Crystal 'Kris''s Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Kris walked the perimeter of the lodge at dawn, checking the foundations the way she'd learned to check her own designs — for the cracks no one else wanted to see. The stone showed hairline fractures near the northwest corner, small enough to ignore if you were trying to meet a deadline or impress a producer. But the transmission tower beyond the lodge stopped her cold. Steel lattice bent at angles that made her stomach drop, power cables frozen mid-droop like stopped clocks. Ice had locked the damage in place, made it look stable. The base had sunk three inches into compromised ground — she could see where the concrete pad had cracked and shifted. She pulled out her phone and photographed the angles, the measurements, the way the weight was redistributing through failing joints. No one had mentioned this. Not in any safety briefing, not on any walk-through. The tower fed power to half the cabins, and it would come down in the next heavy wind. She could write it up, submit it to the producers, let them decide if contestant safety mattered more than their shooting schedule. Or she could fix it herself — spend three days on someone else's neglect instead of designing anything that would get her noticed, get her paid, get her out of debt. She took another photo. The lodge behind her was full of people who'd already decided this wasn't their problem.