"I'm fine," Franklin said. "It's just age filing a ticket."
On the main floor, Liam Croft was helping an older woman compare tablet styluses. His posture was careful. His voice was quieter. Franklin did not know if that was learning or fear. Both could look the same from ten meters. He did not stop. He did not need to collect Liam's growth like a souvenir.
Outside, the afternoon light was honest. Franklin walked the two blocks to his car with Adrian beside him, both of them quiet until Adrian said, "You could have destroyed him."
"I know."
"A lot of people would have."
"A lot of people are tired in different directions," Franklin said. He unlocked the car, then paused with his hand on the door. "Destruction is easy theater. I want the boring repair. If the boring repair fails, then I escalate. Escalation without a held-open window is just revenge wearing a blazer."
Adrian nodded. "For what it's worth, I thought you were going to walk out and withhold approval out of — principle."
Franklin huffed a small laugh. "Principle doesn't get to make the speaker stop singing. Engineering does. I can hold more than one true thing. The boy was wrong. The laptop still has a problem. My name still means something on a packet. None of those cancel the others."
Franklin did not go straight home after the first store day, though every joint in him voted for the couch. He drove to the partner lab across town, a low building with badge readers and a lobby plant that had been dying optimistically for two years. The guard knew him. The guard did not ask if he was casual.
In the lab, the same dark gray chassis sat under harsher light, lids open like mouths mid-sentence. A young engineer named Soto looked up from a thermal camera and raised a hand.
"Heard you slipped us," Soto said. Not accusatory. Almost grateful. "The whine was driving me crazy. Nobody wanted to be the one to say it loud before newsletter lock."
"I said it loud," Franklin said. "That's one of the few perks of having a last name people put on packets."
Soto grinned, then sobered. "Also heard about the floor. You okay?"
Franklin set his bag down. "I'm functional. Don't make me a channel topic."
"Wouldn't dare."
They spent an hour with the retail case on and off, arguing gently about foam density and whether customers would notice what engineers noticed. Franklin liked Soto for the same reason he liked good hinges: no performance, just contact. When they finished, Soto walked him to the door.
"For what it's worth," Soto said, "my uncle used to get followed in hardware stores. He started wearing a collared shirt every time he bought a drill bit. Said it was armor. Said he hated that armor worked."