Chapter One: Tomorrow in the Wheel

She pressed a material scanner against the wheel. Blue light swept the surface, magnifying the fracture into a forest of branches. The wheel was made from first-generation silicon-carbon composite and was twelve years older than Lin. A normal stress fracture should have been chaotic and blunt. These branches turned with suspicious precision: three short, one long; seventeen degrees east; a circular void where no void should be. Han crouched and studied the display. “Someone carved it?” “No tool could carve inside every layer.” Lin opened the tomography model. “But if you stack the layers…” She rotated the projection. The scattered fractures locked together like birds taking formation. Six groups of figures appeared. 14.37° S. 77.51° E.