What's happening right now? The vehicles, the team, this has been planned for a long time. And your name, Mr. Williams, has been in our files for almost as long. My name Andre repeated the maintenance report you filed on March. The camera anomaly you flagged in April.
The temperature variance log from server room. See a pause. We found all of it. And we found something else. Someone tried to erase it.
Andre's jaw tightened. The system was compromised. The facilities management system. Yes, but you filed a paper backup of the March report. A hard copy.
You left it in the subflow maintenance log binder because you didn't trust the digital system. Another pause. And this time there was something almost like respect in it. That paper copy is what started our investigation. Mr. Williams, you put it there.
You saved it. Andre remembered that morning a Tuesday. He had printed the report because something felt off. Not a specific something, just that general low hum of wrongness he had learned over years to take seriously. He had filed the paper copy in the binder almost as an afterthought, a habit from his meridian days when his supervisor had told him, "Always leave something they can't delete."
He had not imagined in that moment that he was starting anything. "What do you need from me?" Andre said, "I need you to walk back inside that building," Reeves said. "And I need you to stay calm when things get loud because they're about to get loud." Andre looked at the entrance doors.
Through the glass, he could see the lobby filling up. People pressing forward, trying to see what was happening outside. Security staff moving to intercept the arriving vehicles. And somewhere on an upper floor, he knew. Clare Whitmore was looking out a window and trying to understand something she hadn't prepared for.
How loud? Andre said. Loud enough. Reeves said that the man who set you up is going to run and we need you inside when he does. Andre put the phone in his pocket.
He turned around. He walked back through those glass doors. Marcus Bennett was standing six feet inside the entrance. And when he saw Andre walk back in, something moved across his face. Surprise.
Relief. Something more complicated underneath both of those things. He stepped forward. I know, Andre said for the second time that morning. I'll explain later.