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OBSIDIAN PACER

THE WEIGHT OF NEUTRALITY

An Antarctic salvage station is collapsing. Zavian Faust-Kente must choose between an irreplaceable archive and six trapped workers, discovering what neutrality demands when every step carries a cost.

By Hubert Bradley · Sci-fi · 10 story pages · 13 total pages including covers and credits

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Zavian Faust-Kente steps into the Salvage Line in Antarctica. — Front cover

Created, Written, Illustrated, Colored, Lettered, Designed, and Edited by Hubert Bradley. Read left to right. — Credits

Antarctica. The Salvage Line. Every broken thing carries a history. Forty-eight. Steady. — Story page 1 of 10

Mara asks if Zavian came for the core. He came for its history. Six workers are trapped below; he asks to see the lock. — Story page 2 of 10

A salvage robot calls personnel expendable. Zavian parries and redirects its force into the railing. — Story page 3 of 10

The bridge breaks. Saving Mara forces Zavian to stop moving, draining his reserve and cracking his left shoulder armor. — Story page 4 of 10

A repair tag names Mara’s brother E. Voss. Zavian scans it and asks her to help save both people and history. — Story page 5 of 10

Silent sequence: Mara works the manual lift wheel while Zavian circles the robot to restore Flow. — Story page 6 of 10

Zavian turns the robot’s momentum against it, disabling its joint with a precision palm strike. The core clamp fails. — Story page 7 of 10

The core falls as a lift cable snaps. Zavian chooses the workers; Mara braces the rail. The archive shatters below. — Story page 8 of 10

The workers are safe. The archive is gone, but the scanned repair tag preserves one fragment. Mara says they can begin with one. — Story page 9 of 10

Zavian walks toward dawn with damaged armor. Neutrality does not mean leaving people behind. A new origin signal waits below the ice. — Story page 10 of 10

Every broken thing carries a history. Some histories are still waiting beneath the ice. — Back cover