Chapter 3 - The Login
The next stage began with a narrower problem. The audit report shows Voss's credentials accessed the draft after Camila had gone home. What mattered now was not how dramatic the discovery sounded, but whether it could survive someone else checking it.
The room did not get quieter so much as more careful. Camila Price could feel people deciding where to look, which usually meant anywhere except at Commander Neil Voss.
The important thing was not winning the argument in front of witnesses. The important thing was leaving the room with the facts intact.
"If I'm wrong, show me where," Camila Price said.
Commander Neil Voss gave a humorless smile. "You think this is a debate?"
"No. I think it's a record."
When Chief Ana Ruiz finally spoke, the voice was low enough that everyone had to pay attention. The point was narrow, factual, and dangerous precisely because it was narrow.
She thought about Camila must clear her name without relying on the fact that her father is an admiral.. That desire could easily become a weakness if she tried to force the evidence to match it, so she kept writing down what she knew and what she only suspected.
The clue was small enough to miss if someone was looking only for a confession: the envelope has a resealed slit and the leak printout points to Voss's login. Small evidence had a way of becoming important once the timeline stopped cooperating with the official version.
The pressure did not arrive as a threat. It arrived as advice: stop making this harder, think about your career, remember how these things look. Camila Price recognized the language for what it was.
Every instinct told her to answer the insult. Experience told her to answer the evidence.
"You keep calling this settled," Camila Price said. "It isn't settled just because you closed the folder."
"Watch yourself," Commander Neil Voss said.
"I am," she replied. "That's why I'm still asking."
By the end of the review, nobody was relying on memory alone. The paper trail, access history, and witness accounts began to overlap.
Anger came in short, hot waves. She let each one pass before she made a decision. The next step had to survive review by people who did not know her and did not owe her sympathy.
A routine administrative detail became unexpectedly important. A signature, a routing stamp, a time field - nothing dramatic by itself. Camila Price had seen enough investigations to know that ordinary details were often more trustworthy than dramatic memories.
The practical consequence came quickly. The audit report shows Voss's credentials accessed the draft after Camila had gone home. Camila Price wrote down what had changed and what still had not been answered.
One witness remembered something differently than Camila Price did. Instead of fighting the discrepancy, she wrote it down. Later, a timestamp explained why both memories could be honest and still incomplete.
Before the chapter of the day could close, one fact shifted the pressure again: Someone opened Camila's personnel file minutes later.
Camila Price spent the next hour rebuilding the timeline on paper. She put the first confirmed event at the top, drew a line beneath it, and refused to write a motive where she had only a guess. Chief Ana Ruiz watched her work and finally said, "You know this may get worse before it gets clearer."
"Clear is enough," Camila Price said. "I can work with clear."
The case changed when someone finally stopped asking who looked bad and started asking what had physically happened. Once that question took over, rank and reputation became context instead of proof.
The review room had no drama in it: plain table, legal pad, water bottle, clock that seemed louder than it should. Camila Price answered each question in order. When she did not know, she said so. That answer surprised the panel more than any accusation would have.
By then, people had divided themselves into camps. Camila Price refused to join either one. She would not call Commander Neil Voss innocent because he was senior, and she would not call him guilty because she was angry. She wanted the sequence to decide what the titles could not.
Chief Ana Ruiz brought coffee and a piece of information that did not solve the problem. It merely made the official explanation harder to accept. Camila Price thanked the ally anyway. Real cases moved that way - one uncomfortable inch at a time.
The review room had no drama in it: plain table, legal pad, water bottle, clock that seemed louder than it should. Camila Price answered each question in order. When she did not know, she said so. That answer surprised the panel more than any accusation would have.
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The next conversation happened without an audience. Commander Neil Voss lowered his voice and tried to make the dispute sound personal, as if the real problem were Camila Price's tone. She kept bringing him back to the same concrete point: the envelope has a resealed slit and the leak printout points to Voss's login. Every time she did, his answer changed slightly.
At home that night, Camila Price could not stop hearing the confrontation. She wrote down what she remembered, then crossed out every sentence that described what someone 'must have meant.' By midnight she had fewer words and better evidence.
