CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
— NAOMI —
She spread the pages across the kitchen island with the efficient confidence of a person who had found the story in a mass of data and was now presenting it. Tav stood on one side of the island. Alistair stood on the other. Naomi stood at the end and pointed.
"The Ablation Structural Holdings account," she said.
"Here. Three years of quarterly transfers, all below the automatic audit threshold by exactly three percent.
Not two percent, not five — three, every time.
Someone with access to the threshold figures is setting the amounts specifically.
" She moved her finger across the page. "The transfers originate from the university foundation's general operational fund — routed through a subsidiary that manages infrastructure investment.
On paper it looks like building maintenance and equipment leasing. "
"But it isn't," Alistair said.
"The subsidiary doesn't appear to own any buildings or lease any equipment.
" She turned to the second page. "It exists in the university's records as a minor operational line item.
No one looks at minor operational line items when they're below threshold and the name sounds administrative.
" She looked up. "Dean Voss authorized the subsidiary's establishment three years ago. "
"He's been running this since the beginning," Tav said.
"Since before your placement," Naomi said. She met their eyes. "Someone needed this infrastructure in place before you arrived here."
"The Amsterdam account," Alistair said.
"Registered six months before your placement," Naomi confirmed. "Which is interesting because—"
She found the page. "The registration date is eleven months after Director Cain took his current position." She looked at them. "He didn't inherit this infrastructure. He built it."
Tav fixed on the spreadsheet.
He was reading it the way he read things that mattered: slowly, with attention to what wasn't there as much as what was. The gaps in the data were as informative as the data itself. The quarterly regularity.
The precise threshold management. The subsidiary's administrative camouflage.
"The Amsterdam entity is private," he said. "Single beneficial owner?"
"That's where I hit the access limit," Naomi said. "Dutch corporate registration is publicly accessible up to the entity level. The beneficial owner structure requires a different access approach."
"I know a financial journalist in Amsterdam who might be able to get further."
"Don't contact them yet," Tav said.
She found his face.
"If someone is monitoring this account's information trail, a sudden external query flags immediately."
He met Alistair's eyes. "We need to know more about who the beneficial owner is before we approach anyone who might alert them."
Alistair was nodding. "Lucien's archive," he said. "If the Protocol has been running for long enough, the financial infrastructure might appear in the operational documentation."
"If Lucien built what he said he built," Tav said.
"He built it," Alistair said, with the quiet certainty. He had been thinking about his brother for twenty-four hours and had arrived at a conclusion.
Naomi looked between them. "why do you believe Lucien is alive?”
A pause.
Tav turned to Alistair.
Alistair watched the spreadsheet.
"Someone who might have built a record of everything Cain has done," he said carefully.
"Including the financial structure."
"Someone who is supposedly dead," Tav said.
“Someone who knows exactly how this goes.” Alistair muttered.
Naomi absorbed this.
"But isn't," she said. Neither of them answered.
"I see," she said. She studied the pages spread across the island. "So the financial records are the trail, and the archive is the map, and the two together—"
"Show the full structure," Tav said. "The Protocol. The funding. The cover operations." He looked at her. "Everything that would be needed to take it apart."
Naomi was quiet.
She had the journalist's stillness that arrived when pieces were assembling into a shape she recognized — the focus of someone who understood that they were sitting inside a story that was larger than they'd estimated.
"I want the full story," she said. "When this is over."
"We've told you that," Alistair said.
"I want to say it again so we're clear." She looked at Tav. "Every part of it. Including the parts that reflect badly on the people I'm currently helping."
Tav held her gaze steadily.
"Yes," he said.
"And the Amsterdam account," she said. "I want to follow that thread. When it's safe to follow it."
"When we know where it leads," Tav said.
"Agreed." She straightened the pages and collected them. "There's something else," she said.
They waited.
"The surveillance photographs that were in Voss's office when you were there," she said. "I asked around — carefully — about what was in them."
"You shouldn't have—"
"I was careful," she said. "The photographs were taken from inside the building. Professional equipment, professional positioning. Someone was running parallel surveillance on Voss." She looked up. "But the photographs weren't of Voss."
A pause.
"What were they of?" Alistair asked.
Naomi looked at them.
"You," she said.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Both of you," she continued. "Together. Multiple occasions. Dating back to the second week of your placement." "Someone has been watching you since before either of you arrived."
Tav processed this.
The photographs. The timing of the gala's shooter. All of it suggesting a third observer — one who had been present before Ablation's monitoring began and who had left traces that were visible only when you assembled them in the right sequence.
"Phase Two," Alistair said quietly.
Tav studied him.
"Someone built Phase One," Alistair said. "And has been documenting Phase Two since before it officially started."
The silence in the kitchen had a different quality now — not the warmth of their recent mornings but the cold of a picture becoming clearer than expected.
"What does that mean?" Naomi asked.
"It means," Tav said carefully, "that we are not just Ablation's experiment."
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