"Nobody cleared this out?" Evan asked.
"Apparently not," Helen said. "The estate records describe the lower testing wing as sealed technical storage. The contents were never cataloged into the main corporate archive."
Priya photographed the furniture and labels before approaching the main drafting table. A large blueprint lay beneath a clear protective sheet, weighted at the corners. At the bottom were two names, Daniel Carter and Richard Bennett, along with an approval line that had never been signed. Charlotte touched the edge of the table with her fingertips.
"They built it together," she said.
Evan studied the drawing. "They were supposed to."
A series of dates ran down the margin, documenting successive revisions to a control system that could recognize conflicting signals before reducing power. Some corrections were in Daniel's handwriting; others bore Richard's initials. The late entries grew increasingly urgent, recording unexplained failures during validation and requests for independent replication. Beside one anomaly, Daniel had written: trace original data, not summary report.
Priya opened a cabinet with the property manager's permission and found bound test logs, mechanical samples, and an index of data cartridges from an obsolete recording system. The labels indicated repeated measurements from a failed demonstration, including a set of independent temperature readings that did not appear in the official incident summary. She stopped flipping pages and asked Helen to record the discovery as potential evidence in the reopened corporate investigation. No one touched the cartridges until the forensic team could handle them appropriately.
Evan looked toward the wall of photographs. In several, Daniel and Richard stood close together, smiling beside experiments that had apparently succeeded. In another, Daniel looked directly into the camera while Thomas Hail adjusted an electrical panel behind him. The composition was ordinary, but Evan felt his chest tighten at the sight of the name on Thomas's identification badge. The engineer had been part of the story all along, standing barely a few feet from the man later accused of stealing the designs.
"Do you know Thomas Hail?" Evan asked.
Charlotte answered without turning. "I knew him then. His son works for us now."
"Marcus."
"Yes."
Evan studied the photograph. "Does Marcus know this room exists?"
A voice behind them answered before Charlotte could speak. "I know more about this room than I wanted to."
They turned. Marcus Hail stood in the open doorway, dressed in his usual work trousers and a dark jacket. He held a sealed document envelope beneath one arm and looked pale enough that Evan instinctively wondered whether he was ill. Priya moved slightly between him and the drafting table, not threatening him but making it clear that the newly discovered records would be handled properly.
"How did you know we were here?" Charlotte asked.
"The property manager called the facilities office. I asked where you were. I've been trying to decide whether to tell you something for years, and this seemed like my last chance to say it before somebody else did."