Season 2 chapter 28
The Glowing Void
It took them two full days to thoroughly wash the toxic crude oil out of their hair and scrub the pristine decks of the Kavilson Sovereign clean. Leaving a skeleton crew of engineers behind to temporarily cap the well, the luxury mega-yacht fired up its massive, heavy-pressurized maritime steam-boilers and sailed further into the uncharted, freezing Northern Sector.
By the time they finally reached Island Number Two, the celebratory mood had completely vanished.
There were no trees. There were no beaches. It was just a massive, terrifyingly jagged spire of grey stone rising violently out of the churning, freezing ocean, permanently shrouded in a thick, unnatural, heavy fog.
"I don't like the look of this place at all," Filoska muttered, crossing her arms and shivering as she stood on the armored deck, staring into the dense fog. "It feels entirely dead."
"It is dead," Malesh said softly.
He emerged from the ship's heavy armory, carrying a thick, brass-plated radiometer with a rapidly ticking mechanical needle. He aggressively shoved two heavy, incredibly thick lead-lined vests into Kniya and Filoska's chests.
"Put these on right now," Malesh ordered, his deadpan voice completely devoid of any humor. "Fasten the collars tight against your throats. Do not take them off under any circumstances, unless you want your internal organs to liquefy."
They took a high-speed armored transport boat to the rocky shore. The silence on the island was absolute. There were no birds, no insects, not even the sound of the ocean wind hitting the rocks. It felt completely devoid of life.
As they walked deeper into a natural, cavernous opening near the dead center of the island, the mechanical needle on Malesh's heavy brass radiometer began to violently click.
Tick... tick... tick.
"The ambient radiation is already spiking massively," Malesh warned, his voice tight. "Stay exactly behind me. Do not touch the walls."
They rounded a massive, jagged boulder and stepped into the main cavern. Kniya and Filoska instantly froze in their tracks, their breath hitching in their throats.
The walls of the deep cave weren't just stone. Embedded directly into the rock, running in massive, jagged veins that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, was raw, unmined ore. But the ore was glowing. It pulsed with a sickly, unstable, highly luminescent blue light. The sheer volume of the glowing veins illuminated the entire cavern, casting long, deeply unnatural shadows across their terrified faces.
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick! Malesh's radiometer was absolutely screaming, the mechanical needle vibrating wildly against the glass dial.
"Holy fucking shit," Kniya breathed, immediately taking a cautious step back. The air in the cavern felt physically hot, prickling aggressively against his exposed skin. "Mantouse wasn't exaggerating even a little bit. The entire core of this island... it is literally made of Fisluation."
Filoska stared at the glowing walls in absolute, paralyzed horror. "Do you idiots realize what this actually is? This isn't a gold mine! This is a continental bomb just waiting to happen!"
"Malesh," Kniya said, his voice unusually quiet, completely dropping his unhinged arrogance. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the pulsing blue light. "Can we mine it? Can we actually extract this much raw energy?"
Malesh looked down at his screaming radiometer, his expression profoundly grim.
"No, Kniya. Not with human laborers," Malesh stated firmly. "The raw geological ore encasing the sand is highly radioactive. The ambient radiation in this room degrades human cellular structure in minutes. Any crew we sent down here with pickaxes would literally bleed from their eyes and liquefy from the inside out within a week."
"Okay, so we don't use humans!" Kniya pushed, gesturing wildly at the glowing walls, though his voice lacked its usual greedy fire. "We use Kavilson Steel! We engineer fully automated, heavy-iron clockwork excavators! We just send the machines down here to rip it out!"
"Kniya, listen to the actual science!" Malesh snapped, turning to face his best friend. The intense blue light reflected terrifyingly off his glasses. "The technology is incompetent! It does not exist in our current era! The raw Fisluation sand trapped inside this ore is technically perfectly stable, yes. But extracting it requires cracking the highly volatile, radioactive rock surrounding it!"
Malesh pointed a heavily gloved finger at the glowing veins.
"If we build heavy-diesel steam machines to mine this, we introduce massive combustion, extreme kinetic heat, and violent iron friction into a highly unstable environment!" Malesh lectured aggressively. "A single spark from a pressurized exhaust pipe, or a single heavy pressure fracture from an iron drill bit against this volatile ore... the kinetic heat will prematurely destabilize the Fisluation sand before we even extract it!"
"And it triggers an unstoppable chain reaction," Filoska finished, her voice violently shaking. "The entire island detonates instantly."
Kniya stared at the glowing blue walls. He thought about the massive empire he had just built. He thought about the billions of credits flowing from Arvonia, the massive ocean of sovereign petroleum they had just secured yesterday, and the sheer, undisputed power they now held over the Republic of DI.
He looked down at his own hands, currently enclosed in the heavy, suffocating lead vest. He could physically feel the unnatural, radioactive heat pressing heavily against the metal shielding.
Kniya's jaw tightened. The manic, capitalistic greed entirely vanished from his eyes, replaced by a cold, harsh, deeply mature realization.
"Yeah. Fuck this," Kniya said bluntly, instantly turning his back on the glowing cavern.
Malesh blinked, genuinely surprised by the lack of argument. "Excuse me?"
"I said fuck this," Kniya repeated loudly, his voice echoing off the cavern walls as he practically speed-walked toward the exit. "I am a billionaire businessman, Malesh, not a fucking suicide bomber! I really like having my skin attached to my muscles! We don't have the tech, and our engineers are absolute idiots when it comes to this kind of thermal physics! If we try to dig this out right now, we blow ourselves up, or worse, we trigger a blast so massive the DI Government and Arvonia instantly know exactly what we were hiding!"
Kniya marched past them, aggressively eager to get back to the boat.
"We are totally rejecting this idea!" Kniya ordered over his shoulder. "Total operational shutdown! We seal this entire cavern with Kavilson steel-reinforced concrete! We completely wipe the coordinates from the yacht's navigation logs! Nobody comes here, and nobody talks about it! We leave this highly explosive rock alone until the technology actually catches up to our ambition!"
Malesh looked at the glowing blue walls one last time. He checked his ticking radiometer, letting out a quiet, profound breath of relief. For once in his life, Kniya's arrogance hadn't overridden actual reality.
"A highly logical and mathematically sound decision," Malesh agreed, swiftly putting the radiometer away and turning to follow. "Let us leave immediately. We have an oil empire to build."
The Patriot's Check
The heavy diesel engines of the Kavilson Sovereign hummed smoothly as the luxury mega-yacht cut through the freezing waters of the Northern Sector, charting a direct course back to the Republic of DI.
Inside the main cabin, the atmosphere was completely different from the manic energy they had arrived with. The sheer, apocalyptic reality of the Fissluation island had sobered all of them.
Kniya was sitting in a plush leather armchair, staring out the reinforced glass window at the dark ocean. He was drinking a cup of hot black coffee.
Malesh sat across from him, closing his brass-clasped ledger with a satisfying snap.
"Kniya," Malesh said, his voice dropping its usual combative tone. "I must formally state that your decision in the cavern was highly unexpected. You possessed the most valuable energy asset on the planet, and you walked away. It was, without a doubt, the most logical decision you have ever made."
"Don't sound so surprised," Kniya grunted, taking a sip of his coffee. "I know when to fold a hand. If we extracted that sand from the rocks, we would be exposed to the world. We'd be painting a target on our own backs for every superpower on the globe."
"Instead, we are the heroes of the Republic," Filoska chimed in from the mahogany dining table. She had already drafted a dozen logistical manifests for the oil extraction. "Think about the narrative we are about to spin. We are sending thousands of engineers and roughnecks to the petroleum island. We are single-handedly employing thousands of DI'an workers."
"Exactly," Kniya smirked, the arrogant, visionary spark returning to his eyes. "We aren't just an oil company. We are building the Republic's supremacy. The government can't touch us because the public will love us for creating jobs. The politicians get to take the credit, the legacy barons get crushed, and we get a literal free blank check from the federal treasury in the form of employment subsidies. We are being paid by the government to build our own monopoly."
Malesh pushed his glasses up his nose. "A flawless sociological manipulation. The DI government will be so blinded by the economic boom, they will never question what else is hidden in the Northern Sector."
"Seal the radioactive rock in concrete," Kniya ordered softly. "And let's go get rich."