Mason had never cared for storms, yet on the night the final answers slipped into his hands rain hammered the tall windows of the Beta’s office with a fury that mirrored his thoughts. Lantern-lamplight flickered across crowded desks piled with ledgers, witness lists, grainy photographs, and hand-written deposition sheets; over the past week every spare corner had sprouted a new stack of documents, as though the walls themselves were swelling with secrets that refused to stay hidden. The Alpha House slept fitfully beyond the corridor, but for Mason sleep had become a foreign country – half-remembered, distant, unreachable – because each new scrap of evidence led him deeper into the web he had always suspected lay beneath Felicia’s ruin.
Tonight a single courier had arrived at the rear ga
