“Potentially very public.”
“Also yeah.”
He nods once, as if we’ve mutually confirmed weather.
Then he slides the Kirell projection aside and sets the relief-network tablet in its place, not dismissing the dead, just refusing to let them be the only thing in the room.
“Good,” he says.
I blink up at him. “Good?”
“Yes.”
“That’s annoyingly cryptic.”
“It means,” he says, and now there’s the faintest rough edge in his voice, something warmer than restraint, “that thememorial should be attended by someone who forced it to tell the truth.”
I stare at him.
The apartment is quiet except for the rain and the low hum of building systems and the distant city carrying on with all its usual obliviousness.
I could say something deflecting. Something sharp. Something easier to wear.
Instead I reach for his hand where it rests near the tablet and curl my fingers around two of his.
He stills.
Just for a second. Then his hand turns under mine, warm and careful and real.
No ceremony. No speech. No grand declaration.
Just contact.
Outside, the city keeps moving. Inside, the proposals wait, the memorial waits, the future waits in all its annoying paperwork and public consequence.
But the decision is made.
I will go.
And this time, when the record is witnessed in public, I won’t be standing there because an institution assigned me to it.
I’ll be there because I choose it.
CHAPTER 32
RHYX
The work depot smells like wet lumber, machine oil, hot wiring, and the kind of coffee civilians make when nobody has the time or dignity for taste.
I have come to like it.
Not the coffee. That remains an insult.
The rest of it, yes.
The depot sits on the southern edge of the neutral district where the city thins into freight lanes, prefab housing blocks, and the broad scar of old transit damage that the refugee stabilization program is still trying to stitch back together. Every morning the place wakes before dawn. By the time I arrive, the loading platform is already alive with motion—fork drones whining under cargo, relief crews calling measurements across the bay, children weaving through the safer corners with the unnerving agility of those who have learned adults are slowest when carrying too much grief.
No one here calls me commander.
