Caleb led with the number.
Not the implication — the number. The specific date. He placed the document in front of me and pointed to the row where the organization's sample tracking had been documented, and the date on that row was eighteen months before the first power manifestation I had documented. Eighteen months before the power's first manifestation. Before the bond. Before the compound. Before Northbridge.
Before any of it.
He delivered it as a data point and paused for interpretation.
"They had a sample before the bond activated," I said.
"Before any externally observable activation," he said. "The sample is documented as Silverblood-lineage blood. The documentation is specific — they knew what they had before they had it." He looked at the row. "Which means the knowledge prec
