Chapter 559

Chapter 559:

Director Sterling raised one hand, his eyes sharp with interest. “Let her speak p>

Isolde climbed the steps and took her place beside Daron, who looked simultaneously furious and cornered.

She glanced at the schematic projected on the screen behind her and pointed to the return valve.

“This design,” she said plainly, “is wrong p>

A wave of gasps moved through the audience.

“What nonsense are you spouting?” Daron roared. “That is patented technology p>

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“This is my discarded draft from 2021,” Isolde replied, her voice cutting cleanly through his outrage. “It was abandoned because under seven Gs of overload, this valve configuration produces cavitation — causing the engine to flame out p>

She picked up the electronic pen from the podium. With a series of swift, precise strokes, she drew directly over the presentation schematic, overlaying Daron’s flawed design with something entirely different. “The correct solution is a dual-circuit bypass design.” As she sketched the new structure, she wrote a sequence of complex differential equations alongside it, her hand moving without a single moment of hesitation.

The experts who had been whispering and smirking in the rows behind her went quiet. Their expressions shifted — from amusement, to confusion, to something that looked very much like awe.

The squeak of the marker was the only sound in the cavernous hall.

Isolde wrote without pause. Greek letters, integrals, pressure coefficients. The mathematics flowed out of her with the ease of something long memorized and deeply understood.

She sketched the pressure curve. It spiked dramatically.

“Here,” she said, tapping the board. “At altitude, without the bypass, the fuel temperature in the pre-burner drops below its autoignition point under pressure p>

She drew a jagged, descending line.

“Thermal shock. The fuel line fractures. The shockwave shatters the impeller blades p>

She set the marker down with a soft click that echoed in the silence.

Then she turned to face the audience.

“Total engine failure in eleven minutes.” She looked at Sterling. “Would you put your passengers on that plane p>

Sterling rose slowly from his seat. He studied the board. He studied the math. It was elegant. It was irrefutable.

He began to clap — a slow, deliberate rhythm that cut cleanly through the tension in the room.

“Brilliant,” Sterling said, his voice carrying without effort. “That is the logic the Phoenix-X7 should have had from the beginning p>

The applause spread through the hall. Not everyone joined.

“This is impossible!” Daron McKnight shot to his feet, his face drained of color. He thrust a trembling finger toward Isolde. “She must have stolen our internal data! She is a corporate spy — security p>

A low murmur moved through the crowd.

Isolde watched him, her expression cold and entirely unsurprised.

“Stealing?” she said, her voice dropping to something dangerously quiet. “Mr. McKnight, perhaps you could explain to this audience why your final blueprints still use the variable notation system I invented to save ink on my personal drafts p>