Interesting
can't wait to see more.

Ooo interesting premise

More good

Might help a bit to decide whether you want to tell the story in past tense or present. Switching back and forth seemingly willy-nilly definitely gets a bit disorienting.

Also -- and this may end up sounding more disparaging than intended, so apologies for that in advance --, I’d consider whether the story really needs that first chapter at all or can just start with Derek’s arrival instead. As it is, witnessing the contradiction between the lead scientist being apparently enough of an idiot to think that running the first-ever test(*) of a potentially either not yet working or else extremely dangerous experimental apparatus in front of a live audience with no thought to anyone’s safety was a great idea while at the same time being allegedly smart enough to head whatever exact team made creating black holes on Earth (among other things almost certainly not a cheap endeavor that someone could just readily pull off in the equivalent of a high school lab) even possible to begin with gave me enough mental whiplash to for a moment consider setting the story aside altogether again if it started in such a slipshod fashion already. So I think that particular scene may actually hurt the story more through its inclusion than it could by its absence.

(*) Couldn’t very well be the “very first man-made black hole on Earth” anymore if they had thoroughly put the device through its paces and confirmed that it did in fact work at all beforehand, now could it?

Pretty great chapter mc kinda stupid for throwing a rock in courthouse tho lol

Until now this was just generic, and cringe, not bad just... It feels like a 15-year-old wrote this