“It is filed,” Drax repeats, and there is something in her tone that suggests she will not allow anyone to dismiss it as mere convenience without consequence.
A communications alert pings again. This time, the chamber’s wall screen auto-displays a live Holonet feed: senators speaking in front of microphones, each face carefully shaped into public concern. The captions below them repeat the phrase like a cudgel.
EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED.
TRIBUNAL NEUTRALITY.
PUBLIC CONFIDENCE.
I feel my cheeks flush, not from shame but from the indignity of being flattened into a label.
The younger ethics officer looks at me again. “If we retain you, you will be under supervision. Your access logs will be reviewed daily. Your communications will be monitored.”
“I already assume they are,” I say, and my voice carries a colloquial edge I do not usually permit in tribunal rooms, because I am tired of pretending that surveillance is a courtesy rather than a weapon.
The older officer’s expression twitches, not quite amused, not quite approving. “And if evidence emerges that you have acted out of bias?”
“Then remove me,” I answer immediately. “Not because senators are whining for optics, but because the record will show I failed.”
Silence spreads.
Drax looks at the ethics officers, then at me, and I see in her eyes a calculation that is not merely legal. She knows that if she removes me, the tribunal looks clean but becomes vulnerable to the exact accusation Varos just lodged. She knows that if she keeps me, the tribunal invites political fury and media spectacle, but it also signals that procedure cannot be bullied by leaks.
At last, Drax speaks, and her voice carries across the room with reluctant finality.
“Liaison Ardent will remain assigned,” she says. “Under supervision.”
The decision lands like a gavel.
The older ethics officer nods once. “So entered.”
I exhale, slow and controlled, feeling the tension ease only slightly, like a strap loosened but not removed.
Drax turns to me. “You understand,” she says quietly, now that the official record has been made, “that they will come at you harder now.”
“Yes,” I say, and my throat feels raw. “They already are.”
Her eyes sharpen. “Then you will be careful.”
I meet her gaze. “I will be accurate.”
She holds my stare for one beat longer, then nods, barely.
“Return to your reconstruction,” she orders. “And Ardent?—”
“Yes?”
Her voice drops, low enough that only I can hear it. “Do not give them a real reason.”
I swallow, feeling the weight of that warning settle into my bones.
“I won’t,” I say.
When I leave Chamber C, the corridors feel louder than before—not in sound, but in attention. I can feel eyes tracking me, feel whispers curl behind my back like smoke. My compad vibrates again with another media alert, another headline, another senator shaping my grief into political theater, and I resist the urge to throw the device against the wall only because the tribunal would call that “emotional instability” too.
I head back down toward the vault, toward the cold light and the corridor map that does not care what senators say.
If they want to call me compromised, fine.
