A beat.
Then he exhales, frustrated. “You have no idea what it cost to get this offer approved.”
“I do,” I say quietly. “It cost them nothing but paperwork, because they thought I’d still be willing to take a deal that erases civilians.”
Saal’s eyes flash. “Careful.”
I tilt my head. “Is that a threat?”
He holds my gaze. “It’s a fact. High Command is not sentimental.”
“Neither am I,” I say. “I’m loyal. Just not to positioning.”
He snorts softly. “Then to what? Ideals?”
“To transparency,” I say, and the word tastes strange in my mouth, like something I should’ve learned earlier. “To the record.”
Saal’s silence stretches long enough that I can hear the low hum of the shield generators in the walls, the soft hiss of ventilation, the faint scratch of one security officer shifting his stance.
Finally, Saal taps his compad again. A new projection appears—statistical models, probability trees, institutional response forecasts. The kind of cold math that pretends it can predict human cruelty.
He points at one column.
“Selene Ardent,” he says. “Do you know what happens to her if this keeps escalating?”
My throat tightens.
The model is brutal in its simplicity:
Likelihood of professional blacklisting across League legal institutions: 0.87.
Likelihood of security surveillance assignment: 0.74.
Likelihood of forced resignation under ‘performance’ pretext: 0.63.
My claws curl involuntarily. The binders hum, irritated.
Saal watches my reaction with clinical interest. “She’s already marked. The panel may validate her work, but institutions don’t reward people who embarrass them. They punish them.”
I stare at the numbers until they blur.
“She didn’t ask for this,” I say.
“No,” Saal agrees, almost gently. “But she stepped into it. And you’re pulling her deeper.”
I feel the words like a hook under my ribs.
He presses. “If you accept reinstatement and quiet resolution, the heat lowers. The League calms. The panel does its review behind closed doors. Ardent might keep her job. Might even get reassigned somewhere safe.”
Safe.
The word makes my stomach turn.
“Safe,” I repeat, voice rough.
“Yes,” Saal says. “Safe.”
I close my eyes for half a second, the way I used to in a cockpit when alarms screamed and I needed to make the world smaller.
