By 4:23 p.m., Rémanence’s wall already held three versions of the same badge.
The first was a white card on which Hugo had written the day before: **VISITOR 07 — assigned to a TechAlsace service call / user on the 29th unknown**. The second, printed from an article published at two, said: **the technician’s badge**. The third came from a screenshot Claire Vasseur had sent twenty minutes earlier. On a board photographed at Rive Solidaire, someone had connected **blue box**, **visitor badge**, and **outside contractor** with an arrow whose authorship no one had yet claimed.
Hugo had pinned the three sheets thirty centimeters apart.
“You’re bringing them together,” Maud said.
“I’m moving them apart.”
“Visually, you’re bringing them together.”
“Then look at the space between them.”
He stepped back. The radiator beneath the window knocked twice every forty seconds, always with the same delay after the first impact. Since the agency opened, Maud had learned that certain sounds found their way into case files simply because they accompanied too many decisions.
She took down the screenshot of Rive’s board.
“This one doesn’t stay.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know who wrote it.”
“We know who took the picture.”
“Claire.”
“No. Claire received the picture.”
Maud turned the sheet over. At the bottom Hugo had added in pencil: **source reported by C.V.: Rive employee / identity not disclosed**.
“You asked her?”
“Yes. She said no.”
“And you kept it anyway.”
“As an image whose chain we can trace back to Claire, no further.”
He held out his hand.
“Put it back. It proves nothing about the badge. It proves that someone there, or claiming to be, has already made the connection.”
The entrance handle squeaked.
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.