Chapter 210: Showing it to the Others

Timothy called Hana to his garage in Tondo, and she arrived an hour later.She walked in holding coffee, stopped mid-step, and stared at it without speaking. Timothy watched her face. Hana was shocked.

"You actually did it," she said.

Timothy took the coffee from her and set it on a workbench. "I needed a baseline."

"That is not a baseline. That is a finished car. How did you do that?"

Timothy just flashed his neurolyzer on Hana and then spoke.

"It is a prototype. Believe it that way."

Hana acknowledged with a tranced response.

"Yes."

Hana walked a slow circle around it. She crouched to look at the diffuser, ran her eyes along panel gaps, checked the wing mounts, then stood and looked through the side glass at the interior. She reached for the door handle and stopped.

"Is it safe to touch," she asked, deadpan.

Timothy gave a short exhale. "It will not bite."

She opened the door and slid into the seat. Hana sat the way she sat in meetings, straight and alert, hands resting on her thighs. She looked at the steering wheel and the compact cluster.

"This is too beautiful and sporty," she said.

"That was the point."

Hana tapped a button and watched the cluster respond.

She stepped out and closed the door carefully, then looked around the garage as if expecting a camera hidden somewhere.

"You are going to tell him."

"I will," Timothy said. "Today. Call Carlos. Tell him to meet me here. No entourage."

Hana pulled out her phone. "You want him to see it in this garage."

"Yes."

Hana made the call while Timothy walked around the car and opened the charge port to check the logs again. The numbers were still clean. Battery temps stayed stable in the drive window he recorded. Inverter temps were within the margin. Suspension sensors had flagged two rough patches, exactly the kind of road reality he had designed for. The system had given him a machine, but he trusted the data more than the miracle.

An hour later, Carlos arrived.

He came alone, no driver, no security, just him in a plain car that did not stand out. He walked into the garage looking irritated, like he had been pulled out of a meeting, then he saw the Motus One and froze.

Carlos stared at it for a long time without speaking.

Timothy watched him the way he watched applicants and politicians, waiting for the first instinct. Carlos did not try to joke. He did not try to flatter. He walked closer like he was approaching a piece of equipment that could hurt him if he got careless.

"What is that," Carlos asked quietly.

Timothy answered, simple. "TG Motus One."

Carlos looked at him, then back at the car. "TG Motus One? How did you get this?"

Timothy simply did what he did on Hana.

"I see, so it’s a long project, a prototype huh?"

Carlos took another step forward and ran his eyes over the front splitter, the headlights, the hood line. He crouched and looked under the nose. He stood again and walked along the side, checking the stance and wheel fitment.

He stopped at the rear and stared at the wing mounts.

"This is not a body kit," Carlos said.

Carlos turned back to the car. "Specs."

"LithiumX S-96 high discharge pack. Eight hundred volt. Ninety-six kilowatt-hours. Structural integration. Dual rear motors with torque vectoring. Adaptive traction tuned for patched roads. Carbon reinforced aluminum monocoque. Double wishbone all around. Carbon ceramic brakes. Blended regen."

Carlos stared at the door. "Weight."

"One thousand six hundred kilos projected. Real feels lower because of balance."

Carlos opened the driver door and sat inside, then sat still for a moment like he was listening for noise that did not exist. The cluster lit and showed readiness. Carlos did not touch anything else. He just looked at the interface.

"This is not a concept," he said.

"It is not," Timothy replied.

Carlos stepped out slowly and shut the door. He looked at Timothy with a different expression now, one that mixed excitement and alarm.

"Do you understand what you just did to my schedule," Carlos asked.

Timothy answered without flinching. "I did not do it to your schedule. I did it to prove capability."

Carlos took a breath. "You cannot show this to the wider company yet."

"I know."

Carlos nodded hard, talking as if he was briefing himself. "If this leaks, everyone will want a piece of it. Marketing will want renders. Finance will want projections. Government will ask if it is road legal. Competitors will try to get photos. Workers will gossip. Somebody will post it."

Hana stepped in. "We keep it in a locked bay. Only a small team. We treat it like a battery lab project."

Carlos looked at her. "Even then, a sports car is a magnet."

Timothy spoke. "Then we do it properly."

Carlos stared at him. "Properly means a program, Tim."

"That is what I am starting."

Carlos let out a breath and walked a slow circle around the car again, this time with a builder’s eyes. His tone shifted from shock to engineering.

"Thermal management. You used dual loops."

"Yes," Timothy said. "One loop for battery, one for motors and inverters, with cross-support in emergency."

Carlos nodded. "Cooling stack?"

"Front pack with side assists. Designed for humidity and low speed."

Carlos crouched again, looked under the side intake. "Serviceability."

Timothy pointed. "Panels come off in modules. Pack drop procedure is documented. Motors are accessible without tearing the cabin apart."

Carlos stood. "If the chassis is solid, this is a training tool for the whole company."

"It is a development tool," Timothy said.

Carlos looked at him. "You are saying the same thing."

Hana watched them both. "We need boundaries. We decide what this project is before it becomes a rumor."

Timothy nodded. "This is not a consumer product yet. It is a halo engineering platform to force improvements across TG Motors."

Carlos crossed his arms. "Say that again. Exactly like that. That is how we defend it."

Timothy looked at the car, then at Carlos. "We will build it in stages. Prototype one is done. Next step is validation. Track, heat soak, braking, durability. We break it on purpose. We fix what fails."

Carlos nodded slowly. "Where."

"Batangas proving loop at night," Timothy said. "Closed. No cameras."

Hana raised an eyebrow. "You are driving it."

Timothy met her eyes. "Yes."

Carlos looked between them. "No. Tim, you do not do the first durability run."

Timothy’s voice stayed flat. "I need firsthand feel."

Carlos shook his head. "You can get feel later. First run is instrumentation. We need a driver who can give feedback and not turn it into ego."

Hana’s mouth twitched. "He just got called out."

Timothy ignored it. "Fine. We hire a test driver. Someone disciplined."

Carlos nodded. "And we keep you in the passenger seat for the first run."

Timothy did not like it, but he did not fight it. "Fine."

Hana opened her tablet. "Also, we decide funding structure."

Carlos glanced at her. "For a prototype?"

"For a program," Hana replied. "If you want a real development pipeline, you need a budget line that cannot be killed by a bad quarter."

Timothy looked at Hana. "Draft it under TG Motors R and D. Separate line. Not marketing."

Hana nodded. "And the name stays internal."

Carlos looked at the car again. "Motus One."

Timothy nodded. "For now."

Carlos pointed at the car. "A Filipino-built electric performance car that does not feel like compromise. If we do this right, it changes what people think our engineering is capable of."

Hana’s tone stayed flat. "And if you do it wrong, it becomes a national joke."

Carlos looked at her. "Yes."

Timothy looked at both of them. "Then we do it right."

The garage went quiet again. Not comfortable quiet. Working quiet.

Hana started listing steps, legal and operational. Secure storage, access control, NDAs, component tracking. Carlos started listing technical tests, thermal cycles, braking endurance, suspension travel, inverter stress. Timothy listened and corrected where it mattered, not to control everything, but to keep it aligned with his original reason for building it.

When they finally stopped talking, the Motus One sat in the middle of the garage like a loaded question.

Carlos looked at Timothy one last time. "You are serious."

Timothy nodded. "I would not build it if I was not."

Hana shut her tablet. "Then we treat it like every other TG project. Quiet until it works. Loud only when it cannot be ignored."

Timothy walked to the driver door and rested his hand on it for a second, not sentimental, just assessing the next step like he did with buses and power plants. Then he let go and turned back to them.

"Tonight," he said. "We schedule the first validation run."