Mason spent two days working beside Elena and the warehouse team. He answered questions, identified references in the original design files, and explained which document trail should accompany a component at each stage. He was careful not to suggest that inspection staff had knowingly falsified records simply because they had trusted labels placed on boxes by people higher in the chain. The inquiry needed to distinguish deliberate deception from workers following a corrupted process. If that distinction disappeared, employees would be less likely to report their own mistakes in the future.
At lunch on the second day, Russell Pike found him in the cafeteria. They sat together at a small table near the vending machines, where hundreds of employees had eaten without paying much attention to the people around them. Russell did not pretend his silence on the day of the firing had been honorable. He said he had watched Cassandra tear the tag off and had looked away, telling himself someone else would step in.
"I should've said something," Russell told him.
"Maybe," Mason replied. "But it wouldn't have changed the alloy in that bolt. What's important now is whether people speak when the next problem comes through."
Russell shook his head. "I keep thinking about the kid who signed the release. They put him in a position he wasn't ready for. Now everyone's calling him the guy who approved bad parts."
Mason agreed that the employee deserved a fair review of what he had been told and what he had the authority to decide. He also said that a system in which employees feared losing their work for questioning a shortcut could not be repaired by finding one frightened technician to sacrifice. Russell looked toward the window, where forklifts moved among the production buildings. "Funny how it takes someone losing a job for the rest of us to remember what we're supposed to do," he said.
Claire's team interviewed the inspector who had signed the release. He admitted the paperwork had been incomplete and that his supervisor had told him the executive office had already cleared the issue. He had seen a newly printed label and assumed a signed authorization existed elsewhere. When asked whether he had deliberately misrepresented the material, he said no and provided the message he had received instructing him to use the new approval number. The message had come from Preston's office.
Preston's explanation changed as the week progressed. Initially, he maintained that the procurement error began in a warehouse and never reached executive review. When auditors produced the requisition, he said management had approved a budget category, not a technical substitution. When they showed him the note describing the commercial material by name, he argued that Laurel's engineering team should have blocked any unsafe use. The story shifted each time another document appeared, and each shift reduced his credibility.