Chapter 6
Arthur stared at the words, the ink blurring slightly as a sudden wave of heat rushed to his eyes. He swallowed the lump in his throat, refusing to let the emotion break through his disciplined exterior. Clara hadn't run away out of rebellion or instability. She had uncovered corporate negligence of terrifying proportions, and her sudden disappearance was no accident of mental health. She had been targeted, silenced, and driven into hiding—or worse.
He picked up the small flash drive resting in the foam bed of the lockbox. It was a standard encrypted USB drive, matte black with a small red indicator dot. He looked around the office. "Marcus, do you have an offline computer I can use to check this drive?"
Vance looked up from his workbenches, wiping his hands on his apron. "Old terminal in the corner. Not connected to the internet. Runs on an isolated local network for inventory spreadsheets. Nothing fancy, but it reads USB drives."
Arthur carried the flash drive over to the dusty desktop computer resting on a metal stand in the corner of the room. He pushed the power button. The heavy machine hummed to life, the monitor flickering with a green-on-black command line interface before booting into an old operating system. He leaned down and inserted the flash drive into the front USB port.
A few seconds later, a folder icon appeared on the screen labeled DATA_DUMP_CLARA_704. Arthur double-clicked the icon. Inside were dozens of spreadsheet files, PDF telemetry reports, and several high-resolution video recordings. He clicked on the first video file.
The screen flickered, and Clara’s face appeared in sharp focus. She was sitting at her office desk inside the Miller & Vance facility, looking tired and pale under the harsh fluorescent lights. Her eyes darted anxiously toward the office door before she leaned close to the built-in webcam.
"My name is Clara Miller," her recorded voice echoed softly through the small, crackling desktop speakers. "Today is October 14th. If this video is being watched, it means my backups have been triggered. The titanium alloy batches marked 'Grade-EX' are being shipped out with microscopic micro-fractures that will fail under sustained load within three years. Management knows. Director Henderson signed off on the falsified certificates. If I don't report in to my dad within forty-eight hours, release this footage to the state transport board."
May you like
The video cut to black. Arthur sat frozen in front of the monitor, the greenish light casting a ghostly pallor across his weathered face. The timeline clicked into place with horrifying clarity. Clara hadn't just discovered a paperwork error; she had stumbled upon a catastrophic structural flaw that could compromise bridges, tunnels, or aircraft frames across the entire region. And the corporation had done everything in its power to bury her along with the evidence.
Vance walked over slowly, standing behind Arthur’s chair. He stared at the blank monitor screen, his face darkening. "Grade-EX titanium," Vance murmured. "That’s the exact alloy they used in the retrofitting of the Interstate 80 overpass downtown. The one the city council inspected last year."
