The Ten Seconds Before the Fireworks Went Dark

Panic spread instantly. Phone flashlights jerked around like a swarm of trapped insects. Someone dropped a folding chair. A kid started screaming for his mother. A man in a foam patriot hat ran into a table of half-cooked ribs, sending sauce and sparks across the pavement. Elias had only come to check a fault in a harbor-side switch cabinet. He had set his tool bag down five minutes earlier. Now the whole waterfront felt like it had been yanked off its hinges. He looked up in time to see a delivery drone wobble out of the smoke. Its rear casing was sparking. It slammed into the string lights strung over the pedestrian plaza and burst apart in a shower of metal and flame.