He found the first geographic cluster three weeks after the board session.
Not while looking for it specifically — he was still cross-referencing the archive's recordings, working backward through time, adding names to the account. But the names had locations. The carriers had territories. And when Neva's organizational methodology was applied to the location data, something emerged from the noise.
He came to the study at seven in the morning.
Me at the desk. Darius at the window. Rowan in the cradle. The usual morning configuration.
Zane set a map on the desk.
Three territories highlighted.
"The suppression deployments in the pre-organizational period," he said. "I've now documented forty-seven names across thirty years. The geographic spread is not random." He held my gaze. "Three
