The air in Lab 7 was cool and still when I stepped through the doorway on Monday morning. Luke was already leaning against his workbench, a fresh cardboard cup from the lobby kiosk resting beside his open notebook. He looked up as the latch clicked shut, that easy, unhurried smile breaking across his mouth. "Morning, Mercer," he said, gesturing with his pen. "Surprised to see you on time. Did the mirror survive the night?" "The mirror is fully operational," I said, setting my bag down by the secondary console and waking both monitors. "Did Landon's bookshelf collapse?" "Still standing. Though he claims he heard a dowel groan around two in the morning." "Structural failure is a process, Hayes, not an event." Luke laughed, pulling his chair around to the shared desk. "Optimistic as always. Come look at the weekend capture." I pulled my chair alongside his. Our screens lit with the automated logs my script had gathered every four hours across Saturday and Sunday. "We had two hits Saturday and one yesterday," Luke said, leaning in to tap the timeline with the tip of his pen. "Look at the timing on the auxiliary rail blip." I zoomed in on the leading edge. "It’s not just concurrent." "No," Luke agreed, following the cursor. "The tiny power-rail spike starts roughly two milliseconds before the motor hits peak current. Every single time." I leaned closer, tracing the trace across the grid. "It’s an electrical precursor. But we still can't tell if the power blip is causing the surge to stumble, or if something upstream is kicking both lines at once." "At least we know it's not a mechanical stutter after the fact," Luke said. "It starts on the wire before the frame even knows the load is coming." "Progress," I noted. "Just narrow progress." The door to the corridor clicked and swung open. Dana Kim stood in the threshold, a tablet tucked under one arm, her dark eyes scanning between our monitors and the whiteboard. "Monday," she announced, stepping into the room. "Tell me you have something I can use." "We do," I said, rotating the left monitor an inch so she had a clear view of the overlay. "In every captured event, the false vibration spike is preceded by a tiny power drop on the auxiliary control rail by about two milliseconds." Dana studied the two aligned curves for three silent seconds. "So the machine still isn't physically shaking," she said. "Correct." "The vibration sensor is still flagging a critical error." "Correct." "And now you've found an electrical signal that lies right before it." Luke nodded from the workbench. "That's the better sentence." Dana let out a quiet sigh that was almost an exhale of resignation. "I hate the better sentence." "So do we," Luke said easily. "Is it useful?" "Eventually," I said. "We've ruled out the main power supply and the shared ground. Tomorrow we isolate the secondary harness to confirm where the bleed is originating." Dana looked between the two of us, tapping the edge of her tablet against her leg. "Keep going. I have an update meeting with Systems Architecture on Thursday. Give me something that sounds like an answer." "We'll give you data, Dana," I told her. "That's usually what gets me in trouble," she replied, turning on her heel and letting the door pull shut behind her. The lab settled back into quiet. Luke let out a low whistle, rubbing the back of his neck. "Thursday. Well, at least she's consistent." "She has an architecture review," I said. "She's just trying to protect the schedule." "I know." Luke pushed back from his desk and walked over to the whiteboard. The seven lines from last week were still sitting there in black marker, untouched. Beneath 7. MERCER IS ON THE TRIVIA ROSTER, he uncapped a blue marker and wrote: 8. ELECTRICAL PRECURSOR PRECEDES SURGE (2 MS). He capped the marker with a sharp snap and turned around, checking his watch. The display read a few minutes past five. The workday was officially over. The corridor outside was already filling with the dull shuffle of people heading for the turnstiles and the parking structure. Luke looked across the room at me, leaning an elbow against the frame of the board. "Food?" he asked. I looked at him. We were off the clock. There was no late-night test batch queued, no emergency firmware flash scheduled for six o'clock, and no trivia team waiting at a booth across town. "Definitely," I said. "Thai?" I paused, picking up my bag from the floor. "You remembered." Luke picked up his jacket from the back of his chair, that slow, effortless grin settling in. "Basic observational skills, Mercer." I zipped my laptop into its sleeve and slung the strap over my shoulder. "Lead the way, Hayes."

Chapter 11: A Better Sentence