The storm lasted nearly three hours. Water seeped under the barn's west door, and Kora worked with towels and a push broom to keep it away from the equipment rather than risk a dangerous repair outdoors. Twice she almost decided the entire batch was lost. Twice she remembered Walter's line about a failed hatch being information and made herself keep collecting the information that would tell her whether there was anything left to save.
When the power returned, the incubators warmed slowly under their normal controls. Kora did not cheer. She checked every tray and logged the duration of the outage and the temperature ranges, then called Leah to arrange a careful reassessment as soon as conditions stabilized. She sat on the floor afterward with the phone resting on her knee, listening to Caleb breathe on the other end.
"You still there?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Are they okay?"
"I don't know."
"You did everything you safely could."
Kora looked at the dark shapes of the cabinets. "Sometimes that's an ugly thing to hear."
"I know," he said. "But it's still true."
The next examination was painful. Leah and Kora found fifty-eight eggs that had stopped developing and had to be removed, leaving 675 with some continuing potential. Kora carried the rejected eggs to the proper disposal container herself, unable to ask Leah to do it for her. She had counted the first signs of life so carefully that each failure felt personal, though Leah reminded her that careful farming could reduce loss without abolishing it.
"You didn't cause the storm," Leah said. "And you don't help the remaining eggs by making yourself responsible for weather."
Kora stood beside the barn door, her coat damp and her eyes hollow with fatigue. "It still feels like I ought to be able to keep everything safe."
"No farmer can. Not even the ones who advertise as if they can."
They returned to the incubators. One of the eggs from the V-17 group showed a small, unmistakable movement under the candling light, and Kora leaned close enough that her breath misted the shield. There was still life in the batch. She photographed the image, recorded the shell code, and kept working through the trays with a steadiness that had nothing to do with optimism.
A week later the mysterious man called again. He did not give his name, but he told her the lot should never have been marked nonviable and warned that Harrington had begun reviewing disposal records. Kora asked whether he had something she could verify independently. The caller was silent long enough that she thought he might hang up, then said there was a maintenance ticket and data from the failed scanner.
"If you have proof, please don't destroy your life trying to hand it to me," she said. "Talk to a lawyer or an investigator. Make sure you're protected."