Marcus asked quietly. Ethan looked up at him and there was no bravado in his answer, no false confidence, just the same plain honesty he'd offered from the very first moment he'd stepped through that gate. I'm sure about the diagnosis. I'm sure about the first two fixes because I already tested them and they held this one. I'm confident, but I won't lie to you and tell you I'm certain.
Nobody could be certain about a system this custom without having built it themselves. Marcus held his gaze for a long moment, feeling the full weight of the decision resting on his shoulders. Three specialists had already failed. A company was threatening to seize the bike by tomorrow morning, and everything now depended on whether he trusted a 17-year-old boy's confidence over his own mounting fear.
"Do it," Marcus said again. And this time, his voice didn't waver at all. Ethan nodded and got to work.
The software recalibration took the better part of another hour. painstaking and slow Ethan cross-referencing values against handwritten notes testing small changes incrementally rather than making sweeping adjustments explaining each step to Marlene for the record even as sweat began to beat along his hairline from the concentration of it. "Almost there," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "Just need to confirm the..." "Marcus." Dutch's voice cut through, sharp and urgent, phone pressed to his ear. His face gone pale in a way that made everyone in the garage freeze.
Marlene, you need to hear this. What is it? Marlene asked, already crossing toward him. That was my cousin. Works at the courthouse downtown.
Dutch lowered the phone slowly, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper, like he couldn't quite believe the words himself. The judge just granted an emergency hearing. Not tomorrow morning. In two hours, the garage erupted into overlapping voices, reapers loudest among them. But Marlene's cut through all of it with the flat controlled authority of someone who'd spent a career keeping her head in exactly this kind of chaos.
Everybody quiet. The room obeyed. She turned to Ethan. How much longer do you need? Ethan didn't look up from the wiring in front of him, his hands never stopping their careful, precise movements, even as the news landed around him like a bomb.
The software calibration's almost done. Once that's finished, I still need to fix the pressure issue, and that's the one causing the actual shutdown. That's not something I can rush either. How long, Ethan? Marlene's voice was gentle but insistent.
90 minutes, Ethan said. Maybe less if nothing else goes wrong. You have until this bike either runs or it doesn't, Marlene said. Because if that judge grants the injunction at that hearing and this bike hasn't been fully repaired and documented, by then it doesn't matter how right you are about the diagnosis, it gets sealed. It sits in a locker while this drags out for months, maybe longer, and none of us get to find out today whether you were right.