"I don’t know," Geron said in panic, fumbling with his words, and still couldn’t say anything. "Cat, I swear to you, I don’t—I didn’t anticipate—"

Catalina just looked at him blankly, making him pause. Soon after, a slow, slightly hysterical laugh escaped from her lips. Then, paused with a blank expression.

As soon as she opened her mouth, she said, "I should’ve known you’ll be like this until the end. It seemed like you were hoping—no, you’re telling me to do just as you said. Forcing me to shut it since ’I didn’t know anything’."

Geron’s right eye shed a tear; his eyes were also bloodshot at this point.

Pete couldn’t take it anymore, facts being lost in this emotional crossfire. He didn’t want to see this couple he grew up with fall apart just like this.

He stood up, catching the attention of everyone in the tent.

"Baroness Gringer." Pete kept his voice calm.

Catalina’s burning gaze turned to him.

Pete met it without flinching.

"Nothing sort of torture occurred during your daughter’s detention. The comprehensive files recovered documents for every test, every procedure, and every interaction done during this period. Each one of them was a standard physiological assessment and monitoring protocol consistent with protective custody, not interrogation. No separate or unauthorized tests were conducted outside of what is already documented in the record."

He paused, letting the words be absorbed by the people listening.

"Your daughter was being held under controlled, documented conditions. Whatever happened to her after the explosion, and the images we’ve seen were a result of what was being done to her inside that facility."

Catalina stared at him blankly, not agreeing nor disagreeing with his conclusions.

Then, Lt. Hawn suddenly spoke.

"With all due respect, Dean Rowan."

Lt. Hawn said calmly.

"Documented tests in the upper medical wing do not account for what may have occurred on the classified sublevels. The basement detention area was specifically designated for tests outside of standard observation parameters. Usually, we could verify those claims with surveillance footage. Still, as we already know, the surveillance infrastructure was destroyed in the initial detonation—targeted first, in fact, which suggests deliberate evidence elimination."

Pete had expected the pushback and turned to face Lt. Hawn directly.

"I agree that the physical servers were destroyed. However, the preliminary data recovery also indicated that the surveillance system was actively recording up until the moment of destruction. The data exists—or rather, it existed. The corruption occurred as a byproduct of the detonation, not through prior selective deletion."

Then he paused for a second. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"It tells us that nobody wiped the surveillance before the explosion."

Pete continued, "If unauthorized procedures had been conducted in that basement, the perpetrators made no effort to destroy the evidence beforehand. That’s either extraordinary negligence on the part of hypothetical torturers, or—and I think this is the more logical conclusion—there was nothing on those recordings that anyone felt the need to erase."

Colonel Vane made a low sound that wasn’t quite agreement but wasn’t dismissal either.

Xavier’s expression remained carefully neutral, though Pete caught the slight narrowing of his eyes that indicated the General was actually considering the argument.

"And Auntie," Pete added as a final touch, "As children you saw growing up, I’m sure you knew that we can never harm others easily, more so our friend."

Catalina listened to this exchange intently. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped to glacial levels.

"Is any of this more important than finding my daughter right now?" she said slowly, making sure it was clearly conveyed.

The question dropped like a bomb.

Colonel Vane didn’t hesitate and answered, "Baroness Gringer, these are proper procedural steps. Establishing what occurred within this facility directly informs the parameters of our search. The method and motive of the abduction will determine—"

"Oh, spare me."

Catalina was much calmer than before, but also colder. She looked at Colonel Vane, then Xavier, then Grayson, then her husband, with contempt.

"Do you all think I’m stupid?" she asked quietly. "Do you think I can’t hear what you’re actually doing? Every one of you is sitting here playing pass-the-blame—who authorized the detention, who knew about the sublevel, who should have had surveillance backups, who failed to maintain the perimeter—while my daughter is out there with God knows who, bleeding from God knows what."

She stepped forward. The men closest to her—Geron and Pete—both instinctively moved.

"You’re not investigating. You’re negotiating. You’re deciding who takes the fall and who walks away clean, and you’re using my daughter’s disappearance as your own bargaining chip."

Her voice was trembling, refraining from lashing out again.

"Gentlemen, I have sat in enough meetings and enough gatherings to recognize a political play when I see one. And I am telling you now: my daughter’s life is not your stage to step on."

It was the silence of men who had been seen through, embarrassed, and had no rebuttal to offer.

Geron reached for her arm again. "Cat—"

"If none of you are going to help," Catalina said, pulling free from his grip, "then I will search for her myself."

"You can’t—" Geron started.

"Watch me."

"Baroness," Lt. Hawn interjected with concern, trying to persuade her. "A blind search of this magnitude, given the blast radius, the structural instability, the potential for secondary detonations—we can’t guarantee your safety outside this place. We need to narrow the search parameters before deploying—"

"Then narrow them faster." Catalina was already moving toward the tent’s exit. "Or get out of my way."

Pete found himself agreeing with her urgency—at least in principle.

The military’s methodical approach was sound but inefficient. But rushing a search without knowing anything would be a waste of resources and could potentially endanger both the searchers and Lilianna.

But you couldn’t beg a mother whose child was missing to be rational.

He and Grayson were also guilty because they had information they hadn’t shared.

But if Geron wouldn’t talk, they couldn’t either.

However, they were quite confident not to be in a hurry. The people who had orchestrated this wouldn’t kill her immediately. She had value alive—far more than dead—and the pattern of the abduction suggested professionalism, not bloodlust.

But Lilianna might’ve fought against the abductor, creating a bloody mess. Or— Pete recalled the bloody claw marks of a human—she might’ve had another breakdown.