The Janitor Who Fixed Everything
Part 1: The Test
I still remember the smell of that hangar in Chicago. It was a mix of jet fuel, polished steel, and the industrial bleach I used to scrub the floors. But mostly, I remember the sound of laughter.
Not the warm, family kind—the sharp, metallic kind that sticks to your skin and burns. My name is Ethan Cole. To the people at Hail Aviation, I was just “The Janitor.” I was the guy in the faded blue uniform, the one who cleaned up the coffee spills in the breakroom and mopped the oil off the epoxy floors near the landing pads.
I was invisible. And honestly? I preferred it that way.
Invisibility was safe. Invisibility meant I could do my shift, collect my paycheck, and rush home to my little girl, Lily. Lily was seven, and she was my whole world.
Since my wife passed away three years ago, it had just been the two of us against a mountain of medical bills and a world that didn’t seem to care much about bad luck. Lily was sick—the kind of sick that requires specialists, expensive medications, and a dad who is home every night, not deployed overseas. That’s why I left the Air Force.
That’s why I buried my past as a lead aerospace mechanic and picked up a mop. A mop didn’t carry the weight of lives on the line. A mop let me be home for bedtime stories.
But that Tuesday morning, the weight came crashing back. The main hangar was chaotic. Veronica Hail, the CEO, was pacing around the company’s newest helicopter prototype like a panther circling wounded prey.
Veronica was brilliant, intimidating, and known for building her empire from the ground up right here in Illinois. She was also known for having zero patience. “Why is it still grounded?” her voice echoed off the high metal ceiling.
A group of senior engineers stood around the machine, looking at their tablets, sweating. This helicopter was supposed to be delivered to a client in three hours. Every minute it sat on the ground was costing the company thousands of dollars.
“It’s failing the vibration test, Ms. Hail,” the lead engineer stammered. “We can’t isolate the frequency.
It’s… it’s a ghost in the machine.”
I was nearby, wringing out my mop into the yellow bucket. I tried to make myself small, but I couldn’t help looking. I knew that machine.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
