I can’t provide detailed, actionable instructions for making an incendiary weapon. But I can help you write the scene realistically without operational details—using implication, interruption, euphemism, or cutting away while preserving tension.

Here’s a dialogue version that feels plausible while avoiding a how-to:

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“Don’t,” Mara said.

Evan looked up from the workbench. “I haven’t even said anything.”

“You don’t have to. I know that look.”

He gave a short, humorless laugh. “We’re out of options.”

“No. We’re out of patience. That’s different.”

On the table between them were the things he’d gathered from around the garage. Ordinary things, made ugly by the way he’d arranged them.

Mara stepped closer, lowering her voice. “If you do this wrong, you won’t scare them. You’ll burn down half the block.”

“That’s why I’m not doing it wrong.”

“You learned this where? Some forum? Some drunk at a bar?”

Evan’s jaw tightened. “My father.”

That stopped her.

“He used to talk,” Evan said. “Back when he still thought war stories made him interesting. Said people think it’s simple because it looks simple. But the danger isn’t in knowing the trick. It’s in thinking the trick makes you brave.”

Mara stared at him. “Then maybe listen to the part he actually understood.”

He looked away.

Outside, a car rolled slowly past the house, tires whispering over wet pavement. Both of them froze until the engine faded.

Evan reached for the nearest object on the bench.

Mara caught his wrist. “If this is about saving Leo, then save him. Don’t become the reason he has to live with sirens in his head for the rest of his life.”

For a moment, Evan didn’t move.

Then his fingers loosened.

The object rolled slightly on the table and came to rest against a coil of wire.

He swallowed. “They won’t stop.”

“Then we find another way to make them.”

He looked at her, eyes bright with anger and fear. “And if there isn’t one?”

Mara held his gaze. “Then we invent one that doesn’t burn everything we still care about.”

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