Mira had inherited the tester with the shop—part payment from an old client, part mercy. She’d spent the better part of a year coaxing it back to life, crawling beneath its chassis with a flashlight and a spool of enameled wire until the voltage rails no longer flickered like dying stars. It wasn’t the newest kit on the market. It wasn’t even the most reliable. It had personality, though, and in a field of sterile, black-box instruments, personality was worth something.