I scan the lower steps once and find her almost immediately.
Selene stands near the outer barrier where the crowd thins just enough to breathe. No badge. No tribunal slate. Just herdark jacket, her braid half-loosened by the wind, and a face that looks carved from exhaustion and stubbornness. The evening light catches at the edges of her profile and turns them softer than the day has any right to allow.
She sees me coming before I reach her.
For one second neither of us moves.
The crowd noise swells and recedes around us. Somebody farther down the steps shouts a question into a live feed. A protest sign clacks against a metal barrier. The wind carries a mix of rain-cooled air, transit exhaust, hot food from a vendor cart three lanes over, and the raw charged scent of too many people staying in one place too long because history is happening and they do not trust it to continue without witnesses.
When I stop in front of her, she tips her head back to look at me fully.
“Well,” she says, voice dry as scorched paper. “You’re vertical and unshackled. Bold look.”
My mouth almost betrays me. “You resigned.”
“Yeah.” She lets out a breath that could become a laugh if given enough mercy. “Apparently I object poorly to being quietly destroyed.”
“I heard.”
“Fast little gossip network.”
“Coalition High Command,” I say. “Not gossip.”
Her eyes sharpen. “That’s worse.”
“Yes.”
A camera drone begins drifting closer from the edge of the crowd, opportunistic and stupid. I glance at it once. One of the reduced-security marshals notices and redirects it with a hard gesture and a harder stare.
Selene folds her arms against the wind. “Did they offer you something insulting?”
I look at her. “How did you know?”
“Because that’s how these people apologize. With vocabulary and poison.”
That pulls a low sound from me that might almost be a laugh.
“They offered ceremonial reinstatement,” I say. “No command. No authority. Public honor.”
She stares. Then, “Wow.”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“I declined.”
Her brows lift. “Good.”
“I thought so.”
The wind snaps a loose strand of hair across her cheek. She pushes it back impatiently. The city light has shifted now, sunset thinning toward the first blue of evening, and the tribunal windows behind her are beginning to glow from within like rows of contained fire.
I say, “I applied for civilian residency.”
Something changes in her face. Not surprise, exactly. More like recalculation happening in real time.
“In League space?” she asks.
