"Some of that is hosted by the vendor," Mercer said.
"Then we'll identify where it's hosted and verify the authentication and service records. That would be straightforward if the architecture matches the contract."
Lena glanced at Maya. "This is what I've been trying to tell them. The invoices say we have equipment and backups that my administrative dashboard can't find."
Rebecca turned to her. "You never said we were missing physical equipment."
"I said our capacity couldn't be reconciled with what was paid for. I didn't have access to purchasing and storage records to tell you where the missing portion was."
Maya asked Lena to show the first case that had persuaded her the problem was more than an accounting matter. Lena hesitated before entering the case number. She knew exactly where to find it; she had checked the file so many times she no longer needed to read her note. The name Nathan Cole appeared at the top of the screen. Age twenty-five.
Temporary municipal subcontractor. Detained following a search at a city service entrance after an officer reported finding a restricted access card in his belongings.
Maya read the summary silently. Nathan had worked as a junior systems technician for a company that maintained lighting and environmental sensors in municipal buildings. His assignments required temporary identification, but not the card allegedly discovered during the search. He had denied possessing it. Officers held him for questioning for several hours. He was released without an immediate criminal charge, yet the report remained attached to his employment history, and an administrative complaint he later filed had been rejected.
"The case sounds ordinary if you read only the summary," Lena said. "That's what bothered me. The video history wasn't ordinary."
She opened the official footage. Nathan stood outside a side entrance beneath a concrete overhang, wearing a reflective work vest. A uniformed officer asked him to empty his pockets. Nathan removed a wallet and keys. The picture stopped.
Another segment began with the officer holding up a restricted municipal access card. The officer announced that it had been found among Nathan's possessions, and Nathan's voice, recorded from somewhere just outside the frame, insisted it was not his.
The sequence looked continuous to a casual viewer because the archive arranged the clips under one case number and displayed a single incident time. Lena showed the technical information beneath the image. The first segment had a native source identifier. The second had different source characteristics. A third export, labeled original, carried a processing time after the detention had taken place.
"Where's the uninterrupted source?" Maya asked.
"Missing from the visible archive."
"Could it have been moved during routine migration?"
"That's what I asked. Nobody could give me a destination or a complete transfer record. I saw the source entry shortly after Nathan was detained. It existed then. Later I couldn't locate it."
Mercer shook his head. "A missing file doesn't prove anyone changed evidence."
"Correct," Maya said.
He seemed taken aback. Maya continued, "It gives us a specific gap to investigate. We don't get to fill it with whichever explanation feels best."