Chapter 161: The Chain of Custody

Eren also seemed to have remembered the report.

Marek leaned back again and rubbed one side of his face. He did not like where the conversation was going.

“I’m going to say this now before anyone gets another idea,” he said. “I’m not investigating your employer.”

Irial did not react much. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“Not directly.”

“I only want someone to look at the records.”

“And if Eren looks at them and says something is wrong, what comes after that?”

Irial had no answer ready.

Marek continued before anyone else joined in. “We don’t know enough about this. You copied internal documents without permission. Somebody threatened your sister, and people already tried to kidnap you. All of that is serious, but none of it tells me who is responsible or whether this whole public-health issue is even connected to the same people.”

He thought about the report they watched the night before and all the names, contractors, and government offices he barely understood.

“If there really is something bigger behind those payments, helping you becomes more dangerous. We don’t know the people running those companies. We don’t know who benefits from the redevelopment or who is fighting against it. We don’t even know enough about Courtspire City to tell which offices we’re supposed to trust if things get worse.”

Irial listened without interrupting.

“We only registered here recently,” Marek added. “I came to this House because I’m looking for someone. I’m not interested in getting all of us dragged into a political issue because we happened to help you once.”

The words sounded harsh, but he meant them.

Mara was dead. His mother was somewhere he could not find, his father had been missing for eleven years, and his own Sunblind period was approaching. He had barely started learning Spatial Parallax properly, while five other foundational Space Techniques remained beyond him.

He already had enough things in his life that could kill him.

He did not need to volunteer for more.

Rhovan finally spoke. “He’s right to hesitate.”

Kellan glanced at him.

Rhovan continued, “Helping someone when they’re being attacked in front of you is one thing. Voluntarily involving ourselves in an issue involving private contractors, public funding, and people willing to threaten relatives is another. None of us know what she actually found yet.”

Marek appreciated that Rhovan did not try to push him.

Irial lowered her eyes toward the document on the table.

“If your sister needs protection, we’ll help you figure out what options she has,” Marek said after thinking about it. “You should also tell the CMS everything about the threat, including the reference number. But I’m not promising that we’re going to start investigating whoever you work for.”

“I understand.”

Marek studied her for a moment.

Then, she opened the bag again.

He sighed. “You really want us to look at them.”

Irial paused with her hand inside the bag. “Yes.”

Marek glanced toward Eren.

Eren tried to maintain a neutral expression, though Marek had already known him long enough to tell that he wanted to see the records.

“You haven’t even asked me,” Eren said.

“You’ve been staring at the bag since she mentioned payment schedules.”

“I’m listening.”

“With your entire face?”

Nadia laughed.

Even Irial’s expression loosened a little.

Eren shook his head. “If she wants me to look, I can only tell her whether the entries raise questions. I’m not going to call it fraud just because a number changed.”

Irial took several sheets from the bag and kept them inside a thin protective sleeve. “That’s all I need.”

Marek remained hesitant.

He could tell her no.

A part of him wanted to.

He had come to Libra to search for his father, yet one strange event after another kept appearing in front of him. First, the failed search requests. Then, Irial’s kidnapping. Then, the environmental-monitoring equipment found near the incident. Now, public-health records from a district he had dismissed less than a day ago.

He did not want another mystery. That would only cause him more headache.

However, refusing to let Eren read several documents was different from agreeing to chase whoever had threatened Irial.

“Fine,” Marek said. “He can look.”

Irial started handing the sleeve toward Eren.

“Wait.”

Eren stopped.

Marek pointed toward the documents. “Who touched those after you copied them?”

Silas looked at him and nodded slightly.

Irial answered after thinking about it. She had made the copies herself and placed them inside the sleeve. The bag had been inspected after the kidnapping, but the CMS had not taken the financial schedules because Irial had refused to explain how they were connected to the attack.

Silas frowned. “If you want these treated as evidence later, that’s going to matter.”

Eren asked Irial to keep the documents on the table rather than passing them around. He started by looking at the pages without touching them, asking where each schedule came from, who prepared them, what period they covered, and which entries had been changed.

Kellan became bored much earlier than everyone else, while Dario just finished eating.

Nadia tried following the discussion but gave up when Eren and Irial started talking about service quantities, allocations, posted payments and supporting schedules. Silas understood enough to keep asking about dates and document versions, while Rafe listened quietly from the other side.

Marek understood the numbers.

The accounting behind them was another matter.

What he did understand was that the records were not as simple as money disappearing from one account and appearing somewhere else.

Several schedules balanced.

The payments had entries attached to them. The contractors existed. Service periods were recorded, clinics were listed, and most of the totals appeared consistent with the supporting pages.

Eren kept returning to the revisions. “Who prepared this schedule?”

“Public-health accounts.”

“And the revised one?”

“Same department. Different preparer.”

“The quantity changed.”

“Yes.”

“The payment didn’t.”

“I know.”

“Could the service description have been wrong in the original?”

“That’s what they told me.”

Eren moved toward another page. “And this one?”

“Different provider.”

“Same pattern.”