The interview request sat in Eli Drake's inbox like an unwelcome asteroid, blinking red with the urgency flag that his assistant had undoubtedly added. CNN Science Division wants exclusive access to OrionX's lead systems engineer. The subject line made his jaw clench.
He closed the email without reading it.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of OrionX's engineering lab, the California sky stretched endlessly blue, unmarred by clouds or conscience. Eli had always found irony in the fact that a man who designed spacecraft for a living preferred to keep his feet firmly planted on solid ground and his eyes focused on screens rather than horizons.
"Drake!" The voice belonged to Marcus Webb, OrionX's PR director, whose approaching footsteps echoed with the particular urgency of a man whose job depended on making antisocial engineers palatable to the public. "We need to talk."
Eli didn't look up from his code. Three monitors displayed cascading data from the Saturn probe's navigation systems—thousands of lines of programming that would, in six weeks, guide humanity's most ambitious deep-space mission to the edge of destruction and back. Each variable had to be perfect. Each calculation had to account for forces that could tear apart matter itself.
"I'm busy," Eli said, which was both true and his standard response to Marcus.
"The entire board is asking about the CNN interview. Isabel Crowe specifically—"
"No."
Marcus stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Eli, this isn't a request anymore. The company is investing three billion dollars in this mission. We need a face for it, and you're the genius who designed the probe. You're our golden boy whether you like it or not."
Eli's fingers stilled on the keyboard. He could feel Marcus's expectation pressing against his shoulders like atmospheric pressure. Around them, the lab hummed with the quiet concentration of a dozen other engineers, each lost in their own critical calculations. None of them had to smile for cameras or explain the poetry of orbital mechanics to people who thought space was just a very high place.
"Find someone else," Eli said finally. "Milo would love the attention."
"Milo Harlan is the backup systems guy. You're the lead. You designed the whole mission architecture." Marcus pulled up a chair, uninvited. "Look, I know you hate this stuff, but think about what you're building. This probe is going to dance on the edge of Saturn's Roche limit—the place where gravity becomes so intense it literally tears apart anything that gets too close. You're sending a piece of human engineering into the jaws of destruction itself, and bringing it back to tell the story. That's not just science, Eli. That's poetry."
Despite himself, Eli looked up. Marcus had a point, though he'd never admit it. The Roche limit had fascinated him since graduate school—that mathematical edge where tidal forces overcome gravity, where moons are born from the debris of worlds that ventured too close to their parent planets. It was destruction and creation in perfect, terrible balance.
His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: Hey stranger, I'm outside your building with coffee and terrible jokes. Come down? - N
Eli stared at the message. Noah. It had been three weeks since their last awkward coffee date, and Eli had assumed the failed pilot turned pastry chef had given up on whatever this thing between them was becoming.
"I have to go," Eli said, already reaching for his jacket.
Marcus sputtered. "The interview—"
"Schedule it for next week. One hour. No personal questions." Eli was already walking toward the elevator, leaving his code compilation running and Marcus scrambling to catch up.
"Wait, what changed your mind?"
Eli didn't answer, but he could have said this: Sometimes the most important orbits were the ones that brought you back to where you started, and sometimes the gravitational pull of one person could overcome all your carefully calculated resistance.
The elevator doors closed on Marcus's protests, and Eli descended toward ground level, toward Noah, toward the one thing in his universe that defied all his equations for maintaining safe distances.