Series

The Standard of Proof

Hema Durrani has five days inside Stavely Systems, no authority to compel anything, a population of eleven thousand she will sample forty of, and one artefact at the end. She is not there because anybody did something wrong; she is there because a customer's contract says somebody independent has to look. The engagement, told from the chair that holds the clipboard: what she can and cannot ask for, what the evidence actually supports, the thing she finds that she was not looking for, and the pressure that arrives when a finding would cost the client something.