Chapter 72: Four Cases
Samuel capped the inference at four tested records and built the next phase around process rather than population.
On Friday, the cap appeared at the top of KRR's scope screen before anyone discussed a name.
The four redacted IDs represented HR, procurement, operations, and project management.
I knew the departments and nothing that could identify every person behind them.
The identity custodian kept the mapping in a separate register.
Vivian's attorney requested that former employees be removed from the sample.
Her written reason was that WMG could not test current process through people who had left.
Samuel marked the objection but refused the exclusion.
The review concerned what the process had done while each record was active.
Departure could be an outcome or a later fact, not a reason to erase the file.
Grant challenged the number from the opposite direction.
Four cases, he wrote, could not support a company-wide population estimate.
Samuel agreed before Grant's sentence finished on the screen.
The sample would not estimate prevalence, total victims, untested divisions, or a hidden fifth department.
It could not support a percentage, a company headcount, or a claim about every departed employee.
It would test whether the same defined workflow appeared across four protected records.
He opened the sampling protocol line by line.
Each case required a formal complaint or issue entry preserved by a lawful custodian.
Each required a later risk label, a reference-routing event, and an available witness path.
Each department had to be different to prevent one manager's habits from masquerading as a system.
The locked choice also prevented KRR from replacing an inconvenient record after learning whether it helped the emerging theory.
The protocol also required a documented limit wherever external consequence remained unverified.
I asked why Jonah's case still counted when so much of it had already been examined.
Samuel said it supplied a tested anchor, not a preferred conclusion.
The other three cases would have to stand on their own records and custodians.
No witness would receive another witness's testimony.
No attorney would be told what answer made the pattern stronger.
My access register would not include addresses, personal references, or full legal names through the sample process.
Seeing my own name in the restriction made the boundary less theoretical.
I signed it.
The procurement case already had a protected contact channel controlled by the witness's attorney.
The operations case had a former supervisor whose participation required exposure advice and employer protection.
The project-management case had not yet accepted public identification.
KRR listed all three as voluntary paths, not compelled performances for my benefit.
Their attorneys would receive neutral invitations, protection terms, and the right to decline before any substantive question appeared.
Vivian's attorney requested a right to attend the interviews.
Samuel denied it and offered the ordinary logged-response process after protected summaries existed.
Grant requested immediate access to the unredacted sample.
Samuel denied that too.
WMG could challenge method without receiving private identities before consent and relevance review.
The final written protocol separated four questions into four columns, each with its own proof threshold.
Was there a protected issue entry?
Did a risk designation follow through the same deployed system?
Did reference stabilization reach an outside-contact path?
Could any claimed consequence be independently verified?
Samuel locked those questions without promising four identical answers.
The final scope receipt recorded the objections, rulings, custodians, and inference cap.
My public role remained unchanged while the private protection burden multiplied.
I could no longer describe the review as one man's correction without shrinking the records already found.
I also could not call four tested cases everyone.
The first interview slot appeared beneath the locked protocol.
It was scheduled for Monday under independent-attorney and anti-retaliation conditions.
The witness was Devon Chase, the regional supervisor who had executed the protocol.