That night, Marcus asked Priya to pull up the full heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system documentation—not the summary. It took until two in the morning. What she found was that the retrofit had not been scheduled for maintenance. It had been initiated by a work order signed by the facilities manager weeks after the funeral.
The timing was uncanny. It was just months before Titan’s behaviour first dramatically worsened. He thought about the Singapore trip, the dismissed specialist, the containment plan abandoned because of a dead woman’s imagined preferences. He thought about how a maze looks from above versus from inside.