Chapter 9 - PROFESSOR KLINE’S LAST LECTURE
Arthur Kline tried to save himself through sophistication.
He issued a statement through counsel saying he was “deeply distressed by an unforeseeable interpersonal altercation between students.”
Students.
Plural.
As though Lily and Ethan had a mutual fight.
He denied directing violence.
Denied falsifying research.
Denied instructing Ray to conceal evidence.
Then investigators recovered the lab backups.
Raw instrument files.
Edited spreadsheets.
Sponsor emails.
Version histories.
Kline had personally approved several altered reports.
Not necessarily because the underlying contamination created immediate public danger—the environmental experts were cautious about that—but because the sponsor-facing reports were misleading.
That was enough.
Then Professor Elaine Foster turned over the whistleblower submission.
Lily’s original concern was timestamped forty-eight hours before the attack.
Meaning Kline knew she was a protected reporter when he participated in confronting her.
The university suspended him.
Renshaw Materials publicly distanced itself and commissioned independent environmental retesting.
The scandal spread.
But Daniel refused interviews.
Reporters found him outside the hospital once.
“Mr. Mercer, do you believe the university failed your daughter?”
Daniel answered only:
“My daughter is nineteen. She’s in surgery because adults were more afraid of paperwork than of what they were doing to her.”
Then he walked inside.
That quote spread anyway.
He hated that too.
Lily was not a symbol.
She was a kid who still needed help washing her hair because opening her mouth hurt.
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Public narratives flatten people.
Daniel was learning to distrust those almost as much as private ones.
