Chapter 85: Before Taking People’s Money

“Where?”

“Kitchen.”

“Bring something back.”

“You could come down.”

Her eyes closed again. Liam waited for an answer, then gave up and put on his shirt. By the time he reached the kitchen, Rachel had taken out a pan, and Emily was sitting at the island with the bread she supposedly hadn’t wanted. His mother glanced at him before returning to the refrigerator, asking whether he wanted eggs. Liam stepped beside her and took the carton from her hand.

“I’ll do it.”

“You cooked yesterday.”

“And you’ve cooked for eighteen years. Sit down.”

Rachel looked ready to argue, but Emily immediately pulled out the stool beside her. Liam ignored the pleased expression on his sister’s face and opened the refrigerator. This time, he didn’t need his phone or somebody reminding him what went into the pan first. His hands moved comfortably between the ingredients, preparing one thing while another cooked. He even knew when to lower the heat before the butter began changing color.

His mother noticed.

“You’re moving faster today.”

“Yesterday gave me practice.”

“One dinner?”

“It was a very difficult dinner.”

Emily laughed around her toast. Rachel shook her head, though she continued watching him until Michael came in and asked where the coffee was. Liam put the first plate in front of his father, then prepared the others while footsteps sounded upstairs. Clara appeared with Rebecca several minutes later, her hair tied loosely behind her head. She stopped beside the stove and looked from the food to him.

“You didn’t bring anything back.”

“You came down.”

“Because you didn’t bring anything back.”

He handed her a plate before she could continue. The conversation slowed once everyone began eating, and Liam understood why when his father looked down at the eggs, took another bite, then reached for the toast without saying anything. Rebecca was less restrained. She pointed her fork toward him and accused him of deliberately making them suffer through yesterday’s meal.

‘Give somebody one good breakfast and suddenly the chicken was a crime.’

They left for the airport that afternoon. Rachel packed food despite Liam explaining that they would be fed on the flight, while Michael stood near the rental car reminding Rebecca to call when she arrived. Liam put the bags away, then found Emily waiting beside the passenger door. She had been unusually quiet while the others said goodbye, turning her phone between her hands.

“Call me sometimes,” he said.

“I do.”

“When you want something.”

“You tell me to ask.”

“I’m telling you to call even when you don’t.”

Emily looked up. Liam rested a hand on her head before she could move away, messing up her hair enough to make her complain. He let her push his arm aside, then pulled her into a brief hug. She returned it awkwardly, muttering that he was squeezing too hard.

He loosened his arms immediately.

“Fine. But answer when I call.”

“Then call at a reasonable time.”

She nodded and stepped back. Liam watched her return to their mother before getting into the car. Having everyone under one roof had made it easy to forget how far apart they normally lived. He didn’t want to spend the next few weeks looking at photographs and assuming that meant he knew how they were doing.

Clara took his hand once they reached the road.

“We’ll come again.”

“Yeah.”

This time, he intended to make that happen before somebody needed him.

Alexandra was waiting at the workshop when Liam arrived on Monday afternoon. A recorder lay open on the precision workbench, its screws arranged beside a folded piece of paper. At first, he thought she had started another unit without him. Then he noticed her expression and the small scratch near the edge of the case.

“One came back?”

She nodded.

“It stopped recording.”

Liam put down his bag and moved beside her. They had sold ten, which had been enough for the system to congratulate him and hand him another reward. Apparently, that didn’t mean all ten would continue working simply because he liked seeing the mission marked complete. Alexandra handed him the folded paper. The student had written down what happened during class, including the point at which the recorder had gone dark.

“Did he lose the recording?”

“The last one. The others are still there.”

“Have you offered his money back?”

“I said we’d replace it. He asked whether we could recover the lecture first.”

Liam read the note again. The recorder had been sitting inside a bag when the student moved it from the floor onto his lap. There had been no fall and no spilled drink. Alexandra had already checked the obvious connections, but it had worked every time she switched it on.

He pulled out a chair.

“Let’s make it fail.”

For the next twenty minutes, they recorded short messages, stopped them, played them back, and moved the device around the bench. Nothing happened. Alexandra pressed along the edges of the case while Liam watched the exposed board. He used Material Analysis, checking the parts one at a time, but the panels gave him their condition rather than an explanation of what a student had done several days earlier.

Then Alexandra fitted the cover back into place.

The light went out.

Both of them stopped moving.

“Do that again.”

She loosened the cover, switched the recorder on, and pressed the same corner. This time, the light flickered before returning. Liam leaned closer as she removed the casing again. With the pressure gone, everything looked normal.

‘Ten sold. One stupid corner of plastic.’

The fault took another half hour to isolate. A wire near the battery connection had been squeezed when they closed the case. It still made contact on the bench, but pressure against the cover shifted it enough to interrupt the power. Alexandra stared at it for several seconds before reaching for the assembly notes.

“I checked this one.”

“We both checked them.”

“I fitted the battery.”

“And I closed the case.”

She looked at him. Liam took the notebook before she could turn the page and placed it between them. There was no point deciding whose hands had touched it last. They had made the thing together, tested it sitting neatly on a table, then sold it to somebody who expected to carry it around.

“Write it down. Then we check the rest.”

“All nine?”

“All nine.”

Alexandra nodded slowly and reached for her phone. Liam stopped her long enough to agree on what they would tell the buyers. One unit had developed a power fault. They wanted to inspect the others, and anyone who preferred a refund could have one. There was no reason to make it sound worse than they knew, but telling everyone there was nothing to worry about would be stupid when they hadn’t checked.

While she sent the messages, Liam repaired the connection and changed the position of the wire. The recorder remained on when he pressed the cover this time. He tried again, then handed it to Alexandra and watched her repeat the movement from the student’s note.

The light stayed steady.

She finally breathed out.

“Good.”

“Now the lecture.”

Her expression tightened again.

They copied the remaining files before trying anything else. Liam opened the Divine Circuit Library and searched through the relevant sections while Alexandra examined what the recorder had saved. The library supplied more information than he could use immediately, forcing him to slow down and follow the explanation instead of jumping to whichever diagram looked useful. By the time he understood why the last recording hadn’t been stored properly, he also understood that fixing the wire wouldn’t bring it back.

There wasn’t enough saved to recover the complete lecture.

He sat back.

“We tell him.”

Alexandra rubbed her eyes, then nodded.

“I’ll call.”

“I’ll do it. You’ve been dealing with this since morning.”

The student was disappointed, which Liam expected. What he hadn’t expected was how little the boy cared about getting a replacement immediately. He had bought the recorder because he struggled to keep up with the lecturer while writing notes. The missing class was the one he had intended to listen to again before starting an assignment.

Liam looked at the repaired device while listening.

A hundred and fifty dollars had become a small amount to him. That didn’t make the reason somebody else spent it small.

“I’m sorry. We fixed the power fault, but we couldn’t recover the full recording. I’ll refund you, and you can keep this one once we finish testing it.”

“Will it happen again?”

Liam glanced at Alexandra.

“I haven’t tested enough to promise that yet.”

There was a pause before the student agreed to collect it the following afternoon. Liam ended the call and left his phone on the bench. Alexandra had stopped looking embarrassed now. She was studying the board with the same focused expression she wore when something refused to work.

“We need to change how it saves,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“And the case.”

“That too.”

A green panel appeared before he reached for the library again.

[Updated.]

[New Side Mission: Build a recorder prototype that preserves recorded audio through an unexpected loss of power.] [Skip for $2.]

Liam read it, then looked at the open device.

‘You could have mentioned that before we sold ten of them.’

The panel remained where it was. He dismissed it and turned the book toward Alexandra, pointing to the section he had been reading. She pulled her chair closer, followed the explanation with one finger, then took the pencil from beside his hand.

“We don’t need to rebuild everything.”

“Show me.”

She began drawing on the back of the student’s note. Liam watched the first few lines, then stopped her and passed over a clean sheet instead. They would keep the complaint with the assembly records. It belonged there as much as the list of successful sales.

By evening, three buyers had agreed to bring their recorders in, one wanted a refund, and the others hadn’t answered yet. Liam put the unfinished units aside and cleared room for the returns. Across the bench, Alexandra crossed something out in her drawing, checked the library again, and started a second version.

His phone lit up with a message from Clara asking whether he was coming home for dinner.

He called her instead of replying.

“Can you give me an hour?”

“You said that last time.”

“This time I’ll set an alarm.”

“What happened?”

Liam looked at the returned recorder, then at Alexandra, who had already reached for another sheet of paper.

“We found something we should have fixed before taking people’s money.”

Clara was quiet for a moment.

“Okay. I’ll keep yours.”

He thanked her and set the alarm while she was still on the call. Then he put the phone out of the way and sat beside Alexandra.

“Start with the power cutting out,” he said. “What does the recorder need to finish before it dies?”

She turned the drawing toward him.

This time, they began there.