Eva scrolled through the seemingly endless list as Ann watched the screen with mounting horror...
Consultants, logistics leads, medical liaisons. Two of the consultants had coven ties on their public records. One liaison had a foundation grant that matched a charity linked to Bartholomew.
Ann felt a pressure building behind her eyes as her anger grew.
"This isn't even like he's just poking around in the edges of these projects… He was in it, not dancing around it and fully fucking aware of what was going on." she hissed furiously.
Eva kept digging and as much as Ann wanted to tell her to stop, she couldn't.
"Here's another," she said. "Project Hemlock. Security screening for Lycan recruits. The language says its stress tests only but the vendor is the same shell company from the Alder procurement request."
Ann opened the vendor file and the shell company listed a registered agent who did not exist in any of their other systems. The contact number routed to a dead line. The bank used for payments had one branch inside a building owned by a holding linked directly to the Elder council's interests.
"Flag all of this," Ann snapped a little harsher than she intended, "Link all of it so that we can show the path directly from the fucking council all the way to the projects and payments."
Eva tagged the files meticulously. She looked tired, but her hands still moved quickly.
"He wasn't even careful," she muttered, "None of them were. Did they really think that the weight of their names would protect them?"
"Well, it has, until now," Ann said.
They moved through another hefty file methodically. Eva decrypted what she could with her clearance level and Ann made notes as they combed through each file, keeping the language precise.
Dates, amounts, payments, names, signatures…the monitor was filled with connection lines all over the place.
"Here," Eva said, her voice flat now, "The field test notes for Project Alder prototypes.The locations match the first sightings of the twisted constructs."
The notes described their subject behavior under stress and some lines were small enough to miss unless you slowed down and looked closely.
Subject returned to camp with agitation.
Subject displayed erratic movement patterns.
Subject resisted restraint.
Subject repurposed for secondary testing.
Ann read the last line again, repeating it slowly out loud as she felt the bile rise.
"They repurposed a person."
"What in the actual fuck…" Maeve snarled, her hackles rising, "So all of this, the constructs, the flesh crafting…the council started it all?!"
"I'm not sure." Ann replied grimly, "But they were involved somehow. Whether it was to advance our military or someone was bound to a daemon and they wanted to see if it could help us in anyway…Goddess, I don't know. I can't even begin to imagine the reasoning behind this."
Eva's jaw clenched as the enormity of this sank in.
"I'm pulling all of the associated files."
Another window opened along with photographic logs. Ann and Eva both covered their mouths in horror at the images that greeted them.
They stared at the blurred faces and the way the bodies were positioned on metal tables and scanned the captions. The words that had been chosen sounded clinical and dehumanised the people forced into these experiments. They did not hide the reality of what was done.
"Secrets always have a way of catching up with you, no matter how deep you bury them," Maeve snarled.
Ann closed the photo viewer and forced her breathing to slow.
"Keep going." she said.
Eva nodded and returned to the index.
"There is a set of messages between Bartholomew's office and a Veritas auditor. Half the thread is missing though. The remaining half is menacing in that polite way that is favoured amongst the Elders though."
Ann read the tone and saw straight through the polite requests and gentle reminders. An invitation to lunch with a name drop of a charity gala even featured in the exchange and . then a line that made her stomach turn.
The council can shield partners during sensitive phases. Your cooperation would be a service to stability.
"So he used the council's cover to block and auditing or outside parties overseeing projects." Ann said.
"And then they had the audacity to tell Adam to be patient about politics," Eva snorted as she shook her head, "Do you want to throw something? I can find you something moderately weighty and breakable if you like."
"Yes," Ann said through clenched teeth, "No. Not yet."
They kept going and the deeper they pulled, the more Bartholomew's name showed up. Sometimes it was his signature. Sometimes it was a staffer forwarding his discussion points. Sometimes it was a foundation passing a grant that aligned perfectly with a needed expense.
"Cross index these with Ely's coven associates," Ann said. "I want shared meetings, shared donors, shared routes…all of it."
Eva ran the search and the result was not one clean line, it was a cluster of related events. Discussion panels. Donor lists. Charity Gala's. Board Meetings. A quiet dinner two years ago that placed Bartholomew, Liora, and a coven-aligned physician at the same table.
"Try their travel logs if there are any," Ann said. "Use Bartholomew's schedule."
Eva pulled a calendar dump and although Bartholomew was shockingly bad at organizing his own schedules, his assistants were incredibly competent.
"That's because they do the thinking for him so that he doesn't have to," Maeve snorted, "You know, I really fucking liked Bartyboy. Now I want to tear him a new hole somewhere."
Three entries were marked private with only city names. Two matched the dates of shipments recorded to Alder sites. The third matched a weekend where a Veritas internal memo said auditing would be unavailable.
Ann felt the pressure behind her eyes change to cold fury.
"We have more than enough to confront him," she said.
"We have enough to confront the whole bloody council," Eva breathed, "Confronting just him gives the rest of them a chance to bury their involvement."
Ann rubbed at her temple. The screen kept filling with links and the picture it was providing was no longer scattered and coincidental, it was specific, and horrifying.
"Who knows," Maeve hissed, "Maybe Narcissa was involved with this too in some way. It would explain why she was allowed to sit the throne for so long and replace your mother."
"Goddess, I hadn't even thought of that."
The door opened behind them and without warning, Adam filled the threshold. He took in the wall of files with one sweep of his eyes and did not step any farther in.
"How bad is it," he asked.
"Worse than either of us could have possibly guessed," Ann said.