The CIMES Recokning

One squeeze. Zero fuel. Infinite consequences.

Reece Harlan is a burned-out South Side Chicago PI who just wanted a quiet drink and an easy paycheck. What he gets is a battered toolbox, a desperate inventor on the run, and a fist-sized conical motor that shouldn’t work—but does.

CIMES: Compressed Inverted Magnetic Energy Source. Permanent magnets in a precision cone deliver continuous torque and serious power from a single mechanical compression. No batteries. No fuel. No heat signature. Spark-free, silent, vacuum-ready. The kind of breakthrough that could gut Big Energy, power off-grid hospitals, silent subs, disaster zones, and entire factories.

Helios PetroDynamics doesn’t want the future. They want it buried—along with the man who built it, Dr. Elias Thorne, and anyone who touches the prototype.

Now Reece is dodging corporate killers across the Midwest, protecting the tech, and racing to get it into the right hands before the assassins close in. From barroom hand-offs and motel safe houses to factory showdowns and moral lines that can’t be uncrossed, the stakes aren’t just money or survival.

They’re the future itself.

The cone is spinning. The hunters are coming. The reckoning is here.