Max's chest heaved with each frantic breath as he struggled to steady himself. The room felt like it was spinning. His heart pounded in his ears, drowning out the low hum of the malfunctioning suit. The lights on the chest plate flickered violently, casting erratic flashes of blue and red across the walls of the cluttered workshop. His hands, shaking uncontrollably, fumbled to deactivate the systems, but every attempt only seemed to make things worse.
He stumbled backward, crashing into a stack of empty crates. The suit's grip on his arms was like a vice, and it felt as though it was draining the very energy from his body. His hands trembled, sweat beading on his forehead. The pulse from the chest plate was deafening now, each beat sending a shock through his chest, as if the suit was alive—too alive.
"Come on, come on!" Max muttered under his breath, his voice strained with panic. He tried again to remove the helmet, but his fingers felt numb, uncooperative. The energy surge seemed to intensify, surging through the suit like an uncontrollable current. The room around him was a mess of flashing lights and sparks—like a small storm brewing inside the metal exoskeleton.
His mind raced as he tried to piece together the puzzle of what was happening. The realization hit him like a slap to the face, cold and brutal. "The meteorite... It's not stable. I'm pushing it too far. It's not ready." The words echoed in his mind, and in that moment, Max understood the full weight of what he had done. His father's warnings, the cryptic journal, all of it suddenly made sense.
Max's legs gave way beneath him, and he crumpled to the floor, his back hitting the cold, hard concrete with a thud. His breath came in short, panicked gasps. The suit's pulsations slowed, but it was still alive, still humming—dangerously alive. He stared at the flickering lights, his chest rising and falling with each deep breath, and everything around him felt distant, muffled, as if he were submerged underwater.
"I... I can't let this get out of control," Max whispered to himself, his voice raw with guilt and fear. "My father warned me, and I... I didn't listen." He closed his eyes, clutching his head in his hands, trying to push away the weight of his failure. His thoughts swirled like a storm, each one more chaotic than the last. Had he ignored the warning signs because he was too desperate to prove something? To prove he could be just like his father?
The world felt smaller, as if the walls of the workshop were closing in around him. The suit, his creation, which he had once believed could change everything, was now a ticking time bomb. The energy source—his father's research, his legacy—was more than just dangerous. It was unstable. And Max, in his blind ambition, had triggered it.
He could feel the weight of his father's absence in that moment, the years of silence, the loneliness that had driven him to this point. He had spent so much time trying to live up to Dr. Alexander Cole's brilliance, trying to finish what his father had started, that he had neglected the one thing his father had tried to teach him: caution. "I thought I could control it… but it's too much," he muttered under his breath, his fingers still trembling as he gingerly touched the chest plate.
The flickering lights began to slow. Max's breathing steadied as the suit gradually powered down. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough for now. He had a moment—just a moment—to think. He closed his eyes again, this time allowing the truth to sink in. He wasn't just trying to build a suit or finish his father's work. He was trying to control something that no one had ever truly understood. Something that, if misused, could destroy everything.
"What was I thinking?" Max whispered to the silence of the room, his voice shaking with the weight of his realization. He felt the sharp sting of regret in his chest, and for a moment, he was overwhelmed by the enormity of his mistake. But deep down, under the guilt and fear, something else flickered—a small, quiet resolve.
Max wasn't ready to give up. "I have to fix this," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the suit's fading energy. He couldn't afford to make the same mistake again. But to move forward, he needed to understand the full scope of the power he was dealing with. And that meant going back to his father's research, the cryptic journal, everything he had left behind.
Max sat in the silence of his workshop, still shaken, but determined. "I won't let this go to waste. I won't let the dangers win."