"Barry." Wells paused. "You do understand what you just said."
He reached up and rubbed the back of his head — a small, involuntary gesture. He'd been catching himself doing it more often lately, and he didn't like what it signified. Doubt was not a sensation he was accustomed to wearing.
"I've been practicing law, science, and medicine for decades, and I have never once heard of a case where the suspect pool was numbered in the hundreds. You're saying the range of people with both motive and opportunity runs into the hundreds?"
"Not the range — the actual suspect count," Barry said. "We started by looking at people with documented conflicts with Stagg. That's when we found the case files."
Wells felt something cold settle in his chest. "How many lawsuits are we talking about?"
"Joe said over twenty active, more than a hundred closed." Barry gave his characteristic slightly-apologetic smile. "I fact-checked him. There are twenty-three active. And two hundred and thirteen closed — patent theft, infringement, wage violations, workplace harassment. Multiple victims per case in several instances." He paused. "The department eliminated several hundred people based on confirmed alibis for the three o'clock window at the ceremony. The ones whose whereabouts couldn't be verified still number in the hundreds. All of them had motive. All of them had time."
Wells said nothing.
He had encountered Stagg before — peripherally, briefly, in the years before the accelerator incident. A negotiation that hadn't gone anywhere because it hadn't needed to. He'd taken the measure of the man across the table and walked away with a clean, unflattering impression: arrogant, greedy, not particularly intelligent, the kind of person who mistakes leverage for competence.
He hadn't thought much about it since. Stagg had seemed like background noise.
He was revising that assessment now, substantially.
Two hundred and thirteen closed cases. The man hadn't just bent the rules. He'd built an enterprise on systematic, industrial-scale exploitation, the kind that generated enemies the way a leaking pipe generated mold — quietly, comprehensively, over years.
"Even if the six people from the ceremony are identified and charged," Barry said, "there are still ninety-plus others with active grievances. Probably more."
Wells pressed two fingers to his temple. He had come into this hoping for a clean thread to pull — one anomalous actor disrupting a known timeline, identifiable through motive and access. Instead he had been handed a haystack with no needle, or rather, a haystack made entirely of needles.
How do you investigate this?
"There's one more thing," Barry said. "The victims have been organizing. A joint appeal — a mass lawsuit against Stagg Industries. I expect it goes public tomorrow or the day after. The timing is deliberate; he just got that award, so public attention is still high. It's going to be loud."
Wells's expression shifted. Something sharpened behind his eyes.
"A joint lawsuit." He was quiet for a moment. "Interesting." Then, almost to himself: "It doesn't matter which way it goes. If the plaintiffs win, Stagg Industries liquidates quickly. If they lose, the reputational damage is permanent — a slower collapse, but a collapse nonetheless." He glanced at Barry. "Do you know who's organizing it? A lead plaintiff, a representative?"
Barry thought back. "It didn't come up."
"Never mind." Wells folded his hands in his lap. "Frankly, if I were the person from the ceremony — any of the hundreds of people from the ceremony — and I saw this news, I'd put down whatever I was planning and join the crowd. Watch the building fall through legal channels. It's safer. It's more satisfying. It's more complete." He looked at Barry steadily. "Given all of this — are you still planning to pursue it?"
Barry was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head.
"No. I just want it to end fairly."
Jude's three-wheeler listed slightly to the left on corners, as it always did, and he compensated without thinking as he navigated toward Central City Hospital.
He'd put together a bag — onigiri, a small container of dashi broth kept warm in a thermos, a few pieces of tamagoyaki wrapped in paper — and carried it upstairs to Elizabeth's room.
He found her already standing, Danton helping her into her coat with an expression of focused concentration that he probably didn't know was visible on his face.
"I keep telling you," Elizabeth said, the particular affectionate exasperation of someone who has lost this argument many times, "I can dress myself." She caught Jude in the doorway and her cheeks colored. "Jude's here. Let go."
"The report said you've improved significantly." Danton did not let go. "It didn't say you were cured. This is strange enough that you should still be careful."
"I'm not made of glass."
Jude watched Danton ease her coat over her shoulders — carefully, with complete attention, the way you handle something irreplaceable — and felt a memory surface from a long way away. Mr. Freeze, in the cold blue light of the cryogenic chamber, one gloved hand resting against the glass.
What a world. He exhaled quietly. "Is Elizabeth being discharged?"
"Yes." Danton's face when he said it was almost hard to look at directly — that particular brightness that belongs to people who've been afraid for a long time and have just, briefly, been given reason not to be. "Her latest results were much better than expected. The heart condition isn't gone, but it's stable enough that she can come home. No more inpatient observation."
What he didn't say — what he didn't need to say, because Jude already knew — was the arithmetic underneath the relief. More time at home meant more time, full stop. Enough time, maybe, to see the appeal through. To reclaim the patent. To get Elizabeth on a transplant list and actually reach the front of it.
It was a slender thread. But it was there.
"Congratulations," Jude said warmly. "Delivery service officially upgraded — door to door, starting now."
"Come home with us." Elizabeth linked her arm through Danton's and smiled at Jude. "Stay for dinner. We've decided you're our lucky star."
"First time I've heard that." Jude picked up her bag from the bed. "Back home everyone mostly called me a jinx."
"Then they weren't paying attention."
Dinner was good. Elizabeth cooked with the relaxed confidence of someone back in familiar territory, and Jude contributed a few things from his cart supplies — nothing elaborate, just enough to round the table out. It was the kind of meal that happens naturally when people are genuinely glad to be somewhere together.
Danton's phone buzzed while they were finishing.
He looked at the screen. The brightness in his face dimmed by a fraction — not alarm, exactly. Something more cautious.
"Sorry — I should take this." He excused himself toward the hallway.
In the bathroom, door closed, he answered.
The voice on the other end was synthetic and precise, with the faint harmonic distortion of processed audio. Jude would have recognized it immediately.
"Apologies for the timing, Mr. Black." A pause. "But this couldn't wait."
"Someone will be coming to find you soon. I can't say more than that." Another pause, briefer. "Don't mention me. Not to anyone. Not under any circumstances."
"Do you understand?"