By noon, Glasshouse Nine had sealed every exit under the excuse of a cyber intrusion. Public Relations called it a “temporary building security protocol.” Employees called their partners in whispers. Executives gathered in the top-floor crisis room where the windows were transparent from the inside and mirrored from the world below.
Mira stood at the head of the table because Ethics technically chaired internal emergencies. Nobody liked remembering that.
Adrian sat to her right. His presence pulled attention the way gravity pulled rain. Across from him, CEO Celeste Vann looked like a silver-haired judge carved from expensive ice.
“This is sabotage,” Celeste said. “We will not indulge conspiracy theatrics.”
“The message refers to a criminal verdict tied to our founding product,” Mira said. “That makes it an ethics matter.”
“It makes it an old wound opportunists enjoy poking.”
“Caleb was investigating it before he vanished.”
The room changed temperature.
Celeste’s eyes sharpened. “How do you know that?”
Mira did not look at Adrian. “Archive logs.”
A lie, but not a reckless one. She had already checked; the logs were missing.
Celeste turned to the security chief. “Recover the logs.”
“We can’t,” he said. “Someone purged them from inside the executive access tier.”
Everyone looked at Adrian.
He lifted his coffee. “I’m flattered by the confidence in my abilities.”
“You had the access,” Mira said.
“So did Celeste. So did Caleb. So did the board chair, who is conveniently in Singapore.”
“Conveniently?” Celeste repeated.
Adrian’s smile returned, calm and weaponized. “Statistically.”
Mira hated that she almost laughed.
After the meeting, she found him waiting outside her office as if he owned the hallway. He probably did, through options and influence if not paperwork.
“You set me up,” she said.
“I gave you a door.”
“You gave me an accusation I can’t prove.”
“Yet.”
Mira unlocked her office. Adrian followed without being invited. She considered ordering him out. Instead, she closed the glass door and dimmed the smart tint until the walls clouded over.
“Talk,” she said.
He removed a small metal drive from his cufflink and placed it on her desk.
“That is either evidence,” Mira said, “or the most arrogant piece of jewelry I’ve ever seen.”
“Both. Caleb sent me a fragment before he disappeared. He believed the Harrow Street system didn’t malfunction. It was designed to produce the scores it produced.”
“Designed by whom?”
“Not the official team.”
Mira plugged the drive into an isolated reader. A video file appeared. Grainy. Old. A deposition room. A younger Celeste Vann sat beside a nervous man identified as Dr. Ivo Penn, expert witness for the prosecution.
On the recording, Dr. Penn whispered, “If I say the model could not be externally altered, Lena goes down.”
Celeste replied, “If you don’t, the hospital contract collapses, and every patient whose score leaked becomes our responsibility. Choose the smaller fire.”
The file ended.
Mira stared at the blank screen.
“Why come to me?” she asked.
“Because if I release it, they’ll say I’m staging a coup.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
At least he was honest about one thing.
Adrian stepped closer. “But not for the reason they think.”
Mira should have moved away. She did not.
“My mother was a nurse at Harrow Street,” he said. “She was flagged as unstable after she reported the altered scores. She lost her license. She died believing the verdict proved she was crazy.”
His voice did not break. That made it worse.
Mira remembered her own mother at the kitchen table, pension letters spread like bad tarot cards, saying computers had learned to sound like fate.
“You want revenge,” Mira said.
“I wanted revenge. Caleb wanted truth. I’m trying to determine which one is more useful.”
Her phone buzzed.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: If you trust Adrian Kest, ask him where he was the night Caleb vanished.
Mira looked up.
Adrian read the change in her face instantly.
“What?”
She turned the phone toward him.
For the first time since she had known him, the Smiling Knife looked afraid.
