He Offered Seventeen Living Fragments For The Records In My Care

I counted seventeen shapes in the photograph. Two were pale. One had a bare white patch at its base.

Five of the missing twenty-two were not there.

I called Gabriel instead of Russell.

“Keep the envelope,” he said. “I'll have someone collect it.”

“He'll move them.”

“He might.”

“He'll let them die.”

Gabriel took a breath. “He might do that, too.”

I hated him for not giving me something softer.

“Then what good are all these forms?”

“They let us go into places we otherwise couldn't. They make people answer under oath. They don't make this painless.”

“I didn't ask for painless.”

I ended the call, then called back before he could reach my block.

“I'm sorry. Tell me what you need.”

He asked me not to meet Russell or agree to any trade. He said investigators were trying to confirm the photograph's location. The generator address had led to a property with several rented sheds, not a room they could simply walk into.

I sent him the photograph without cropping it.

Before sending anything else, I wrote a care note. Pale color alone did not mean a piece was dying. The bare patch worried me more. I described both without guessing at how many hours remained. Russell had made the photograph into a clock. I would not give that clock a false number just because I was afraid.

The note ended with the same request I used for every troubled delivery: Stable Water, Separate Systems, Trained Care At Transfer.

At his request, I listed what I could see: portable tubs, foam insulation, two airline valves, a black lid with a round break near one corner.

“That lid came from our spare equipment,” I said. “I patched it in March. There's a photograph in my maintenance log.”

“Send that separately.”

June came over before the courier envelope was collected. I had called her, too. She read Russell's note at my kitchen table.

“He can't erase the lab's results by buying your drive,” she said.

“He knows that.”

Russell called while she was still there. June signaled for me to let it go to voicemail. We listened after the message finished.

“Aiko, let's be grown-ups. The animals come back. You keep your job. I pay you $20,000 for your collection. You'll sign a statement that your sample key had errors. And I need the complete index. All sites. No copies left anywhere.”

There it was. He wanted more than the past gone. He wanted a map to what remained.

The message continued.

“Your investigator can save his case or you can save the coral. Think about which one matters.”

June wrote down the time.

I stared at the phone.

“He's using my own work to make me feel dirty.”

“He's asking you to lie,” she said. “That part belongs to him.”

Gabriel came with another investigator, a woman named Ruth Hale. She took the envelope and a copy of the message under a receipt. He stood by my door with his hands still at his sides.

“Did you hear it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“If they die while you build your case, can you live with that?”

His face changed. He did not look away.

“I would have to. If I sent you into an unsafe exchange because I wanted you to like me, I'd have to live with that, too.”

I had not said I liked him.

I had also not hidden it well.

“You could tell me there's a way to do both.”

“We're working on one. I won't promise the result.”

Ruth asked whether I wanted a few minutes. I shook my head. All three of us had work, and seventeen animals had less time than we did.

I opened the maintenance folder. The picture of the cracked lid included its old stock number. Paula could identify the equipment transfer if investigators asked her. The tubs might have traveled with the generator.

Then I noticed a narrow strip of yellow paper taped to the gray lid in Russell's photograph. Only the bottom of its letters showed.

“That's a filter service label,” I said. “We used that company once. They put the date below their name.”

I gave Ruth the old invoice. She did not tell me what it would lead to.

Before leaving, Gabriel said another investigator would handle my witness contacts for now. He had told his supervisor about our growing personal feelings.

“Is this punishment?” I asked.

“It's a record nobody should have to discover later.”

I understood. I still cried after he left.

I painted one small blue square and let the rest of the page stay blank.

At six eighteen the next morning, Ruth called.

“We've confirmed the room,” she said. “The judge signed the warrant. The animal care team is going in with us.”