Lydia had been sitting in the car for ten minutes.
She'd read the Harding file twice at her desk and once more over coffee that morning. Grayson was fourteen. A student at Westfield Prep, honor roll, varsity tennis. The kind of kid whose trajectory had been mapped since birth. THI wasn't just a program to families like the Hardings — it was an access point. Evan Mercer moved in rooms most people never got close to, and for a certain kind of parent that proximity was the whole point. You didn't send your kid to the Helix Initiative because you believed in bio-hacking. You sent him because of who else was in the room.
What happened to Grayson had come out sideways. A teacher at Westfield noticed something was off with his younger sister, Chloe. When the school flagged it the parents confronted Grayson, and what came out of that conversation opened a much larger one. He'd been harmed at the cohort. What he'd done to Chloe was what had been done to him. Dr. Aris was in custody within seventy-two hours, the whole thing held together by a combination of Grayson's confession and THI's almost immediate cooperation. By all accounts this had been done thoroughly and by the book. Not a hair out of place. It was near perfect. And that bothered her.
THI had lawyered up on the Hardings' behalf before the family had thought to ask. Financial arrangements had been made quietly. The parents' statements to investigators were careful in a way that felt coached — lots of language around the program's failure, very little around what their son had actually told them, and almost nothing about the months between when Grayson came home from those sessions quieter than he'd left and when his sister's teacher made a phone call.
She had a particular disdain for parents who offered their children up to predators on the chance it raised their station. She knew that about herself. She also knew it wasn't useful in there.
She checked her reflection in the visor mirror, closed it, and got out of the car.
They said you got one story like the one she'd broken eight years ago. The one that made her career, gave her credentials she'd spent every day since making sure she deserved. Eight years at the Chronicle building something real out of one extraordinary piece of luck.
And now another white whale had swum directly into her lap and handed her the harpoon.
Everything about it felt solid. The package. The cooperation. The timeline.
She rang the bell.
Sarah opened the door before the echo died.
"Ms. Park." Both hands around a mug, warm smile. "We're so glad you came."
Lydia stepped inside. Still white living room. Family photos evenly spaced. Nothing out of place.
She sat when Sarah gestured toward the couch.
"Thank you for making time," Lydia said. "I know this hasn't been easy."
"It really hasn't." Sarah settled into the chair across from her. "For any of us."
Jeremy came in from the kitchen with a glass of water and took the seat beside his wife. He hadn't offered anyone else a drink.
"We just want people to understand what this program meant to us," Sarah said. "What it was supposed to be. Evan Mercer built something we genuinely believed in. The access, the network, the other families involved. You don't find that just anywhere. We were investing in Grayson's future."
"How did you first hear about THI?" Lydia asked.
"Through the Delanceys," Jeremy said. "Their son Marcus was in the first cohort. We saw what it did for him. The doors it opened."
"And Grayson — was he excited about it?"
"He was nervous at first," Sarah said. "But he settled in. The program was rigorous. Dr. Aris was — everyone spoke so highly of him."
Lydia nodded and wrote something down. "And over the course of the program, how did he seem to you at home?"
Sarah looked at Jeremy.
"Teenagers," Jeremy said.
"He was quieter," Sarah said carefully. "We noticed that. But the workload was intense. We didn't want to hover. We trusted the process."
"Of course," Lydia said. She set her pen down. "I have to ask — and I want to be clear this isn't about assigning blame — when Grayson told you what happened, what was that conversation like?"
"It was devastating," Sarah said. "Obviously."
"Obviously," Jeremy said.
"As parents you do everything right and something like this—" Sarah stopped. Started again. "THI failed him. They failed us. That's what we need people to understand. We vetted the program. We vetted Dr. Aris personally. The failure wasn't ours to see."
Lydia looked at her. Sarah's eyes were still searching.
"I hear you," Lydia said. "And I want the Chronicle's coverage to reflect that. A family that did everything right, trusted an institution that let them down. That's a story people need to read."
She meant none of it.
"Yes," Sarah said. "That's exactly it."
"And Chloe?"
"She's with my mother." Sarah's hands tightened around her mug. "Astrid. She's young. She doesn't have the language for this. We felt it was better she not be here."
Lydia nodded and capped her pen.
"Thank you both," she said. "This helps."
She walked herself to the door.
Outside it was cold. She got in the car and sat a moment before calling Charles.
"Their account tracks with Mercer's," she said. "But the daughter isn't here. They sent her to the grandmother before I arrived."
"Relevant?"
"I don't know. Something's off and I can't place it yet."
"Chase what's real," Charles said. "Not ghosts."
"Yeah," she said, and started the engine.