Kora called the professor that evening. Ortiz spoke carefully at first, asking about the batch code and the markings on the original shipping label. When Kora said V-17, the professor stopped her. She asked Kora to repeat the code, then asked whether the birds were truly alive.
"Six hundred thirteen hatched," Kora said. "We've had some routine losses and health issues since then, but most are doing well. Leah has the exact current count."
There was a silence on the other end of the line. "We were told V-17 had no surviving viable stock," Ortiz said. "It was supposed to be the last retained breeding group from a heat-tolerance trial our university funded jointly with Harrington. We were preparing to close the research file."
"Why would a company want to close something like that?"
"That," Ortiz said, "is the question we've been asking for months. The published performance data didn't match some of our field observations. Harrington kept reporting poor viability and recommending the program be discontinued."
Kora looked across the kitchen at Walter's notebook. "My father-in-law supplied birds for an early university study years ago. His name was Walter Halstead."
The professor was quiet again, but this time the silence had a different quality. "I remember that name from our archive," she said. "His flock contributed baseline records to an earlier heritage-breeding study. I can't say without checking whether those birds became part of Copper Crest, but I would like to see what he kept."
Kora opened the old notebook to the page with the line about weather and resilience. She could hear Walter's voice almost as clearly as Ortiz's. The eggs were not necessarily connected to the man who taught her to raise birds; proving that would require records none of them yet had. Still, the possibility made the coming fight feel more personal than it had been that morning.
When Kora ended the call, she found Caleb in the doorway holding a bowl of soup he had heated for her. He had come home for a short break and had listened without interrupting. "Did Grandpa Walter really help start this?" he asked.
"Maybe a very small part of it," Kora said. "We don't know yet."
"Then he would have liked that you picked them up."
Kora smiled. "He would have asked whether I inspected the shells first."
"And did you?"
"Every single one."
Caleb handed her the soup. "Then I guess we're not finished yet."
They were not. The bank notice remained beside the phone, the flock was still under a movement hold, and Harrington's attorneys were preparing arguments that extended well beyond whether the eggs had been abandoned. But for the first time, the questions being asked about V-17 were no longer confined to a small farm or a company conference room. A veterinarian, a cooperative, a university researcher, an attorney, and a frightened hatchery technician were each examining a different part of the same record. They had not yet put the pieces together. Genevieve Harrington was counting on them never doing so.