The next four weeks blurred together in a haze of fabrication, testing, and increasingly heated debates about valve placement and power distribution. Isabella had expected Roman to fight her on every decision, but instead he did something worse—he listened, asked questions, and forced her to defend every assumption.
It made her designs better. She hated that it made her designs better.
Kevin became the team's unofficial mediator, defusing tension with badly-timed jokes whenever arguments got too intense. Aisha organized their workflow with ruthless efficiency, making sure they hit every milestone on schedule. Marcus had an uncanny ability to spot problems before they became catastrophic—he'd quietly point out a stress fracture or a miscalibrated sensor, saving them hours of rework.
Even
