Chapter 3 - THE SECRET OF THE MOUNTAIN
The room remained frozen in a state of collective shock. Two hundred world-class engineers, scientists, and state inspectors stared at a ten-year-old girl who was currently adjusting the torn blue thread on her teddy bear's arm.
Grant Whitmore slowly descended the stairs of the observation deck. The arrogant smirk that had defined his features for years was entirely gone, replaced by a dark, calculated intensity. He walked until he was standing three feet from Emma and Rachel.
"Who taught you that?" Whitmore asked. His voice was no longer loud, but dangerously quiet. "Who gave you those blueprints?"
"Nobody," Emma said plainly. "I don't need blueprints. When you run the water in our apartment bath, the pipes in the wall rattle if you turn the cold handle too fast. It's the same thing. Just bigger and louder."
"Don't lie to me," Whitmore spat, taking a step closer. "Someone leaked the 1984 facility schematics to you. Was it your mother? Has she been taking documents from the trash bins?"
"Leave her alone!" Rachel stepped firmly between Whitmore and her daughter, ignoring the sharp, burning flare of pain in her ribs. She drew herself up to her full height, her janitorial badge swinging on her chest. "She is ten years old! She doesn't steal from you, she doesn't lie, and she certainly didn't break your machine!"
"Mr. Whitmore, back off," Dr. Helena Price snapped, stepping forward with her federal credential badge drawn. "The child is correct. Look at the structural frequency logs from the Department of Energy’s baseline test back in July. The spike matches the resonant frequency of high-grade structural iron, not titanium."
Whitmore turned his glare on Price. "Are you telling me that a sixty-year-old piece of construction scrap has stalled a two-billion-dollar project?"
"I'm telling you that your engineering team built a state-of-the-art engine on top of a uninspected foundation without checking the acoustic feedback," Price said coldly. She turned to look at Rachel, her eyes softening with profound respect. "And your janitor's child just saved your company from complete bankruptcy."
Whitmore’s face turned an ugly, mottled red. He looked at Rachel’s frayed uniform, then at Emma’s faded jacket, and finally at the giant, silent machine sitting in the center of the bay.
"A fluke," Whitmore sneered, his pride refusing to yield. "A lucky guess from a child who plays with plumbing."
"Then test it," Dr. Hale interrupted, his voice suddenly filled with an uncharacteristic steel. "We cut the secondary dampener anchor from the sub-floor steel frame right now. It will take three hours with thermal cutters. If we run the test again at midnight and it passes ninety seconds... then it wasn't a fluke."
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Whitmore looked around the room. Every engineer was staring at him, waiting. The pressure in the room was absolute.
"Fine," Whitmore growled, turning his glare back to Rachel. "Cut the anchors. We re-test at 00:00. But if that engine dies at ninety seconds again, Bennett, you and your brat will be handed over to security for industrial sabotage."
