Nobody would catch that in a cold diagnostic. There's a timing gap somewhere in your sensors that's small enough to be inside normal tolerance so it wouldn't throw an error. And I'd bet there's something in the software calibration that was set up for a version of this engine that doesn't exist anymore because I'm guessing you've upgraded parts of this bike more than once over the years. Marcus went very still. How would you know that?
Because that's what happens with custom builds. Nobody builds something this complicated in one shot. You add things, you improve things. eight years, right? Ethan glanced at him. That's what I heard anyway. eight years.
Marcus confirmed quiet. Then somewhere in those eight years, something got upgraded that the rest of the system never fully caught up to on its own tiny mismatch. Doesn't matter. But when the engine's cold, none of these problems show up, give it exactly the right amount of running time, exactly the right heat, exactly the right load, and all four of these small, harmless little things line up and start talking to each other. He looked up at Marcus.
That's when it shuts down. Not because anything's broken, because everything's arguing at once. For a long moment, nobody said anything. Then Sal Vitali, 16 hours in that garage, two decades building race bikes, said very quietly, "That's insane." "Is it wrong?"
Ethan asked. Sal opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again because the truth was he didn't know, and the not knowing was written all over his face. Marcus stood up slowly and something was moving behind his eyes that hadn't been there an hour ago. Not certainty, not yet. But the first flickers of something he'd been afraid to feel again after three failed attempts.
You're telling me three specialists, engineers, professionals, people with degrees on their walls, missed this because they were looking for one problem instead of four small ones. I'm telling you, that's what it looks like to me, Ethan said. I could be wrong. You don't sound like you think you're wrong. Ethan met his eyes steady.
I don't, but I've been wrong before. And I'd rather tell you the truth than tell you what you want to hear. That answer did something to Marcus that none of the polished confidence of Victor Cole or Grant Faulner had managed in four straight days. It made him believe.
Reaper. Marcus didn't turn around. Get everyone back another 20 feet. I want quiet. Marcus, do it.
Reaper's jaw worked like he wanted to argue, but 30 years of respect for the man in front of him won out, and he turned to push the crowd back further, muttering something under his breath that nobody quite caught. Dutch crouched down on Ethan's other side, studying him with the careful eyes of a man who'd watched Marcus get his hopes crushed three times already and didn't want to see it happen a fourth. Kid, Ethan, I need to ask you something, and I need you to be straight with me, okay? Have you ever actually fixed something like this before? Not a tractor, not a truck, something this complicated.