Chapter 10 - THE MAN WHO KEPT THE NAMES
The control-room door opened onto a corridor full of smoke and the sound of a coughing man.
Agents evacuated two workers while firefighters isolated a deliberately started electrical fire.
Nobody needed to play hero; speed, training, and discipline were enough.
The rescued man identified himself as Adrian Shaw, Miriam's younger brother.
He had been taken while trying to locate his sister's records years earlier and forced to perform archival work under false identities.
He recognized Lena's surname and began shaking.
“My sister isn't dead,” he said.
I looked at Vega.
That sentence could overturn the only account our families had been permitted to believe.
Adrian said Station Nine served as a temporary storage and intimidation site for witnesses connected to Meridian's wartime contracting fraud.
Records of diverted communications equipment and falsified transport invoices had moved through the black case.
People who could authenticate those records were threatened, relocated, or made to disappear from ordinary channels.
He had personally seen Peter Hayes at a guarded facility less than a year earlier.
Walter would have to hear the news slowly and from someone who could answer questions.
Adrian produced a thumb drive hidden in the seam of his work coat.
It contained scanned manifests, witness names, and several recordings of Vale instructing staff to alter dates.
A federal examiner copied the device under evidence controls.
One file displayed a photo of the unmarked helicopter with its passenger doors open.
There I was, seventeen years younger, arguing with Vale beside the wounded men.
The timestamp contradicted the official claim that the second aircraft had never entered the valley.
Another file included Daniel's name beside a falsified approval.
He stared at the screen when Vega showed him.
“They used my signature,” he said.
“Or they had my cooperation once and assumed they could take the rest,” he added quietly.
The honesty hurt him.
He admitted he'd accepted a promotion soon after refusing to challenge the false operation summary.
He could not prove it was a reward for silence, but he no longer wanted to believe it was unrelated.
When Walter arrived, Adrian showed him a brief video captured on a security monitor.
An older Peter stood in a hallway and held up two fingers in a gesture Walter recognized from childhood.
Walter made a sound I had never heard from another human being.
“My boy,” he whispered.
The video ended abruptly as a guard pushed Peter out of frame.
On the monitor's lower edge, a location code appeared.
WREN HAVEN.
May you like
Adrian shook his head before anyone asked.
“That isn't a place they'll put on a map.”
