“Is Vol cooperating?”
“Will additional commanders be arrested?”
“Is the tribunal admitting institutional misconduct?”
Drax rises to leave, because she knows exactly when staying becomes surrender. The oversight chair follows. Clerks scatter. Marshals move.
And the whole machine starts reshuffling before anyone can pin it down long enough to stop it.
I should probably stay exactly where I am. I know that. I know the way institutions behave in the thirty seconds after a verdict—how they scan for weak points, how they look for someone lower on the ladder to make into an example.
I know that someone might very well be me.
As if summoned by the thought, Senior Administrative Counsel Veridan emerges from the side clerk corridor with two aides and a face like pressed paper. He spots me immediately.
Of course he does.
He changes course and approaches with that awful bureaucratic urgency that always meanswe’d like to ruin your life in a very organized manner.
Mirov sees him too. “Ah,” he says softly. “There it is.”
My stomach drops.
Veridan stops two feet from me, inclines his head in a parody of respect, and says, “Liaison Ardent, tribunal leadership requires immediate administrative?—”
“No,” I say.
He blinks. “Excuse me?”
The word comes out clearer the second time. “No.”
Around us, the chamber is still convulsing—press movement, security redirection, side feeds flashing, senators grandstanding into private channels they absolutely know are being monitored. But this little circle of air goes precise and still.
Veridan’s mouth tightens. “I’m informing you that an administrative review is being initiated regarding your procedural conduct, media exposure, and?—”
“I know what administrative review means,” I say. My voice isn’t loud, but it’s sharp enough to cut through his script. “It means you want to pull me into a sealed room, call a retaliation process, and pretend the timing is unfortunate.”
His aides go rigid.
Mirov does not move, which somehow feels like support.
Veridan’s expression frosts over. “Mind your tone.”
I actually laugh.
It comes out tired and mean and completely beyond my control.
“My tone?” I say. “That’s what we’re doing? The institution just admitted systemic interference in a mass-casualty event, and you’re here to critique my tone?”
A nearby reporter’s head turns so fast I can practically hear the vertebrae.
Veridan lowers his voice. “Liaison Ardent, do not make this worse for yourself.”
And there it is. The oldest institutional threat in the universe. Behave and we’ll hurt you politely.
Something inside me goes very calm.
Not gentle. Not forgiving.
