Each time he stood in the same spot, in the same posture, eyes open the second and third time watching the engine with an attention so total it made some of the men in the room uncomfortable. Like watching someone read something written in a language nobody else could see. On the third cycle, as the scream peaked and died, one of the older men in the back of the room, a heavy-set man with a long white beard and arms like oak branches, shook his head and said to the man beside him, not quietly enough, "Waste of time. Just like all the others."
Ethan heard it. "No," he said without turning around. "This one's different." The room went very quiet.
"Different how?" Joker asked. His voice was neutral, careful. The voice of a man who had heard a hundred promises in this room and watched every one of them shatter.
Ethan moved toward the bike for the first time. He crouched beside the engine and placed his palm flat against the casing gently, the way you'd touch something fragile. He stayed like that for a moment. Then he looked up at Joker.
"Every mechanic who came before me, they were listening for what was wrong," he said. "I've been listening for what's right, what's still working. What the engine is trying to protect." He stood up.
"This engine isn't broken the same way twice. Every time it shuts down, it shuts down for a different reason. That's not malfunction. That's defense."
The white-bearded man in the back laughed, a short dismissive sound. "Defense? The kid thinks the bike's got feelings." "No," Ethan said.
He turned and looked directly at the man. "I think the builder did. And I think he built those feelings into the machine so well that 73 mechanics couldn't find them."
He paused. "I can." The white-bearded man stopped laughing. Joker looked at Ethan for a long moment.
"You've got 48 hours," said at last, "two days. After that, the vote happens and we decide what we do with the bike." "What are the options?" Ethan asked.
Joker's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "Fix it or destroy it. Those are the only two things left." Ethan nodded once.