Chapter 8 - The Recorded Silence
The flash drive was examined by specialists before anybody played its contents.
That delay frustrated Ryan, who still believed truth should arrive as quickly as an accusation.
"You can't just plug it in?" he asked.
"Not when someone may have altered it," I replied.
When the investigators finally invited us to hear an authenticated copy, the room felt colder than it was.
A recording began with static and the distant sound of rain.
Then Granddad's voice filled the speakers.
"Victor, I'm asking you one more time to walk away from this contract."
Dad's voice answered.
"You don't know what they're paying."
"I know what they're hiding."
There was a scrape of furniture.
"Nothing has happened," Dad said.
Granddad replied, "That isn't a defense.
It's a warning."
The recording stopped.
Ryan leaned forward.
"That's it?"
The investigator nodded.
"That's the segment we can authenticate so far."
I hated how little it proved.
It established a dispute about a contract.
It did not establish that my father caused a fatal mission failure.
But it demolished his claim that he had never heard of Mercer Systems.
At home, Dad was already telling relatives that I had forged the recording out of revenge.
Aunt Patricia repeated it in a family group chat.
Madison posted a photograph from the ceremony with a caption about attention seekers who destroy happy occasions.
Ryan showed me the comments.
"Should we respond?"
"No.
Evidence doesn't improve because strangers approve of it."
He looked guilty.
"I was one of those people."
I didn't release him from the truth of that.
Later, Reyes called with an update.
The modified mission log had been uploaded from a remote connection that passed through Dad's office network.
A subpoena request was underway.
Then she gave me a name connected to the login: Andrew Mercer.
I remembered a voice from the communications center before Daniel died.
It had told us to hold position even after the extraction window closed.
I couldn't identify the voice with certainty, but hearing Andrew's name made an old fear rise.
The same person might have been in that room then.
May you like
And if so, Daniel hadn't died because of a simple equipment fault.
