Nolan's attorney arranged a meeting at a diner outside the county seat. Kora brought Janet and left Caleb with Leah to check the birds. Nolan arrived looking exhausted, his sleeves rolled down despite the warm room, and slid into the booth opposite them. He had no dramatic speech prepared. He had a detailed chronology of the scanner fault, the maintenance request, the denied shutdown, the disposal order, and the subsequent alteration of the research program's reported viability figures.
"I haven't taken anything I wasn't permitted to review in my job," he said immediately. "My attorney has arranged for the originals to be preserved and produced through the right channels. These are reference copies and an index. I want somebody outside Harrington to authenticate the full files."
Janet looked through the index. Some entries included system audit identifiers and messages to Genevieve's executive office. One email asked whether all V-17 material had been removed before the university visit; another instructed staff to classify the batch as nonviable inventory rather than record a scanner failure. The language was not as dramatic as a confession, but taken together it described an organization repeatedly choosing the appearance of a failed breeding line over the discovery of why its machine had failed.
"What would the university have seen if the original data had been available?" Kora asked.
Nolan glanced at the window. "That Copper Crest was performing better than the public report said. Not perfectly. No breeding line is perfect. But well enough to challenge the claim that the project had no future."
"And Harrington wanted that claim on the record?"
"I can't prove what Genevieve thought. I can prove that the failure was reported and that people above me decided not to stop the line or correct the disposal report."
That answer mattered more to Kora than any dramatic accusation could have. He was distinguishing what he knew from what he feared, even though making the distinction reduced the force of the story. She recognized the same discipline in her own incubation logs. When a calculation mattered, neither of them had much use for a convenient number.
After the meeting, Nolan walked with her to the parking lot. He asked whether she regretted taking the eggs. Kora thought about the bank calls, the sleepless nights, the piles of feed receipts, and the way Genevieve had looked at her patched roof. Then she thought about six hundred little voices rising at once in the barn.
"I regret how many people had to become afraid before somebody admitted a machine was wrong," she said. "I don't regret checking."
Nolan stood beside his car for a moment. "I'm scared I'll lose my job."
"You might," she said. "I won't tell you it's simple. But whatever happens, thank you for doing this the right way."