Chapter 7: Smoke Without Fire

There's something about early morning silence in an office that's still finding its identity.

It's not just the absence of noise — it's the potential humming under the surface. The whisper of something about to begin.

I stood by the window of my office, watching traffic begin to smear across the streets below. The sun wasn't up yet, but the city had already started to stretch. My desk behind me was buried — notes, files, flagged documents, digital transcripts. But my attention wasn't on them. Not yet.

My focus was on the board I'd pinned against the far wall. A cheap thing from the supply store, already covered in marker lines and half-finished questions. Five names sat there. Five questions. Five unknowns.

Mercer.RX-51.Langford.Trial Logs.Suppression?

Beneath them all, in bold, underlined strokes:

"WHERE IS THE SMOKING GUN?"

Because I hadn't found it yet.And that bothered me.

Circling the Fire

We gathered in the small conference room around 9:30 that morning.

By "we," I mean my team — a skeleton crew that had somehow been punching above its weight since I opened this place.

There was Rina Devens, thirty-one, analytical to the bone, with a mind like a scalpel. Her specialty wasn't memory — it was patterns. Give her enough paper trails and she'd map the whole terrain before you knew what you were standing on.

Then there was Max Renley, my case researcher. Quiet, former litigation support out of Baltimore. The kind of guy who seemed invisible until he dropped something like, "I found a timestamp inconsistency in their Phase I report. Want me to dig?"

He always dug.

And finally, there was Tom Callow. Young. Early-20s. A little too green, a little too eager. But he'd been with me since month one, and I trusted his drive. He'd burn the midnight oil and still show up with a case file under his arm and coffee in the other hand.

They looked at me now, waiting. The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the A/C and the faint tap of Rina's pen against her legal pad.

I stepped forward and tapped the whiteboard.

"We're walking into a fire," I said. "But we're doing it on our terms."

I slid a thick folder onto the table. "This is Mercer's complaint. Our opening map."

They opened it without a word. The pages rustled like dry leaves.

"Let's start simple," I said. "What do we know about Mercer's exit?"

Rina spoke first. "Redwell's internal memo states she was let go due to 'philosophical divergence regarding trial progress.' It's vague. Corporate-sanitized. No misconduct, no errors. Just disagreement."

Tom added, "Which sounds like they knew she'd push back legally. They're hedging."

Max didn't look up. "I found a Slack log from the research team's internal server. Mercer raised concerns about trial continuity after Subject M12 developed tremors. She wasn't just disagreeing — she was escalating."

I met his eyes. "Anything about that subject in the trial summary?"

"Scrubbed," he said. "There's a gap. Subject M12 disappears after day eleven."

The words sat heavy in the air.

"That's where we start," I said quietly. "Because Mercer didn't pull this case out of thin air."

The Boston Visit

Redwell's headquarters didn't surprise me.

Polished chrome interiors. Security badges for every step. A front desk staff that could've moonlighted as models and still made commission.

Langford met me by the elevator — crisp, no nonsense, as usual.

"I'm giving you full board access today," he said, adjusting his cufflinks. "Play it how you want. Just remember: you're not speaking to colleagues. You're speaking to people who own problems."

He wasn't wrong.

The boardroom was sleek, soundproofed, and smelled faintly of cedar and ego.

Eight people were seated when I walked in — executives, legal reps, and a scientist or two. Langford didn't introduce anyone. He didn't have to. I already knew the names from documents: Whitaker, the financial mind; Celia Dorsey, COO; Ellison Grant, head of development; and the rest of their curated wall of authority.

I didn't bring fanfare. I brought a file.

"This," I said, dropping it on the table, "is a list of what I need to begin this defense properly."

Some brows lifted. A few exchanged looks.

"I'm not your in-house guy," I continued. "I won't paint your fences if they're burning. If we're doing this, we're doing it clean. Which means metadata, email archives, access to Mercer's correspondence, and full visibility into Subject M12's documentation."

"Who?" Ellison asked, brow furrowed.

"M12," I repeated. "Phase I participant. Recorded neurological degeneration. Footage exists. Your final report doesn't reflect him."

Silence.

Langford's face didn't change, but his eyes flicked toward Grant.

"Unintentional omission," Dorsey said quickly.

"Then it won't be hard to correct," I replied. "You have until Monday."

The Paper Maze

By the time I returned to the office, the courier had already dropped the first flash drive batch from Redwell's compliance team.

I stayed past midnight combing through it.

Some files made sense. Others didn't.

There were video logs, but some were missing audio. Others had frame skips. The audit trails were disjointed — fragments of truth polished into artifacts.

One file caught my eye.

RX-51_Log12. Subject M12.

The footage was hard to watch. The tremors began slowly, then escalated. The man — thirty-something, calm at first — descended into something closer to seizure.

None of it appeared in the trial logs.

I paused the video and stared at the frame.

Somewhere out there, a man agreed to be tested in good faith. And the system swept him under the rug like a blemish on a portfolio.

I rubbed my eyes, sat back.

This wasn't just a high-profile case anymore.

It was a question mark stamped across my conscience.

And I couldn't shake the feeling that Mercer had tried to do the right thing… and paid for it.

 Whispers in the Quiet

The next morning, I met with a name I'd circled three times on Mercer's project list — Dr. Lillian Cho.

She agreed to coffee, but only if it was far from the Innovation District.

"I don't want to be seen," she said.

We met at a bookstore café in a side alley near Back Bay. She was younger than I expected, mid-30s, eyes tired.

"I won't speak on record," she said before we even sat.

"Then speak as someone who's tired of watching good work become a lie."

That made her pause.

After a sip of tea, she leaned in slightly.

"Mercer didn't go rogue," she said. "She was quiet. Focused. But when she realized what was happening with RX-51, she asked questions. The kind that get answered with silence."

"Like what?"

"Like why certain results were scrubbed, or why specific participants were transferred off record."

"Who made those calls?"

She hesitated.

"No one made them directly. That's how Redwell works. Decisions are spread like raindrops. No one gets wet enough to drown."

I nodded slowly.

"Langford?"

"No. Langford's a suit. He's the messenger, not the decision-maker."

I wanted to press further, but her eyes darted around the café.

"That's all I'll say."

I thanked her and walked out into the cold.

Her words clung to me longer than they should have.

"No one gets wet enough to drown."

Unless, of course, you're the one who's thrown into the fire for asking why it's raining at all.

Back in my office, the city had faded into dusk.

The board was messier now — new lines, new names.

Still no smoking gun.

But I could feel the heat beneath the paper.

My phone buzzed with a message from Max:

"Found cross-referenced inconsistencies in IRB logs. Might be something. Details tomorrow."

I was still reading when I heard it.

Three knocks at my door.

Firm. Precise. Deliberate.

It wasn't Marcy. She'd left hours ago.

I walked to the door, opened it—

And there stood someone I didn't expect.

A figure whose presence wasn't part of my notes or files.

But maybe — just maybe — they held the next breadcrumb.

The one that might lead me straight into the fire… or finally out of it.