An independent vessel engineer named David Okafor met him at the hatch. Okafor was responsible for isolation, personnel safety, and authorizing any physical work performed during the demonstration. His presence was not ceremonial. He asked Russell to state what he intended to check and explain the conditions under which he would stop.
Russell named the accessible sensor mount, the exhaust flow-control linkage, and the coolant circuit's documented high-point service fitting. He also told Okafor that he would not defeat an alarm or attempt a full-load run. Okafor examined the service documentation, confirmed that the plant was safely secured, and handed him a clean pair of gloves. "We start with the first observation," he said. "One step at a time."
Above them, the cameras adjusted their focus. The enormous clock on the screen reset to ten minutes. Russell looked once toward the marina beyond the railings, where Miami glittered in a haze of sunlight and seawater, then he disappeared into the engine room beneath the yacht. The timer began.
The Sovereign's engine room was cooler than Russell expected. Air-handling fans sent a constant mechanical breath through the space, carrying the smells of warm insulation, metal, lubricant, and sea air from the ventilation intake. Pipes traveled overhead in organized runs and disappeared into compartments marked with careful identification plates. The twin engines occupied the central space like enormous sleeping animals, their protective housings spotless in the places that visitors could see.
Russell noticed the contrast immediately. The visible surfaces had been cleaned so thoroughly that a photographer could have mistaken the engine room for a showroom. Beneath one protective guard, however, an old stain had darkened the edge of a fitting, and on the port side a fastener wore a faint crescent of polished metal where it had moved against its bracket. Those were the marks that mattered to him. A polished cover could be ordered from a vendor; the movement of metal under vibration could not be argued away.
David Okafor moved to the safe observation station and checked the isolation status. A competition technician named Elena Ruiz was already there, assisting with the permitted diagnostic interface. She glanced up as Russell entered and froze for a moment, recognizing the young man Thornton had ridiculed on the dock. Then she looked at his face instead of his apron. "What do you need to see first?" she asked.
"The last failed-start sequence, if it's still in the log," Russell said. "And the physical timing reference near the port intake side."
Elena brought up the log while Okafor confirmed that moving components remained secured and the starting system could not energize unexpectedly. The display showed the same conflicting reference values the university teams had struggled with. Russell read the data quickly, then asked whether he could inspect a particular mounting point beneath a service panel. Elena checked the diagram and looked genuinely surprised.
"That bracket is behind the lower guard," she said. "We don't normally open it for a start fault."
"I know. But the feedback goes wrong before the injection controller decides what it thinks happened. I want to know whether the sensor itself moved."