Her meeting with Patricia Bell, the human resources director, was worse than she had expected. Patricia sat behind a glass-topped desk with the expression of someone who would rather be anywhere else and said the access restriction did not necessarily imply wrongdoing. Talia asked why she was being prevented from completing assignments that had been due that morning. Patricia said departments were being reviewed after a security incident involving confidential investor information. When Talia asked whether talking to Dr. Bellamy was the real issue, Patricia advised her to be careful about making accusations she could not prove.
"I'm not accusing anyone," Talia replied. "I'm asking you to give me a written explanation for a decision that affects my job. If this is routine, there should be a routine answer." Patricia looked away before saying she would provide one as soon as legal approved it. The meeting ended without a restored account or a credible explanation. Talia walked back toward her desk feeling that she was already being pushed outside a workplace where she had spent six years trying to build a future.
At noon, an internal message appeared on the department bulletin board announcing that Talia's work would be redistributed until further notice. Coworkers stopped answering her messages, not because they believed she had done something wrong, but because they feared their responses might become evidence of association. A junior colleague who had once asked Talia for career advice passed her in the corridor and pretended not to see her. Talia remembered her first year at the company, when she had promised herself she would never become so frightened of a job that she stopped being a decent person. She wondered whether making that promise had been easier before the bills and responsibilities of adulthood arrived.
Meanwhile, Mariah met with the independent review leader, Patricia Hayes, a forensic accountant with a reputation for refusing to confuse executive explanations with supporting documentation. Patricia was not related to the human resources director, despite the similar surname, and she joked dryly that the confusion had already caused two mistaken email introductions. She brought a small team of accounting and technology specialists, along with a former hospital systems auditor, to the meeting. Their scope was deliberately narrow: identify urgent financial risks, document significant irregularities, preserve relevant evidence, and make clear what deeper work would remain after the seventy-two-hour window.
"I can tell you where the smoke is," Patricia explained. "I cannot promise to reconstruct every fire in three days." Mariah said she understood, but needed enough evidence to determine whether the proposed investment was defensible. The team had obtained access through the board's preliminary authorization, although Elliot's office continued to challenge individual requests. Patricia described a pattern of urgent consulting contracts, unusual payment approvals, and accounting entries classified broadly enough to conceal their actual purpose. The most concerning were invoices that appeared to draw from the same limited cash reserves meant to pay clinical support workers.