Tessa later traced the leaked video to an account tied to the communications team Reed quietly controlled, confirming he wanted both Bennett and Sloan consumed by scandal so he could seize greater leverage over the company's future. Sloan had the option of releasing a prepared statement blaming the entire episode on a private misunderstanding, but she refused the polished lie and instead began writing an admission of responsibility in her own words. Before she could publish it, the emergency alarm at the Denver plant tore through the building, signaling that the central cooling system had failed in the middle of a $200 million prototype test. The cooling failure threatened to destroy an engine prototype worth tens of millions of dollars if the assembly line shut down without warning, and federal observers, along with a major client, were present to witness the test in person. A failure now could cost Whittaker Aerosystems the largest contract in its history.
Reed immediately ordered management evacuated and announced the plant had suffered an unforeseen technical malfunction, quietly hoping the failure would proceed unchallenged and force the company into accepting a far weaker merger valuation. Bennett suspected within minutes that the system had not failed naturally, discovering that a remote lockout command had disabled the plant's backup control systems entirely. Because Sloan had begun her career in engineering before moving into management, she understood the plant's software architecture well enough to act immediately alongside him. She and Bennett split responsibilities with Bennett heading into the mechanical bay alongside Marshall, while Sloan coordinated engineers, the client's representatives, and the legal team from the control room above. Bennett faced an impossible choice between protecting the prototype and keeping the line operational until he found an old cooling pathway that had been physically removed from the plant's official schematics years earlier.
Engineers around her shouted conflicting numbers as gauges climbed steadily toward the danger threshold, and for a moment, the entire control room seemed to hold its breath waiting for her decision. Sloan confirmed through paper archives that the forgotten pathway could safely withstand the pressure for exactly 12 minutes, just enough time to prevent catastrophic failure. She relayed the information down to Bennett over the radio, her voice steadier than she felt, and somewhere beneath the noise of alarms, she realized this was the first decision in months she had made using her own judgment rather than someone else's spreadsheet, despite Reed's warning that she would bear personal liability for any resulting damage. Sloan authorized the activation of the old system under her own name rather than pushing the risk onto a subordinate. Bennett and Marshall opened the mechanical valves by hand, and the temperature dropped just seconds before the prototype crossed the threshold of permanent damage.
The test finished at slightly reduced output, but still met every safety requirement, and the client agreed not to cancel the contract outright. Marshall stood beside him as they photographed the device from every angle, insisting they log the discovery through proper channels rather than simply handing it to management. A small act of procedural stubbornness that would later prove essential in court. Afterward, Bennett located a remote access device hidden inside a control cabinet. Its identification code traced directly back to a contractor Reed had personally hired.