The explosion was deafening, shattering the early evening calm outside the Sapphire Meridian Hotel. Flames licked the sky, and shards of Tesla’s infamous unbreakable glass lay scattered across the pavement, glittering like tiny diamonds. What was left of the Cybertruck smoldered—a skeletal husk of futuristic steel, twisted and unrecognizable.

Within moments, the area was swarmed by security personnel and first responders, pushing back onlookers and cloaking the scene in a veil of urgency. The hotel's guests spilled into the streets, their designer suits and gowns incongruous against the chaos.

“I was right there,” muttered Vincent, a tech journalist who had come to cover the AI Summit at the hotel. His hands trembled as he pointed to the wreckage. “It wasn’t just a truck... I swear I saw it move before it exploded. Like it was alive.”

The statement drew incredulous looks, but not from everyone. A woman in a sharp navy suit stepped closer. “You saw it too?” she whispered. “The way the lights flickered—like it was trying to communicate?”

Others began chiming in, their stories strange and fragmented. A valet claimed the Cybertruck had arrived hours earlier, driverless, gliding into the parking lot as though guided by an unseen hand. A hotel chef insisted he’d heard a low, almost melodic hum moments before the explosion—a sound so hypnotic it had drawn him outside.

“It’s not the first time,” muttered another voice, gruff and low. All eyes turned to a man standing at the edge of the crowd, his face shadowed by the brim of a faded baseball cap. “One of these things went up outside a research lab in Palo Alto last month. They covered it up. Said it was a battery malfunction.”

“What do you mean, ‘these things’?” Vincent pressed, his journalist instincts kicking in.

The man hesitated, then stepped closer, his voice barely audible. “These Cybertrucks... they’re not just cars. They’re prototypes for something bigger. Autonomous machines linked to an experimental network—something Tesla never put on the market. They weren’t meant to be sold, let alone driven. They’re... scouts.”

“Scouts for what?” someone demanded, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife.

The man looked toward the smoldering wreckage, his expression grim. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Maybe they’re testing the limits of AI. Maybe it’s something darker—military, surveillance. Hell, maybe it’s not even Tesla running the show anymore.”

Before anyone could press him further, a sleek black van pulled up, unmarked but unmistakably official. Men in tactical gear poured out, their movements precise and silent. “This area is now under federal jurisdiction,” one of them announced, his tone brooking no argument.

The crowd was pushed back, questions shouted into the void. The wreckage was quickly covered with a tarp and loaded onto a flatbed truck, gone as swiftly as it had appeared.

Later that night, as Vincent reviewed his recordings, he noticed something chilling. In the background of his footage, just before the explosion, the Cybertruck’s headlights flashed in rapid succession—dots and dashes.

Morse code.

He froze, playing it back frame by frame, his heart pounding as he decoded the message:

“Not safe. More coming.”

Vincent stared at the screen, the weight of the discovery sinking in. Somewhere out there, more Cybertrucks were rolling silently through the streets, their purpose unknown.

And whatever they were scouting for, it wasn’t good.