That evening, Patricia received the first preliminary results from the independent specialist. The drive was old, but readable. Several archived email files appeared intact, along with a distribution spreadsheet and a folder containing drafts of the Lantern transfer checklist.
The specialist had not yet reviewed the contents in detail. He had only confirmed that the files existed and that their timestamps appeared consistent with the period in question.
Patricia sent the summary to Andrea and Richard.
At 8:42 p.m., Andrea called Marcus.
“We've found something,” she said.
“What?”
“The distribution spreadsheet for the supplementary report. It lists six recipients.”
“Who?”
“Three members of the original Lantern technical team, the compliance manager, Daniel Mercer, and Maya Thompson.”
Marcus waited.
“Is there anything else?”
“Yes. There's a second spreadsheet that doesn't appear in the official archive. It lists the recipients of a later email with the subject line ‘Lantern Appendix — Revised Distribution.’”
“And who received that one?”
Andrea was silent for a moment.
“Five people at Northstar Energy Solutions. Stephen Vale. And one person at Caldwell Industries who wasn't listed on the original transfer paperwork.”
“Who?”
“Maya's predecessor in commercial analysis had left by then. The additional recipient was Daniel Mercer's assistant, who later moved to Northstar.”
Marcus sat up straighter.
“Does that prove the report was sent to Northstar?”
“No. The spreadsheet is evidence of a distribution event, but we still need the original email and its attachments to verify what was sent. It could have been the technical appendix, the supplementary review, or a different version.”
“Can we open the email?”
“The specialist is working on it. He found a message file with the same subject line, but the attachment reference is broken. He thinks the attachment may have been stored separately.”
“Where?”
“That's what he's trying to establish.”
Marcus looked at the anonymous note beside his notebook.
For the first time, the Lantern archive offered a possible connection between an old technical project and the commercial team that had later negotiated with Northstar.
But it still didn't explain why ClearCurrent's files had disappeared.
Then Andrea spoke again.
“There is another issue. The revised distribution spreadsheet was modified after the original transfer checklist was completed.”
“By whom?”
“We don't know yet. The author field contains a user ID rather than a person's name.”
“Can the ID be traced?”
“Possibly. It depends on whether the old company records still contain the account mapping.”
Marcus looked toward the dark windows of the empty workshop. Beyond them, the students' projects sat on shelves, each one representing hours of work and the belief that a useful idea deserved a fair chance.
He had once thought the hardest part of engineering was finding the flaw.
Now he understood that finding it was only the beginning.
The harder task was proving what happened next.
And somewhere in the old records, someone had changed a distribution list.
Someone had sent a revised appendix.
Someone had decided that a document which should have accompanied a transfer no longer needed to be part of the official story.
Whether that decision had been careless, deliberate, or entirely unrelated to ClearCurrent remained unknown.
But the investigation had finally reached a point where the questions could be tested against records instead of suspicions.
Marcus opened his notebook and wrote three lines:
What was transferred?
Who received it?
Who changed the record?
He underlined the third question.
Because if the spreadsheet had been altered, the next step was not to guess who had done it.
It was to find the original.
And when Andrea sent him the first screenshot from the recovered email archive, he saw a filename that made his stomach tighten.
CLEARCURRENT_REVIEW_REQUEST — DRAFT
The timestamp was dated three days before Olivia's team discovered the missing files.
The sender's name was not visible in the screenshot.
But the recipient field was.
It showed an internal account belonging to the Open Bench Initiative.
PART 17 — The Request Sent Before the Files Disappeared
Marcus read the screenshot three times.
CLEARCURRENT_REVIEW_REQUEST — DRAFT
The timestamp placed it three days before Olivia Bennett and her team discovered that their latest project files had vanished.
The recipient was an internal Open Bench Initiative account.
But the sender's name was missing.
“Could it have been an automated notification?” Marcus asked over the phone.
Andrea Mills answered carefully. “Possibly. The screenshot doesn't show enough information to establish that. We need the original message, its metadata, and any attachments.”
“Who had access to that account?”
“Several people. The initiative coordinator, our IT administrator, and two staff members who helped manage project submissions.”
“Could someone outside the initiative have sent a message using it?”
“Not without some form of access, but we shouldn't assume that happened. The account might have forwarded a message, imported a draft, or recorded an incomplete transaction.”
Marcus leaned back in his chair.
“Then we have a draft about ClearCurrent before the files disappeared, and we don't know who wrote it.”
“Correct.”
“Can we find out?”
“We're trying.”
The call ended with no clear answer, which had become an increasingly familiar feature of the investigation.
Marcus returned to the workshop the following morning. The students were already there, gathered around the workbench where ClearCurrent's latest prototype sat disconnected from its monitoring equipment.
Olivia had spread the remaining printed test records across the table. Her teammate, Noah Price, was checking the dates against an old project notebook. A third student, Grace Miller, was reviewing photographs they had taken during calibration sessions.
They had decided not to wait for the investigation to finish before organizing the evidence that remained.
“We found a gap,” Olivia said as Marcus approached.
“What kind of gap?”
“Not in the measurements. In the documentation.”
She showed him a timeline she had built from the team's notebooks, exported reports, and saved photographs.
The missing files had included the newest calibration tables, the updated software, and several test summaries. But the students had printed some of their results before the disappearance. Their photographs also showed computer screens during earlier testing sessions.
“We can reconstruct part of the development history,” Olivia explained. “Not the whole thing. Some settings changed after our last printed report, and we don't remember every value.”
“Don't guess,” Marcus said.
“We weren't going to.”