Ning brought the first survivor replies to the clinic back room just before noon.
She had visited the families herself. The papers in her hand were not forms; they were notes in different hands, each folded around a private answer. She put them on the table beside the route chronology and left the names turned down.
“Several agreed to speak only so the furnace failure could be investigated,” she said. “They thought the inquiry would stay with the people responsible for the machinery.”
Yan looked at the folders from the previous day. The Registry had already printed names and times. “A full release might be the strongest way to show what they changed.”
“The truth may still be theirs to publish,” Ning said. “If a family never agreed to appear in a public fight with the Registry, do we get to expose them because we need to prove a point?”
He did not answer at once. He had imagined placing every order, statement, and medical record in front of the villages. If the evidence was complete, the altered account would fall apart. But he had treated the people in those records as parts of an argument.
Ning unfolded one note. The paper had been creased twice, and a thumb had smudged the ink beside a sentence. “This family asked whether their account could be used without naming them. They also asked if a route could identify them even without a name.”
