The boardroom smelled like filtered air and the faint ozone tang of expensive electronics.
Evan didn't sit at the head of the table. He sat in the middle, flanked by legal counsel and his COO. The monitors were dark. No slides today. Just people and the particular silence that collects when a room is waiting for one person to speak.
He let it collect.
Then he set both hands flat on the table.
"I want to start by saying something I mean." He looked up. "I failed. Not the protocol. Not the intake process. Not this board. Me. I built the environment. I vouched for the people inside it. What happened to that boy is the result of a blind spot I should never have had."
Nobody moved.
"Peter Aris was exceptional. I recruited him personally. I trusted him with our most vulnerable work." A breath. "That trust was a catastrophic error and it belongs entirely to me."
One of the London investors leaned toward his camera. "Evan—"
"Let me finish." Quietly. "Authorities were notified at 0400. Full digital hand-off to the DA's office. The cohort is suspended. Every family personally contacted by our ethics board." He looked around the table. "The moment it was verified I initiated Protocol Zero. We have nothing to hide because I refused to let us have anything to hide."
"The exposure question," someone said.
"Is mine to carry. Not the board's. Not the company's." A breath. "It started with me. It ends with me."
The Singapore feed crackled softly. Outside, forty floors down, the city moved at its ordinary pace.
"Before any public statement I'm bringing in an outside voice. No stake in our success. A reputation for being uncomfortably honest." He picked up his portfolio. "If the truth is going to be told I want it told by someone who hates me enough to make it believable."
"Who."
"Lydia Park."