Austin kisses her forehead, grabs a biscuit, and heads outside.
He rides his bike along the fence line the way he has every morning for the past two years. Through the chain link, he can see SkyVault's compound: three hangars, a small control tower, a runway smooth enough to land a dream on.
For months, he has watched trucks deliver parts for their prototype, the SV-1. He has memorized tail numbers, shift changes, delivery schedules. Not because anyone asked him to, but because his mind won't stop.
Next to the active hangars sits an abandoned one: Hangar 6. Rusted doors, broken windows, decommissioned aircraft rotting inside. Austin found a gap in the fence eight months ago. He has spent hundreds of hours in that hangar, running his hands over old airframes, tapping every surface, teaching himself the difference between healthy metal and dying metal.
No classroom. No teacher. Just a dead man's hammer and a living man's hunger.
This morning, something is different. Black SUVs line the entrance. Men in dress uniforms step out. A convoy of equipment trucks rolls past the gate. Austin grips the fence and watches. Something big is coming.
Inside SkyVault's executive boardroom, that something has a price tag: $340 million.
Victor Hadley, the company's CEO, stands at the head of the table. Fifty-six, silver-haired, expensive suit, the kind of calm that hides calculation. The Pentagon has sent General Richard Cole to observe the SV-1's final test flight. If the flight succeeds, the contract is signed. If it fails, SkyVault is finished.
"There is no margin for error," Hadley tells his team. "None."
Captain Lance Crawford enters in his flight suit. Chest out, chin up, the walk of a man who expects applause. "Relax, Victor. The bird is ready. I'll have Cole eating out of our hands by sundown."
In the corner of the room, a young woman reviews data on her tablet: Sarah Williams, 29, junior structural engineer, three months on the job. Her brow furrows. A stress point diagram of the left wing fills her screen. One zone over the flap bracket glows amber. Not red, not green—amber. Uncertain.
She opens her mouth to speak. Then she looks around the room—at Crawford's confidence, at Hadley's authority, at the uniforms and the money and the pressure—and she closes it. She is the youngest person in that room. She is the newest hire. She stays quiet.
Three days from now, that silence will almost kill a man.
The day before the test flight, Austin slips through the gap in the fence just after noon, when the Alabama heat drives the ground crew indoors for lunch. He heads for Hangar 6, his usual route, but today the rusted doors are wide open. SkyVault is using the overflow space to stage equipment for tomorrow's demonstration: crates of tools, spare parts, fuel line assemblies, all stacked along the walls.