Chapter 3 - The Viral Phenomenon
Unbeknownst to Leo, a young baggage handler named Tyler had been standing by a luggage cart with his smartphone out. Tyler had hit record the moment the skinny kid walked past the security line.
By the time Leo was sitting at the worn kitchen table of his mother’s cramped apartment, eating a bowl of cheap cereal, the video had already bypassed a million views on Facebook and TikTok.
“12-Year-Old SAVES $250M Flight When Experts FAIL! 🤯✈️”
The caption was clickbait gold, but the footage was undeniable. The internet exploded. Armchair mechanics, aviation enthusiasts, and ordinary people were captivated by the stark contrast: a team of panicked adults in suits and uniforms, absolutely paralyzed, while a calm, skinny boy with a dirty t-shirt and an old wrench solved the impossible.
The comments section was a warzone of theories. “It’s reversed! It’s fake!” one user argued. “I’ve been an aircraft mechanic for twenty years,” replied another. “That kid bypassed the hydraulic fail-safe. You can’t learn that in school. You have to be born knowing that.”
But while the internet was obsessed with how he did it, massive corporate entities were obsessed with who he was.
At the sleek, glass-walled headquarters of Apex Dynamics, a cutthroat rival aviation corporation, CEO Richard Sterling watched the video on a loop. His eyes narrowed, zeroing in on the rusted toolbox the boy was carrying. Sterling paused the video and zoomed in. There, barely visible beneath decades of grime, was a faded sticker: A. Vance - Chief of Engineering.
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Sterling’s blood ran cold. Arthur Vance. The genius engineer who was blacklisted from the industry twelve years ago for allegedly designing a fatally flawed hydraulic system. Arthur Vance was dead. But clearly, his secrets had survived.
Sterling slammed his hand on his desk, barking into his intercom. "Find that kid. Before Boeing does. Before the FAA does. Find him, and bring him to me. He has something that belongs to us."
