Diana Vance took one step toward the open hood and stopped.
The laughter around the Dodge faded almost by itself.
At first glance, the engine bay still looked like something that belonged inside a battered forty-year-old car.
Elijah had never cared about making it beautiful.
Several brackets were hand-fabricated.
Heat shielding had been cut and fitted in his garage.
Wiring looms were bundled neatly but without the molded covers found on corporate prototypes.
Then Diana leaned closer.
Her expression changed.
Carter Hale noticed it and stopped smiling.
The architecture was wrong for the car.
Not badly wrong.
Impossible wrong.
The compact combustion unit sat unusually low and rearward, coupled to an electric assist system Elijah had adapted so tightly into the old Dodge that the installation looked less like a restoration than an experiment hidden inside scrap metal.
The intake routing was unfamiliar.
So was the chamber-control hardware connected to the custom electronic module near the firewall.
Diana’s eyes followed the fuel system.
“What is that?” she asked.
Elijah stood beside Grace, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
“My engine.”
“I can see that.” Diana pointed toward the compact assembly.
“What architecture?”
“Two-point-one-liter hybrid combustion.
Custom chamber geometry.
Adaptive injection.
Reduced thermal-loss design.”
Carter gave a dismissive laugh, but it arrived too late.
“Those are words,” he said.
“Anyone can machine unusual parts and call it innovation.”
Elijah looked at him.
“That’s what the test is for.”
The Apex official who had called Elijah to bay three stepped closer.
His name was Martin Reyes, one of the technical inspectors responsible for verifying that competition entries could be tested safely.
He examined the engine without touching it.
“You built this installation yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In my garage.”
Martin looked up.
“Your company?”
“I don’t have one.”
That answer produced a different kind of silence.
Diana had spent years around founders who introduced themselves with valuations before they explained what they had built.
She knew engineers backed by venture firms, laboratories funded by governments and startups that had raised twenty million dollars with little more than simulations.
Elijah had arrived in a rusted Dodge with his daughter and apparently no organization behind him at all.
Carter crossed his arms.
“Then who validated the system?”
“I did.”
“Independent laboratory?”
“No.”
“Published results?”
“No.”
“Patent?”
Elijah hesitated.
“Not filed.”
Carter looked at Diana as if the case had closed itself.
