The excavation began on a Monday.
Adam stood at the edge of the construction site, watching the backhoes bite into the earth where Warehouse 17 had once stood. The memorial was supposed to be a place of healing. A garden. A fountain. A wall of names.
But the ground had other plans.
The first sign was a fragment of fabric. Blue, faded, torn. The worker who found it called it garbage. The second sign was a bone. Small, white, unmistakably human.
The foreman stopped the machines.
Adam walked across the churned mud, his boots sinking into the wet earth. He knelt beside the bone.
“How many?” he asked.
“We don't know yet,” the foreman said. “But there's more. A lot more.”
---
Arthur Pendelton arrived within the hour.
His face was pale, his hands unsteady. “Dear God.”
“Not God,” Adam s
