“Yes.”
He doesn’t ask again. Thank God for small mercies.
We leave through the civilian family corridor just as planned. Marshals guide us cleanly through the outer path. Protesters still chant somewhere behind the barriers, but the sound is thinner now, frayed by containment and weather and their own exhaustion. A cold wind sweeps across the memorial steps and brings with it the scent of damp stone, transport fuel, and the bitter roast from a vendor cart trying to monetize accountability. The city beyond the site is already metabolizing the ceremony into headlines. Giant public screens along the transit lane pulse with clips of Selene Ardent saying documentation matters and Commissioner Serr naming the doctrine in full. Somewhere inside that stream, the world is deciding which part of me to hate next.
I hold the folio inside my coat all the way home like it might bite.
By the time the apartment door seals behind us, my skin is buzzing.
The quiet inside hits like impact. No crowd noise. No public commentary. Just the muted hum of the climate system, the faint tick of water moving through old building pipes, and the city pressed back behind rain-gray windows.
Rhyx turns to me immediately.
“What is it?”
I set the folio on the table.
For a second neither of us touches it.
Then I say, “Talis gave me something.”
His gaze drops to the folio, then rises again. “Concerning.”
“Yes.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” I say. “It’s the shape of one.”
I peel off my gloves with clumsy fingers. My hands are colder than they should be. My mouth is dry. I can still feel the memorial wind in my bones.
Rhyx crosses to the kitchenette, fills two glasses of water without speaking, and sets one in front of me before taking the chair opposite. The domestic normalcy of the gesture nearly undoes me.
“Open it,” he says.
So I do.
The folio unlocks on a timed oversight seal and spills projections upward into the dim apartment light. Senate briefing notes. Emergency authorization summaries. Committee review excerpts. Ratification language. I know the formatting immediately—closed committee circulation drafts, the kind that never see public floor debate because plausible deniability is easier when atrocity is discussed in rooms with soft carpeting.
The headings alone make my stomach twist.
Emergency Civilian Loss Threshold Frameworks
Strategic Continuity Briefing — Restricted Committee Review
Wartime Stabilization Scenarios — Casualty Tolerance Bands
Rhyx says nothing.
Neither do I.
I start reading.
The apartment disappears.
There is only light, text, and the sound of my own pulse.
The notes are dated months before Vol formalized Sacrificial Stabilization Doctrine into operational command language. Months. Before. Senate committee review. Closed-session emergency powers subgroup. Limited casualty threshold frameworks quietly ratified under the kind of sanitized phrasing that makes murder sound like budget forecasting.
