Thermal Zenith

Gareth Hale is an aerial inspection technician working the solitary night shift at a colossal Concentrated Solar Power plant in the desolate Nevada desert. Suspended four hundred feet in the air on a narrow maintenance catwalk, he oversees a sea of three hundred thousand computer-controlled mirrors designed to focus the sun's rays into a single, thousand-degree point. But when Gareth tries to descend, he discovers the heavy steel access hatch has been maliciously welded shut from the outside. He is trapped. Accessing the plant's diagnostics, Gareth realizes a rogue hacker has rewritten the facility's targeting software. When the sun rises in exactly two hours, the massive ocean of mirrors will not aim at the central boiler—they will focus directly onto his catwalk, incinerating him alive. Using his inspection drone, Gareth uncovers the terrifying truth: a corporate fixer is orchestrating a mass assassination to cover up a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme, making the deaths look like a catastrophic software glitch. Worse, the mirrors aren't targeting a fixed location; they are slaved to the proprietary tracking sensor on Gareth's tool belt. The concentrated beam of solar fire will follow him anywhere he moves on the tower. As the sun breaches the horizon and the blinding array pivots to lock onto him, Gareth must execute a desperate, impossible plan. He must weaponize his industrial drone and turn the inescapable physics of light and heat against the assassin before he is burned to ashes.