The deputy beside the projector was Daniel Reeve.
He had worked the fire with Andrew and Forge. In the video, he wore no helmet and carried the missing alarm log beneath his coat.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Daniel removed his radio and placed it on the floor.
“I was supposed to deliver the log,” he said.
Forge’s face remained still.
“To whom?”
“The state fire marshal.”
“But you didn’t.”
Daniel looked toward Elaine.
She had found him outside the building after Andrew was trapped. The property company knew the alarm system had been disabled. They offered Daniel enough money to clear his debts and threatened to blame Forge for every death if he refused.
Daniel gave Elaine the log.
Then he signed the statement saying Forge ignored orders.
Andrew had recorded the exchange through his helmet camera, but smoke damaged the file. The flexible chip preserved only fragments until Lucas completed the projector and aligned the lenses.
Elaine said the video had been manipulated.
The technician did not argue. He copied the file to three drives while the other deputy called state police.
Daniel did not resist when his badge was taken.
He asked Forge to look at him.
Forge did not.
The building owner, Elaine, Daniel and two city inspectors were charged with falsifying safety records, obstruction and offences connected to the fire. Daniel testified against the others. His cooperation reduced his sentence, but it did not erase what he had done.
Nora gave a full statement about surrendering the chip.
No charges were filed against her. The investigator said fear explained her choice, though it did not make it harmless.
Lucas heard that sentence.
He remembered it.
The museum removed Andrew’s memorial programme and closed the sponsored fire-safety wing. Months later, the dome reopened under a different name. The projector remained manual, just as Andrew intended.
Forge’s dismissal was reversed.
The department offered him his position back.
He refused.
He had spent eight months being called a coward by people who never asked what he carried down those six flights. Returning felt less like justice than another order.
Instead, he repaired equipment for volunteer departments that could not afford replacements. Lucas visited on Saturdays and learned to polish lenses, tighten wooden joints and test every mechanism twice.
Nora came too, though at first she waited in the car.
She and Forge did not forgive each other quickly.
She had believed the report because accepting it was easier than questioning the people who gave her Andrew’s folded flag. Forge had stopped calling because every unanswered message made grief feel like humiliation.
They began with smaller truths.
One afternoon, Lucas asked why Forge stepped away when he tried to hold his hand.
Forge looked at the pale scars across his palms.
“Your dad was the last person I couldn’t pull out.”
Lucas considered this.
“But you came back for me.”
Forge nodded.
“That took longer.”
At the first public showing, Lucas installed the red lens himself.
Andrew’s bedtime constellation appeared across the dome before the alarm diagram formed beneath it. The evidence had already been heard in court, so no one gasped this time.
Lucas sat between his mother and Forge.
When Andrew’s voice filled the room, Nora reached for her son.
Forge kept his hands on his knees.
Lucas took one of each.
The final red star settled above them.
It did not prove that Andrew had died well, or that the people left behind had lived well afterward.
It only showed where the truth had been hidden.
This time, no one turned off the projector.