For two decades she had treated the sentence as the desperate accusation of a disgraced employee. She had repeated the official account until it felt like memory: Daniel had stolen confidential technology, Richard had discovered it, and the company had survived because Richard acted decisively. Three weeks after being dismissed, Daniel was killed in a highway collision. Charlotte had attended the funeral from the back of the church, too ashamed of the scandal to approach the family and too young to understand what that shame might mean.
The elevator doors opened onto the prototype division. The air changed immediately, trading expensive perfume and polished stone for hot rubber, machine oil, clean solvents, and metal that had recently been cut. Behind a transparent barrier sat a black electric performance car with an open hood and cables reaching from its diagnostic ports to a rolling computer station. Six engineers clustered around the screen, arguing in tired voices. Nobody noticed the visitor until Charlotte spoke.
"Everybody," she said, "this is Evan Carter. He's here for the mechanic opening, and I want him to look at the vehicle."
A tall engineer with silver at his temples turned sharply. Marcus Hail had managed advanced powertrain testing for seven years, and he did not like surprises that came from outside his department. His irritation was visible even before he saw Evan's boots. He looked at Charlotte as if hoping she was testing his sense of humor.
"We're already working through the fault tree," Marcus said. "The software team is preparing a revised control map."
"How long?" Charlotte asked.
"Two hours, perhaps three. We need to isolate whether the problem is thermal or electrical."
"You told me that at six this morning."
Marcus's expression tightened. Evan set the toolbox beside a workbench, studying the car instead of the argument. He could see a cooling manifold, a recently replaced inverter assembly, and a makeshift bundle of diagnostic leads draped over the left side. Whatever had happened, it had left the technicians more interested in what the computer said than in what the machine was doing.
"What did the driver feel?" Evan asked.
Marcus regarded him. "Excuse me?"
"Before it went into protection mode. Did it shudder? Lose torque all at once? Smell hot? Make noise?"
A younger technician near the monitor glanced toward Marcus. "The test driver said the power dropped smoothly. No shudder, no warning smell. Like somebody had turned down a dimmer switch."
Evan nodded. "And what did the temperatures do?"
"Battery telemetry climbed above the limit," Marcus replied. "The system shut down performance output."
"Did the cells actually get hot?"
Marcus opened his mouth, then closed it. Evan did not smile. He had come to solve a problem, not to collect victories over people who wore cleaner shirts.
"Could I see the raw sensor data?" he asked.
Charlotte looked at Marcus. "Show him."
A technician rotated the monitor toward Evan, and the screen filled with lines that meant very little to anybody who saw them as isolated numbers. Evan read them as events. The battery temperature leaped twelve degrees in less than a second, but the coolant outlet temperature barely moved, the pump speed stayed consistent, and the inverter remained comfortably inside its operating range. He leaned closer, resting one hand on the edge of the workstation.