The lab was quieter in the morning.
Aarav arrived earlier than he needed to, letting himself in with the spare card Skye had given him. The overhead lights flickered on one by one, casting a pale glow over the benches.
For once, there was no noise. No conversations, no rushed movement. Just space.
He preferred it that way.
He set his bag down and took a moment to look around properly. The equipment was basic. School level, mostly. Cheap kits, reused components, wires that had been stripped and reattached more times than they should have been.
But it was enough.
He picked a clear section of the bench and laid out what he needed. A small breadboard. A few resistors. A voltage regulator that had seen better days. Nothing complicated.
The goal was simple.
Not innovation. Not yet.
Control.
He began assembling the circuit slowly, more out of habit than necessity. His hands moved with a kind of quiet confidence, guided less by memory and more by understanding. Each connection made sense before it was even completed.
Halfway through, he stopped.
Something was off.
Not wrong, just… inefficient. The layout worked, but it wasted space. More importantly, it introduced unnecessary resistance across the path.
He pulled one wire free and adjusted the configuration. Then another.
The structure tightened. Cleaner. More direct.
He continued.
By the time the others started arriving, the circuit was already complete.
He powered it on.
A small indicator light flickered, then steadied.
Stable.
He watched it for a few seconds longer, waiting for fluctuations. There were none. The output held within a narrow range. Better than expected.
"Did you even go home yesterday?"
Skye's voice came from behind him.
He turned slightly. "I did."
She stepped closer, glancing at the setup. "That wasn't working last week."
"It works now," he said.
She crouched beside the bench, scanning the layout. "You changed the routing."
"It reduces loss," he replied.
She nodded once, more to herself than to him. "You're not guessing, are you."
"No."
There was a brief pause. Not uncomfortable, just… measured.
"Good," she said, standing again. "Then don't stop."
The rest of the session passed quickly. Aarav made small adjustments, testing variations rather than chasing perfection. Each change gave him something useful. A better sense of how components interacted, where inefficiencies appeared, how small decisions affected the whole system.
By the end, the circuit was no longer just functional. It was consistent.
That mattered more.
Later, back at home, he redrew the entire layout in his notebook. Not as a copy, but as a refinement. He removed what was unnecessary, simplified what remained, and marked the points where energy loss could be reduced further.
At the top of the page, he added a note.
Efficiency is not about adding more. It is about removing what is not needed.
He leaned back slightly, studying the design.
It was still basic. Still far from anything advanced.
But it was his.
And more importantly, it worked the way he expected it to.
That was enough for now.