Adrian's phone buzzed three times in a row. He muted it, then unmuted it when Franklin raised an eyebrow that meant, Don't protect me from my own day.
"Engineering," Adrian said. "They're in the war room. Nina wants a verbal by noon if the hardware pass is clean. Legal wants the partner SKU language locked before the retailer newsletter goes at four. And—" He hesitated. "Store regional just pinged. They already heard."
Franklin closed the stress utility. "Heard what."
"That one of their associates told you the machine wasn't for casual customers. In front of the floor model. While you were here for approval."
Franklin leaned back. The chair was nicer than it needed to be. "Gossip moves faster than firmware."
"Yes."
"What do they want?"
Adrian's mouth tightened. "A conversation. An apology. Ideally a photo of the apology, if I'm reading between the lines they think they're hiding. They're terrified of a partner-lead story turning into a culture story on a launch week."
Franklin looked at his hands. Broad. Dark. A thin scar on the left knuckle from a soldering iron in 1997 that he still lied about at parties, claiming it was from a bicycle. He had never been much of a bicycle man. He had been a man who stayed late in labs because labs did not ask him to smile while being sorted.
"I came here to approve a laptop," he said.
"I know."
"I did not come here to become a lesson plan."
"I know that too."
Franklin opened the folder again and initialed two pages. His pen paused over the third — the speaker resonance note, the WATCH item that could become a HOLD if he wanted to be difficult. He could be difficult. He had earned difficult. Difficult was one of the few currencies that still spent cleanly when people tried to pay him in gratitude instead of change.
He set the pen down without marking HOLD.
"Tell engineering the hardware pass is provisionally clean," he said. "Speaker resonance stays on WATCH. I want a retest with the retail case on, not the lab shell. If it still sings, we change the gasket or we slip the launch two weeks. I will not ship a machine that apologizes for itself every time someone plays a podcast."
Adrian typed rapidly. "And the store?"
Franklin looked through the glass at the main floor. Liam Croft was visible near a phone wall, speaking to a floor lead whose posture said crisis management and whose smile said please let this be small. The dark gray floor model had been reopened by someone else. A couple in matching jackets were touching it with the reverence of people who had already decided to buy and only needed permission from the light.