Chapter 101
Chapter 101:
The clock on Camille’s office wall ticked past eleven. Most of Kane Industries had emptied hours ago, but Camille couldn’t rest—not with Victoria’s revelations about Herod Preston still echoing in her mind.
A soft knock pulled her from her thoughts.
“Come in,” she called.
Hannah Zhao, the Phoenix Grid’s chief engineer, entered clutching a rolled set of blueprints. Her normally neat appearance had frayed, her hair escaping the bun and dark circles under her eyes.
“Ms. Kane, I’m sorry to bother you so late, but…” Hannah hesitated.
Camille motioned to the chair across from her desk. “It’s fine. What’s wrong?”
Hannah sat, placing the blueprints between them. “I’ve been going over these since the groundbreaking ceremony.” She unrolled the top sheet. “Something feels… off.”
“Off how?”
“After finding those modifications to the safety protocols last week, I started comparing every version of the blueprints.” She pointed to a section showing the Grid’s main junction box. “This is what I originally designed,” Hannah said, then unrolled a second blueprint. “And this is what’s currently on file for construction.”
To Camille’s untrained eye, they looked identical.
“What am I missing?” she asked.
Hannah retrieved a magnifying glass. “Look at the temperature sensors here, here, and here. The specifications are off by tiny increments. Half a millimeter in placement. Two degrees in the trigger threshold. A slight delay in response time.”
Camille examined the areas Hannah indicated. “These are very small changes.”
“Individually, yes. But collectively? These modifications would allow the junction boxes to overheat without triggering the emergency shutdown protocols. The system would continue operating as if everything were normal, even as temperatures reached dangerous levels.”
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“How dangerous?”
Hannah met her eyes directly. “Catastrophic failure. Potential explosions at multiple sites. Massive power outages. And the modifications would make it look like design flaws, as if Kane Industries had built an inherently unsafe system.”
Camille sat back, the implications hitting her. This wasn’t just sabotage; it was character assassination.
“When did you first notice these discrepancies?” Camille asked.
“I caught some before the groundbreaking, the ones I showed you and Mr. Pierce last week. We fixed those. But these are different. More subtle. It’s like someone went through twice, making different kinds of changes.”
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