Chapter 5 - THE SECOND VIDEO
Scott’s edited clip began after he moved the broken guard.
It showed me beside the press with my hand near the raised plate. The audio had been removed. The frame cropped out Scott’s grip on my wrist and ended before his hand reached the control.
Without the beginning, it looked like I had bypassed the safety system and placed my own hand beneath the machine.
Scott sent that version to the insurance carrier, the acquisition team, and the county fleet manager before deleting the original from the group chat.
But he made one mistake.
The shop’s wireless network automatically synchronized media sent through the company messaging application to a local backup server. Mark maintained that server during night shift because Scott never wanted to pay an outside technician.
The original upload still existed in the cache.
So did the edited version.
The metadata showed the edited clip had been created twenty-three minutes before the accident.
Dr. Lawson looked up from the tablet.
“He prepared the false version before you were injured?”
Mark nodded.
Scott began shouting through the speaker. He said metadata could be wrong, that Mark hated him, and that everyone was conspiring because the acquisition would modernize the shop.
Claire finally picked up her coffee cup and set it down before she crushed it.
“You made the cover story first,” she said.
Scott went silent.
Mark placed his brass key on the metal tray beside my cut glove.
“I’m not going back,” he said. “But there’s something inside the foreman’s cabinet you need to see before he empties it.”
That cabinet contained eleven years of inspection sheets bearing my name.
May you like
Some were real.
Several were not.
