After the briefing, he found Sarah in the armory.
“I should have stopped him earlier.”
Sarah did not pretend otherwise.
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“I kept thinking he outranked the situation.”
“Nobody outranks a mechanical failure.”
“I know that now.”
“Know it next time before somebody has to stand between you and a rifle.”
He accepted the correction.
Blake’s investigation expanded beyond the weapon.
The unauthorized modification alone would have removed the rifle from service. His conduct made the leadership problem larger.
The range video showed him pouring water over Sarah, kicking her tool case across the concrete, refusing repeated warnings, and ordering a trainee not to help her. Witnesses confirmed that he had used the class as an audience while dismissing a technical inspection he did not understand.
Other armorers reported that Blake had previously pressured them to return equipment faster when repairs interfered with his schedule. None described an earlier unauthorized modification, but several said he treated technical limits as obstacles that should bend around his experience.
The command removed him permanently from the senior weapons instructor position.
He received formal discipline for the unauthorized alteration and his conduct toward Sarah. His weapons-instructor qualification was suspended pending a review he would not complete in that assignment. He transferred to a non-instructional role with no authority to modify or approve training weapons.
The consequence was not temporary embarrassment.
The role he had used to define himself was gone.
Sarah did not celebrate.
For two days after the finding, she was angrier than before.
Olivia noticed.
“I thought you would feel better once they proved you were right.”
Sarah looked up from an inspection light.
“Being right about something that could have hurt people is not satisfying.”
Olivia considered that.
“Then what helps?”
“Making it harder to happen again.”
That became the work.
The range commander asked Sarah to help rewrite the local inspection procedure. She refused at first because the technical manual was already clear.
“The manual did not fail,” she said. “People decided parts of it were optional.”
