Day: December 1, 2025

But the second Caleb stepped out of his hoodie, every ounce of training she’d ever had tried to evaporate at once.

Under the thin lantern light, he looked unreal – like someone carved him in secret and forgot to tone it down for real life. Broad shoulders, smooth lines of muscle, a chest that rose and fell in slow, steady waves. Even the long cut of his waist looked sculpted, defined by a faint shadow that dipped beneath the band of his shirt.

She swallowed hard. Professional. She had to stay professional.

“Sit… sit still,” she said, though her voice wavered.

Caleb obeyed, but the motion only made things worse – muscles shifting under his skin like a quiet ripple, arms flexing as he rested them on his knees. There were faint veins along his forearms, subtle but impossible to ignore, and his hands… strong, warm-looking, capable.

Ava’s fingers hovered before she touched him.

Focus. Just focus.

But then she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm, and her fingertips brushed the heat of his skin – the kind of heat that wasn’t just temperature. Caleb drew in a breath, low and surprised, and she felt it like a pulse of electricity between them.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” she lied instantly.

His eyes flicked to her mouth for half a second – half a second – and her heartbeat misfired so hard she nearly fumbled the stethoscope.

Get it together, Ava.

She leaned closer, pretending she needed to hear his pulse better, but really just trying to anchor herself. Caleb smelled faintly of clean soap and something warm, something masculine that made her knees weaken.

“Your heart rate’s elevated,” she murmured.

His voice dropped: “Yours too.”

Her hands trembled.

Professional. Right. Any second now.

Light Years to Midnight

by Dustin Blackwall

Genre: SciFi Thriller

When data itself begins to speak, who decides what it’s trying to say?

Light Years To Midnight — a globe-spanning thriller where science, faith, and code collide in a race against a countdown written into the fabric of reality.

The wind whipped dust across the plateau as Jonas crested the ridge, breath burning in his throat. Below him, the satellite dishes of the abandoned relay station stretched into the dark like a field of frozen giants. Their metal frames groaned under the rising storm, each bent toward the same invisible point on the horizon.

He wasn’t alone.

A faint beam of light—too controlled to be an accident—flickered between the dishes. Jonas crouched, heart thudding, watching as a woman stepped into view, her silhouette sharp against the skeletal machinery. She moved with the alertness of someone who had been running for far too long.

Elena.

He had seen her face in files, in encrypted packets, in the warnings that had chased him across continents. But seeing her here, in the flesh, felt unreal—like walking into a photograph he wasn’t meant to understand.

Before he could speak, a second figure emerged from the opposite end of the array. Maya paused only when she spotted Elena, recognition flaring across her face. They had never met, not really, but the anomaly had braided their paths tightly enough that the moment felt inevitable.

Jonas stood and lifted a hand, but movement in the distance froze him mid-step.

Engines.

Low, tactical, deliberate.

A convoy approached from the north, its headlights dark, its tires crunching through gravel like muffled gunfire. Special operations—unmarked, unhurried, confident. Not hunters, but collectors.

Elena’s eyes locked on his.

“Are they here for you,” she whispered, “or for all of us?”

Maya stepped closer, her breath sharp in the cold air. “Does it matter?”

Something pulsed beneath the earth—three beats, a pause, three more—vibrating up through the metal frames of the dishes. The sky above them shimmered, faint but unmistakable, as if answering the rhythm.

Jonas swallowed hard.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s already found us.”

Dustin is a lifelong fan of science and speculative fiction, blending his fascination with astronomy, technology, and the unknown into stories that explore the edge between logic and wonder. When he’s not writing, he’s reading, stargazing, or chasing trails on his dirt bike — always searching for what lies just beyond understanding.

 

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