He asked whether Vela had found her mother.
Sepha nodded.
He looked at the ceiling for a moment and said that he was going to need a minute.
She offered him privacy.
He said he preferred company.
They stood together without speaking until the noise of the station returned around them.
For a moment, the universe felt less interested in making miracles than in allowing ordinary people to go home.
The inquiry began six weeks after the rescue, when the surviving witnesses were healthy enough to decide whether they wished to speak.
The hearings took place before an independent panel whose members came from five different worlds and had no financial connection to Helix.
Sepha appeared first as a physician and described the distinction between an authorized treatment and the altered cartridges recovered from Vela’s case.
She explained what the laboratory measurements demonstrated and what they did not.
Several panel members appeared impatient with her caution.
One asked whether she was willing to say that Helix had knowingly murdered the patients.
Sepha replied that intent was a question for investigators to establish from evidence, while her responsibility was to explain the medical consequences accurately.
She would not use a stronger word simply because a stronger word sounded more satisfying.
Hamish watched from the public gallery and recognized the expression she wore.
It was the same expression she had worn when she told him to remain on the treatment bed despite his insistence that he felt fine.
She was thinking clearly and refusing to be hurried.
When Nerin testified, the room became silent.
She described her work in the development laboratory and the moment she discovered that the control group in the research records consisted of patients who had never agreed to participate.
She described her attempts to report the discrepancy through internal channels.
She also described being ordered to replace those records with summaries that excluded the deaths.
The panel asked whether she had preserved any original data.
Nerin identified the technical archive recovered from Bluehaven and explained how it had been copied before the laboratory fire.
Independent analysts confirmed that the archived records matched several separate shipping and financial systems.
No single person could have altered every source without leaving contradictions.
The records showed that Second Threshold had been funded through a network of subsidiary companies.
They also showed that the project directors received financial rewards for reaching milestones defined by the number of subjects exposed.
