Their tour guide, a bright, patient engineer named Megan, herded the children through the lobby, explaining how Nexora was “engineering the future.” The kids nodded politely, more fascinated by holographic displays than by propulsion systems. As they passed a side corridor lined with glass offices, raised voices cut through the polished calm.
Inside a reinforced conference room stood nearly thirty engineers, clustered around a table layered with blueprints and a complex metal assembly. Tension radiated from the room like heat.
Adrian stopped walking.
The group moved on, but he remained planted before the glass, eyes fixed not on the arguing adults but on the machine at the center. His finger traced invisible arcs in the air, mapping motion only he could see.
“They’re wrong,” he murmured.
Megan, realizing he had fallen behind, returned and gently touched his shoulder. “Adrian, we need to stay with the group.”
He barely blinked. “They’re correcting it in software. But it’s mechanical. The drive shaft is inverted. The sensor polarity’s fighting the rotation.”
Megan froze. Those weren’t words an elementary student guessed by accident.