Tessa waited outside the advice room until the engineer asked her in.
The independent advocate had a small table, a working contact line, and no copy of the coalition’s public draft in front of her. She had asked to begin with the engineer’s concerns rather than the team’s proposed solution. By the time Tessa entered, two concerns had been written separately: what the witness wanted the public to know, and what identification could put at risk.
The engineer’s family had answered the secure contact.
They were alive. They were worried. One relative had already been asked where she was, by someone who offered assistance and would not say who had supplied the question. The message did not establish a threat from Rook. It gave her a reason to avoid treating public identification as a harmless courtesy to readers who wanted a face beside the figures.
“I want the warning known,” she said. “I don’t want you to promise no one can find me.”
Tessa sat where the advocate indicated.
“We can remove direct identifiers from the copy we send,” she said. “We cannot guarantee that the details won’t let someone infer the source. We can’t promise anonymity through every later proceeding.”
