The silence woke me before dawn—that complete absence of sound that only happens when electricity dies. No furnace cycling, no refrigerator hum, no streetlight buzz filtering through frosted windows. Just winter-deep quiet pressing against the walls like a living thing.
I checked my phone.
Six-oh-seven, February 14th, 2026. Valentine’s Day in Colorado Springs, and the city had chosen violence.
My bare feet hit hardwood that felt like punishment. I hissed, fumbling for slippers and pulling on a hoodie over my T-shirt.
The light switches were useless, all three of them confirming what I already knew: we were dark.
Outside, ice had sheeted the world in crystalline malice. Every surface gleamed like a blade. Pine branches drooped under the weight, creaking in the wind with sounds almost like laughter.
My phone buzzed with a message from David, my operations manager.
Crews reporting widespread line damage. Multiple feeders down.
Ice load snapped crossarms near Briargate. City is dark in sections.
Mutual aid?
I leaned my forehead against the kitchen cabinet and exhaled slowly. My head was already in two places: the house I was trying to keep from freezing, and the grid I was responsible for bringing back to life. The second place mattered more.
My name is Peter Donovan.
Most people in Pinewood Ridge knew me as the quiet guy with the older truck, the one who waved but didn’t linger, who shoveled his own walkway and kept his garage closed. A man with a decent job, they assumed.
Someone who kept to himself. What they didn’t know was that I owned Rocky Mountain Power Solutions.
Twenty years earlier, I’d been a lineman with cracked knuckles and a cheap tool belt, climbing poles in snow squalls because the lights didn’t care what the weather did.
I’d lived on gas station burritos and overtime, learned the language of high wind and low voltage, watched good men go up in bucket trucks and come down with ice in their eyelashes, smiling anyway. Eventually, I bought into a struggling utility co-op. Then I bought more.
I stitched together contracts, infrastructure, and enough investors to turn RMPS into a real operation—solid crews, decent benefits, a reputation for restoring power fast without cutting corners.
I could have moved into a mansion, could have put my name on a building, could have played the kind of game rich people play. Instead, I chose a modest house in a modest neighborhood and a life where I could still blend into a crowd.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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