The permission arrived in a document longer than the data it allowed him to see.
Luo had arranged an independent technical review of the disputed extracts, with the site operator’s agreement. Yanchuan could examine a named set of files, ask questions through the designated engineer, and return a written comparison. He could not inspect customer records, download unrelated logs, or present himself as an employee of any company involved.
“They want to control what I find,” he told Mei.
“They want to control what you can access. We can evaluate the result without pretending the permission is bigger.”
She read the document, asked who could receive their findings, and pointed at a clause that would have prevented him sharing even the conclusion with An. He sent it back. The revised permission allowed family counsel and the investigators handling the missing-person case to receive relevant material through an agreed channel.
That change cost a day. During the day, he checked his travel confirmation so often that the dates began to look unreal.
On the plane he slept badly, waking with the certainty that he had missed a call. There was no new message. At the connecting airport, he bought a sandwich he could not finish and watched a child steer a suitcase shaped like a car around a sleeping man’s feet.
By Saturday he was sitting opposite Amina in a café whose fan moved the warm air without cooling it. She wore an ordinary blue shirt. He recognized her only when she put the metal bottle on the table.
“You look more tired in person,” she said.
“So do you.”
She laughed once. It was the first time either of them had.
They opened the authorized folder. Forty-six minutes of event records, some fields omitted, serial numbers masked consistently. It was not enough to reconstruct the whole installation. It was enough to compare the clocks and see that the missing interval had contained several changes of state.
Yanchuan found the protective intervention almost at once. He began explaining it, then stopped when Amina turned the screen toward herself.
“I was there,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Tell me what you think the report claims about it.”
The claim was that the full run had met the agreed performance conditions. Yet the conditions in the summary applied after cooling demand had been reduced. The record did not say what had been reduced, only that an auxiliary control had changed. A label had become a gap in the story.
He asked to see the relevant circuit list. Amina checked the permission, then called the designated engineer. They could receive a simplified list excluding unrelated systems. They would not get access to the control network.
While they waited, Yanchuan watched people queue for takeaway tea. The world had an offensive ability to remain ordinary around his urgency. Then Amina stood to greet an older woman carrying a bag of bread, and he realized that ordinary was what she was trying to preserve.
The simplified list arrived after lunch. The auxiliary circuit served part of the equipment room’s cooling. During the troublesome period, another load had been shed to keep the demonstration within its limits. The clean chart did not describe the full demand the system was supposed to handle.
“It may have been an allowed test condition,” Amina said.
“Then it belongs in the header.”
She nodded. “That is a useful question.”
They wrote it together, with the file names and the limits of the extract attached. Had the acceptance conditions been changed, by whom, and where was that change authorized?
It was narrower than asking what had happened to his brother. It was also a question someone would have to answer with a document or an admission that the document did not exist.
At the café door, Amina asked what he planned to do that evening.
“Go to the hotel where he stayed.”
“With an appointment?”
“The manager agreed to speak at six.”
“Good.”
He wanted to ask her to come. She had already given him half her Saturday. Her phone showed a message from home, and she had been turning it face down each time it lit.
“I’ll send you the notes,” he said instead.
At six, the hotel manager offered him water and a seat. Behind the desk, hooks held keys to rooms occupied by people who would probably return for them. Yanchuan put the authorized folder on his lap and waited to hear what the manager could actually tell him.