Maya picked up the preservation folder. "Ben, show me."
Ben led Maya and two federal technicians upstairs to a secondary administrative room near the command offices. The door was partly open. Rebecca Sloan stood at a workstation with the administrator console displayed on the screen.
She turned when they entered.
"What are you doing here?" Maya asked.
Rebecca kept one hand near the keyboard. "Preparing a clean export of the audit records before your people change anything else."
One technician moved to the adjacent terminal.
"Don't touch that workstation," Maya said.
Rebecca stepped away. "I'm helping preserve the system."
The technician opened the administrator action history from the second terminal. "There's no export running."
Rebecca looked at him. "I hadn't started it yet."
He continued reading: "Archive selection, overwrite queue assignment, purge preparation."
Rebecca's expression changed.
Maya asked, "Were you attempting to delete these records?"
"No."
"Then explain the purge request."
"I was isolating compromised data."
"Under whose authority?"
"My administrative responsibilities include evidence security."
Maya looked at the screen. "A federal preservation order has been active since this morning."
"I know."
"And you still initiated a purge."
Rebecca shook her head. "You're interpreting a technical function as intentional deletion."
The technician clicked into the authentication history. "This action requires biometric confirmation."
Rebecca said nothing. He opened the verification record: Fingerprint accepted under Lieutenant Rebecca Sloan.
Maya waited before speaking. "Did anyone else use your hand to authorize the command?"
Rebecca looked at her. "No."
"Then don't tell me the system misunderstood what happened."