Page 68 of Omega’s Fold

I’ve left my laptop in the other room. I go grab it and come back, opening it up beside him so that he can see the screen.

“Page sixteen of the appendix.” I say, pointing. “That is the modeled drawdown across the south-east quadrant of the development radius for an operating window of forty years. But it’s on a reduced model. That is what the appendix says. That is what was submitted. That is what was approved.”

My brother gives me an exaggerated sigh. He looks at me and rolls his eyes. “I have no idea what you’re going on about. Leave out the jargon, you big nerd. What does that mean in normal people words?”

“The impact of the dewatering is far larger than they claimed. And they know it. They must.”

Eli looks at the screen. “That’s bad. Like. Bad bad.”

“Yeah.”

“How sure are you?”

“Completely. I’ve spent the last two weeks working out whether I am reading it wrong but I’m not.”

“So what’s your move?”

“That is what I’m trying to work out.” I shut the laptop and take a drink. “I can take it to Richard Pace, show him what I know. He’ll then explain to me, calmly, that the project is approved, that the compensation has been paid. And then he’ll quietly move me off the big projects. The partnership will, at some point in the next eighteen months, quietly slow down. That’s option one.”

“Option two?”

“I could leak it. I send the appendix to the volunteer lawyer who has been working with the holdouts. That seems the most obvious. I can stay anonymous.”

“And…”

“And the list of people inside the firm who have access to that document is short and people with the motivation to leak it is even shorter. They’ll know it was me. I’ll lose my job. Absolutely no doubt. And no one will hire me again. Yes, the corporations talk big about responsibility but they don’t mean it. No one hires known whistleblowers.”

“Third option.”

“I file an affidavit. I send a copy to Pace and a copy to the county zoning board and a copy to the volunteer lawyer for the holdouts. I attach the appendix and I attach the published summary and I attach my analysis of the difference between them, and I sign it and I file it.”

“And…”

“And the firm sues me. Breach of fiduciary duty and breach of the firm’s data protection policy. The accreditation board opens a review of my registration. They will probably suspend it pending the review. The review takes a year. It might find against me. It might not. While the review is going on I cannot work.”

He nods slowly. “Those are all shit options.”

He turns the bottle on the counter. He looks at it. “Jules.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

“I know.”

“I’m just sitting here.”

“I know.”

“I’ll have another beer.”

He stands. He goes to the fridge. He gets a beer and he opens it the same way I opened the first one, against the underside of the counter, and our mother would kill us both if she saw us doing it.

I had thought, when I called him at half past four, that I had the three options in front of me and all I needed to do was talk it through. I thought that was it.

It’s not. I am, as I sit at the island with my brother across from me and the second beer cold against my hand, absolutely furious.

I am angry.