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Silas glanced at the screen.

“Delete the mirrored path. Keep or destroy the local copy on your own conscience. It does not enter another system.” His eyes came back to mine. “And Samantha.”

The full name.

Never a good sign.

“Yes.”

“The reason this stays contained is that I am choosing to treat it as judgment under pressure rather than bad faith.” His voice stayed quiet, which was more effective than volume ever could have been. “Do not make me regret that distinction.”

The professional line appeared.

The professional line.

Clear.

Intact.

Still, somehow less brutal than I deserved.

“I won’t.”

Silas studied me for half a second. Then Sandra. Then the dead queue on the monitor.

“Good.”

He turned to go, then stopped at the door without looking back.

“Walsh will ask for replacement options. Give him something excellent enough that he stops missing this one.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

Sandra let out a slow breath.

“Well,” she said. “That was practically a hug.”

Sandra reclaimed her coffee and made a face after tasting it.

“Cold.”

“Tragic.”

She set it down again and looked at the laptop screen, where Frame 187 still sat in the local folder, waiting to become either memory or evidence.

“You know,” she said, “for what it’s worth, if Walsh had gotten that image cleanly, he would have run it into the ground.”

I looked up at her.

“He would have called it brave,” she said. “And human. And season-defining. Which is executive-speak for: we found a private truth and put a logo on it.”

The knot in my chest tightened once, then loosened just enough to hurt.

“Yeah.”

Sandra pushed away from the desk.

“I’m going upstairs to tell him the replacement set is coming. You have…” She checked the time on her tablet. “Forty-seven minutes to become transcendent.”