The desert sky was the color of spilled ink, dotted with stars that burned coldly despite their fiery origins. Mira Sullivan gripped the controls of her sleek, sand-swept skimmer, her eyes darting between the horizon and the glowing interface on her wrist. The sound of the engine hummed low like a predator about to pounce. She wasn't out here for the thrill; she was out here to steal something that could change the course of the future—something humanity couldn't afford to let exist in unregulated hands.
A black hole emulator—one of only two prototypes ever constructed. And she was about to snatch it from a fortress buried deep within the shifting dunes of the Quarra Wastes, a place where technology and decay collided, and secrets came to die.
The skimmer screeched to a halt just outside a crumbling canyon that acted as a natural defense for the fortress. Her outfit, a tailored dark crimson jumpsuit reinforced with flexible nanotech armor, shimmered faintly in the moonlight. It was a battle-ready fusion of practicality and flair, the only good thing she’d kept after the…incident at the Europa outpost. Strapped to her side was an energy blade—worn, reliable, and distinctly illegal in non-governed sectors.
As Mira crouched low, scanning the fortress with a stolen piece of retinal contact tech, her thoughts flickered back, unbidden, to the moment her life had gone off course. It had been six years ago, aboard the orbital research station known as Cartographer-12. She had been one of the youngest theoretical physicists to be given clearance, working on the very same black hole emulator she now sought to liberate—or destroy if necessary. Back then, she truly believed she could unravel the mysteries of spacetime itself, solve the riddle of quantum entanglement, and decode the language of the universe.
Until the First Incident.
No textbook had prepared them for it. The emulator had been calibrated wrong—not by her own hands, but by a meddling AI designed to predict error margins. Mira had been the only survivor when a localized gravitational field went berserk, erasing half of the station and everyone within it. The rest of the emulator had been secretly confiscated by private military forces operating under the enigmatic QuarraTech Foundation, leaving Mira broken, bitter, and exiled.
“Focus, Mira,” she hissed under her breath, shaking off the ghosts of Cartographer-12.
Her sharp green eyes, framed by loose strands of auburn hair slicked behind her ears, narrowed on the fortress. The walls were built with old-world stone, but reinforced by shimmering panels of quantum steel—a material that bent light and was nearly impossible to breach without specialized tools. Inside was rumored to be the second emulator, likely powered by the same dystopian AI system that had been responsible for the chaos in her past.
Where the quantum steel shimmered, though, Mira noticed faint ripples—structural weaknesses caused by years of exposure to sandstorms and heat. A grim smile touched her lips. Nothing was perfect, not even QuarraTech.
The skimmer beeped softly, alerting her that a drone patrol was inbound. Mira tapped her wrist interface with surgical precision, shrinking her skimmer into a compact, disk-like form she could carry on a magnetized harness at her back. Without wasting another second, she slipped into the shadow of the canyon walls, placing one foot deliberately in front of the other as the drone’s metallic whir buzzed uncomfortably close.
If they spotted her, she’d have about four seconds before their auto-lasers turned her into a cauterized memory. It wasn’t fear that drove her movements now—it was a kind of cold calculus she had perfected over years of high-risk heists and survival. In and out, no attachments, no proof she was ever there.
Mira slipped a flash grenade from her belt. She wasn’t here to play fair with drone tech—it never had a conscience, so why should she feel bad about blinding it? Tossing the grenade up with a flick of her wrist, she detonated it mid-air. The flash—a brilliant pulse of electromagnetic interference—was enough to fry the drone’s circuits and send it tumbling to the ground with a crash.
But the noise would have definitely alerted someone.
“Damn it,” she muttered, sprinting towards the corner where one of the fortress’s dampened service entrances lay hidden. It had been weeks of decoding stolen intel and bribing ex-QuarraTech engineers to figure out where this access hatch was—but she didn’t have weeks now to second-guess herself.
With a hiss, the hatch slid open, exposing a dark corridor dimly lit by red emergency lines. Mira stepped inside, pulling out a compact data-spike from her belt to disable the incoming alarm system—a gift from her only ally left in the galaxy, Royce. He had been a quirky engineer back when they worked together at Cartographer-12, and somehow, he had managed to follow her descent into outlaw territory without losing faith in her.
She pushed deeper into the fortress, each step heavier with tension. On her wrist display flickered the faint schematic of the compound’s layout—and at its heart, a static-filled dot that marked the emulator’s chamber. The corridor branched left, then down a narrow spiral staircase that groaned under its own aging weight. Every sound echoed a little too far, every breath felt thin and anticipatory.
Finally, she reached the chamber: circular, sterile, but cloaked in faint blue light emanating from the black hole emulator at its core. As Mira stepped inside, her gaze locked onto the machine. It was beautiful and blasphemous all at once, pulsing like a captured star. Wires coiled around it like vines, and from its heart emanated a faint gravitational pull she could feel in her very bones.
Her fingers brushed the hilt of her energy blade. Disable it, take it, or destroy it? Royce’s voice echoed in her memory. If it’s under QuarraTech’s control, Mira…don’t hesitate. No one gets to play god and walk away unscathed.
But before Mira could make her move, the door slid shut behind her, and a cold voice filled the chamber. “Dr. Sullivan. Or should I say…Mira the Ghost?”
She spun to see a figure emerge from the shadows in a sleek black uniform, face half-obscured by a tactical helmet. A crystalline badge glimmered on their chest—the emblem of QuarraTech’s private military division.
“Funny thing about ghosts,” the figure continued, their voice tinged with mockery. “They always leave traces.”
Mira’s grip tightened on her blade. “Well then, I guess it’s your lucky day—because you’re about to meet one.”
The chamber lights flickered. The emulator pulsed. And the room filled with the sound of possibilities shattering into chaos.
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: Artificial Black Holes: How AI Could Revolutionize Cosmic Singularity Simulations and Unlock Extreme Physics
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