She held his gaze. The same way you didn't have to submit 14 reports to an empty inbox. But you did it because the truth of a thing matters even when nobody's watching. Daniel looked at her her. He said, "Make sure you CC the board for the first time all day." Something in Victoria.
Harington's face broke open into something warmer than composure. She almost laughed. She didn't quite, but she almost did. At 6:18 in the evening, Patterson stood up from his station and stretched and said, "I think we're ready for validation." Daniel saved the final code file. He rolled his chair back.
He looked at the RS7 from across the testing floor. This machine he'd built, this machine that had been his and then taken from him and then given back to him under circumstances he could not have predicted in any version of the future, he'd imagined standing in this building 3 years ago. He stood up. He walked to the main console. He initiated the startup sequence.
The RS7 powered on. The diagnostic sweep ran clean. The balance system activated and the load distribution algorithms ran their calibration cycle and the failsafe layer. All 43 lines of it restored and reintegrated and tested against six different simulated failure conditions registered active and ready. The robot took one step.
Steady, then another. It moved to the first terrain module, adjusted its gate in real time to the irregular surface, and maintained balance with the clean, precise efficiency of a system doing exactly what it was designed to do. Patterson watched it and said nothing for a moment. Then he said, "There it is. There it is." Daniel agreed around them.
The other engineers who had stayed through the afternoon began one by one to applaud. Not the polished performative applause of a formal presentation. The real kind. The kind that happens when a room full of people who understand what they're looking at see something that actually works. Daniel stood with his hands at his sides and watched the RS7 complete its test sequence.
He watched it move the way he'd always intended it to move, the way he'd designed every component and written every line of code, and spent two years imagining it would perform when it finally had the chance to be what it was built to be. He thought about Amara's text. Are you famous yet? He thought, "No, baby girl, not famous. Just finished." And he thought that was probably enough for one day.
The applause died down after about 30 seconds. Not because people lost interest, but because engineers are at their core. Practical people and the practical reality of the moment was that validating the repair was not the same as completing it. Daniel knew that better than anyone. He let himself have the 30 seconds.