The recorder’s damaged segment began with a flash of white and ended with Tessa’s voice.
“Before the trial began.”
Between those two points, the image broke into bands. The audio carried a scraping sound, then a burst of static. Juno ran the segment again in the independent examination room while the people who had handled the device watched. The second copy looked no better than the first.
“Can you repair it?” Eli asked.
“I can preserve the damaged file and document what the reader reports. I can’t reconstruct what isn’t there reliably.”
Juno stopped playback. A neutral examiner, Amina, photographed the recorder’s casing and checked its seal against the transfer record. The device had been handled by Eli in the lower room, then passed through the documented response and inquiry custody. Juno confirmed the recorder’s identifier and the clock offset she had written down before lending it.
Sera sat beside the table with her original field notes. Tessa had the limited medical records she was authorized to use. Kellan watched the door, where a second investigator stood with the evidence container for the extracted files. Eli stood close enough to see the screen but did not touch the controls.
Juno extracted a working copy under Amina’s observation. She recorded the software version, the device settings, the clock offset and the time of extraction. Amina checked the file identifiers against the recorder and made a second copy for the inquiry. The original device would remain sealed after the process. Another examiner…
