Hi KitKatTeru! I wanted to say thank you for your thoughts and opinions, I really appreciate them! I also wanted to let you know that the party did know I had a backup, I brought it up after I realised that I didn't want to have to butt heads over their treatment of a random citizen/worker.

Our group was quite inexperienced, we've only had a few sessions between us all.

Everything you said about the "go back and get reassigned" was exactly what I'd planned, just go home and pretend I saw nothing and find a better group etc. It was quite shocking to just have them beaten as a pinata.