Kirell Memorial Dedication Ceremony
Attendance requested
Requested.
As if request has anything to do with it.
As if they didn’t agonize over whether inviting me would look like accountability or provocation.
Talis watches my face. “You are not required to respond tonight.”
Nera adds, “There will be media. A lot of it.”
Pavel says more softly, “There will also be names.”
That one gets me.
I look back at the memorial rendering, at the curved lines of restored corridor data and the walls that will finally hold what the dead were owed from the beginning.
“Leave the invite,” I say.
When they go—at last, blessedly—the apartment feels twice its actual size and half as loud. The door seals behind them with a cushioned click, muting hallway noise completely. Rain keeps working at the windows, steadier now, and the city beyond is all wet light and blurred geometry.
Rhyx starts gathering the emptied folders without asking. He moves with the economical grace of someone who has spent most of his life in spaces where taking up too much room got people killed, which is ridiculous, considering the room bends around him anyway.
“You were kinder than usual,” he says.
I sink back into my chair. “That’s because I’m too tired to escalate properly.”
“Mm.”
He stacks the folders, then sets them aside. Not in the neat pile I would have made. In a sturdier one. More practical. Less fussy.
I sip the tea. It’s too hot and it scalds the tip of my tongue and I welcome the pain because at least it’s local and uncomplicated.
On the table, one of the proposals is still open to the casualty disclosure section. The language glows faintly in the projection field.
I should stop.
I do not stop.
Instead I pull the Kirell sequence back up.
Not because I need to. Because some corner of me still revisits the wound the way a tongue probes a broken tooth. Morbid. Automatic. Honest.
Rhyx sees the projection shift and does not interrupt.
The room narrows to blue-white light, rain-hiss, the warmth of tea in my hand, and the old familiar geometry of the corridor. Safe-zone. Override. Compression. Impact.
I open a side model and strip out the hearing-era evidence. Strip out the subpoena chain. Strip out the public broadcast pressure. Strip out the anomaly flag.
I build the scenario where I stay silent.
The scenario where I see the inconsistency and file it internally and let it die there because I am tired, scared, pragmatic, obedient—pick your poison.
The system runs the projection.
Projected archive status:sealed indefinitely under wartime strategic protection clause.
