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“When did you last see the folder?”

“After the Executive Briefing.”

“And you’re certain you didn’t leave it there?”

“Absolutely.”

“Is anything missing from it?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded. “Please leave the folder. Security will examine your office.”

Marcus gave nothing away. I couldn’t tell whether that should reassure me or make me more concerned.

I stepped back outside. The sun was still shining across the grounds. Nothing had visibly changed.

It no longer felt like the same Saturday.

* * *

Alexander

Marcus reported shortly after six.

He stood across from me in the study, folder in hand, and delivered the facts in the order they became relevant. Security had flagged an anomaly outside Emilia’s office that morning. The keycard log showed a brief gap consistent with a manual override, a method requiring either institution-level access or knowledge of the system.

The corridor camera had repeated the same eleven seconds of footage instead of recording live video. Marcus checked the other cameras and found the same pattern occurring sequentially. Someone had deliberately created a path through the building without being recorded. Based on the timestamps, we knew someone entered her office between eight and nine-thirty that morning.

Saturday. Early morning. The one stretch of the weekend when the research wing was quietest, when a person could move through it without attracting much attention. Whoever had done this knew the building’s rhythms, architecture, and security measures. They had not just found a gap. They had orchestrated one.

“Was anything taken?”

“During my investigation of the lab, I spoke with Dr. Rossi. She identified one item that had been moved.” He slid the folder toward me.

I opened it. The handwritten pages were notes from Emilia’s meeting with Mercer. The discussion centered on a sample-processing method, just as Emilia had mentioned at the Executive Briefing. Their collaboration outlined improvements that would make the method applicable beyond Aurora.

Mercer’s history with Helix had already made the collaboration worth examining. The fact that the one item disturbed in Emilia’s office concerned her work with him was not evidence against Mercer, but it was too much overlap to dismiss.

The phishing email had not asked about data. It had asked for the blueprint. This changed the nature of the threat. Stolen results alone could not reveal how Aurora produced them. But a stolen methodology could allow someone to reproduce the work. Maybe even fabricate it.

Every scientist who learned how Aurora worked became a point of exposure. Not because any of them were suspect, but because sophisticated intrusions rarely target a single source. They target the people and processes around it. I needed to contain Aurora to its current team to reduce the risk.

“Have Research Administration suspend the Mercer collaboration until Security has a clearer picture of what we are looking at,” I said. “No meetings, calls, messages, or exchange of research information. We have an active investigation and need to limit the points of exposure around Aurora.”

Marcus made a note. “Should Dr. Rossi be told why?”

I considered the question. Emilia deserved an explanation. But Victoria, Helix, and Mercer were pieces I could not connect.

“Not yet,” I said.

Marcus accepted that instruction without comment, though a brief look of disagreement crossed his face. He picked up the folder and left.

I walked over to the window. She would be angry when she learned what I had done. She would probably be right.

I pulled a sheet of letterhead toward me. The invitation was brief. It thanked Dr. Rossi for the professionalism she had shown during the recent security incident and invited her to dinner the following evening to discuss Project Aurora’s future at Blackwood Hall. I added my personal number beneath my name and asked her to let me know if she would join me.

It was entirely professional. Entirely appropriate. Entirely truthful. It simply wasn’t the whole truth. I had run out of patience with corridors and elevators and the careful accident of crossing her path. I wanted, for one evening, to sit across from her as myself and see what she did with it.