I heard your servers breathing wrong and I think your flagship product has a legacy timing defect’?”
“You could have tried.”
His expression changed.
“I did.”
Catherine stopped.
Jack went to a shelf and removed a plain envelope.
Inside were copies of three maintenance reports.
The first described abnormal fan cycling in the R&D rack.
The second mentioned repeat controller resets.
The third requested that engineering inspect a legacy thermal module before deployment testing.
Each report bore a submission stamp.
Each had been closed.
One contained a handwritten note: Cleaning staff should restrict reports to facilities issues.
Catherine read it twice.
“Who closed these?”
“Facilities routed the first two.
I don’t know who dismissed them after that.
The third came back through my supervisor.”
“Why didn’t you come directly to an executive?”
Jack looked almost incredulous.
“I clean their offices at midnight.
I’m not invited into them at noon.”
The sentence landed harder than Catherine wanted it to.
She had built her reputation on disciplined systems.
Systems were supposed to prevent important information from being lost to personality or status.
Yet here was a system that had apparently categorized a warning by the uniform of the person delivering it.
“Give me everything,” she said.
Jack did not move.
“Everything you’ve recorded.”
“And then?”
“Then we verify it.”
“And the server-room footage?”
“That depends on what verification shows.”
Jack’s expression hardened.
“I broke policy.
I know that.
Don’t pretend I didn’t.”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Good.”
He gathered his notebooks.
Before Catherine left, the kitchen door opened and Jack’s child appeared, sleepy and curious.
“Dad?”
Jack immediately stepped away from the workbench.
“It’s okay.
Go back inside.
I’ll be there in a minute.”
The child looked at Catherine.
“Are you from Dad’s work?”
Catherine glanced at Jack’s uniform, then at the old engineering diagrams covering the bench.
“Yes,” she said.
“I am.”
The next morning, Catherine entered Nexus before sunrise.
Marcus Reynolds was waiting when she called him upstairs.
“Did you find something?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Competitor?”
