting to do? The government wanted their own ends, and Max wasn't sure he could place his trust in them to look after his father's legacy.

  He shut his eyes for an instant, drawing in a deep breath. The burden of the decision rested heavily upon him. But one thing was certain: the more he knew about the meteorite and his father's work, the more he knew he had no option but to complete the suit.

  Max gazed at the design on the suit, now a promise and a warning. "I can't let them have their way with this. I won't." His voice was calm now, doubt dispelled by something else—determination.

  He backed away from the workbench, glancing back at the energy core once more, as it now was radiating bright light. "This is more than me. This is more than all of us." His mind kept reiterating this. He was aware of what was at hand.

  Max understood that he was on the verge of a world in which he would have to make choices that were impossible. But with his father's work before him, he felt prepared. He would complete what Dr. Alexander Cole had begun—and safeguard it, cost whatever it may.

  "I'm not completing just the suit, Dad. I'm completing the mission.