2: 2
2
The news broke at eleven that night.
I was lying in my bunk in the break quarters when I heard someone running down the far end of the corridor.
Boots slamming against the steel plating, one after another.
Every channel on the radio exploded.
“Death confirmed. Initiate emergency response!”
I sat up and opened my phone.
The work group already had over a hundred messages.
Someone had posted a screenshot of the maintenance report.
The execution field was written plain enough.
“Confirm: open the No. 3 chamber door.”
Approval signature: Virginia Simmons.
Digital seal, red enough to hurt.
But on the original in the records room, that same field read:
“The isolation door may be opened only after depressurization is complete.”
Someone had deleted the one line that mattered most.
The group was already cursing.
“She sends men down into that and doesn't go die herself?”
“Heard Virginia Simmons is about to make supervisor. Bet she was rushing the schedule!”
“Two lives for one promotion. Worth it?”
The screenshot got forwarded into the families' group.
I don't know what Old Bruce James's family felt when they saw it.
I don't know how Julian Dickerson's twenty-four-year-old wife took that call in the middle of the night.
But I knew this much. They would hate whoever signed that name.
Rodney's call came at eleven-twelve.
“Ginny, are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You saw the group?”
He kept up a steady stream of comfort.
“Don't panic yet. I'll go with you to the investigation team and lay it all out. As long as it wasn't deliberate, the company will take your record into account.”
I gripped the phone tighter.
“What makes you so sure it was my mistake?”
He sighed.
“Losing your temper at me won't help. The signature's right there. You have to give them some explanation.”
“The most important thing right now is your attitude, not arguing right and wrong with me.”
He didn't offer to take one look at my maintenance report.
He didn't even ask why the isolation valve had been opened while it was still under pressure.
All he cared about was whether my posture was soft enough.
“I'll go to the investigation team myself.”
I hung up.
Before I got up, I put every piece of material in order by time.
Synced a backup to the cloud.
The site footage at five fifty-six.
The chamber door shut, the pressure gauge needle above the safe mark.
Clyde reading out the time and the valve status to the camera.
The photo of the temporary warning sign.
The receipt the records room issued before six.
The card-swipe time on the break quarters door.
The GPS track from my phone.
And the emergency call log from when Aunt Ethel collapsed.
Every one of them time-stamped.
I wasn't the only person who'd handled this.
When I got to the conference room, one of the higher-ups was there too, watching me.
“Virginia Simmons, the system shows the No. 3 chamber maintenance report was approved by you.”
“It doesn't note that depressurization was required. Explain that.”
I pushed the receipt and the copy across the table.
“My version clearly requires that pressure be brought to zero before the chamber is opened.
“The file circulating in the system right now has been altered.
“I'm requesting that the version logs, the edit history, and the login IPs be sealed immediately.”
He stopped turning pages, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
The door swung open.
Rodney came in fast, walked straight to my side, and reached out to rest a hand on my shoulder.
“Stop trying to tough it out!
“You've been badly short on sleep chasing this promotion. Missing a line during approval isn't impossible.”
I shifted my body to one side, out from under his touch.
“Rodney, I didn't miss a line. The report was changed.”
He turned to the investigation team, his face all tenderness and helplessness.
“I know Virginia. She would never hurt anyone on purpose.
“If there really was a slip, I hope the company will consider everything she's given and grant her a chance to make it right.”
Every line sounded like he was defending me.
But every word was pleading me guilty.
My phone buzzed.
My stepsister Trudy Fox had posted an update.
“Some people talk about responsibility every single day, then when disaster strikes they can't wait for you to stay away.”
“They should have had peaceful later years and a bright future ahead.”
The picture was a pitch-black stretch of sea, two white lights photoshopped into the corner.
She hadn't written a single name.
But everyone in the company knew who she meant.
At one-nineteen in the morning, the formal notice came down from the shore-based headquarters.
“The accident is still under investigation. Virginia Simmons is suspended from work effective today.”
I laid the phone face-down on the table.
Seven years.
From the day I got my first qualification certificate, it had taken me seven years to reach this door.
And now two bodies, not yet even carried back to shore, had been laid across the threshold.
Waiting for me to bow my head and confess.
Then step aside.
