I do not reach to close the display fast enough.
Her eyes track the disclosure text, the submission routing header, the marked recipients.
Civilian Oversight Broadcast Channel. Senate Review Archive. Independent Press Escrow.
She crosses the room before I can stand.
“Absolutely not,” she says, and slaps her palm across the submission field.
The transmission window collapses.
I exhale once through my nose. “That was inelegant.”
“That was life-saving.”
She plants both hands on the table and leans toward me, blanket slipping off one shoulder before she yanks it back up with visible irritation.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Preparing a disclosure.”
“I have eyes, Rhyx.” Her voice is low enough not to turn into a shout, which somehow makes it more dangerous. “Why.”
Because I cannot tolerate another hidden chamber in the architecture. Because once I know where the rot extends, every instinct I own says cut it out in daylight. Because part of me stillbelieves if you do not name a structure publicly, you are helping it breed.
I say the simplest version. “Because incomplete accountability is still corruption.”
Her jaw tightens. “Don’t give me the polished line. I heard the dictation.”
“Then you heard the truth.”
“I heard a man about to light a match in a dry field and call it principle.”
The cursor still blinks in the corner of the reopened draft. The room feels too bright suddenly, too full of edges. Rain taps harder at the windows as if to punctuate her point.
I rise slowly. “Those documents prove broader culpability.”
“I know what they prove.”
“Then how do you sit with them in a locked cabinet and call that justice?”
Her eyes flash. “I don’t call it justice.”
“Then what.”
“I call it not repeating the cycle with better intentions and the same body count.”
That lands because it is aimed well.
I step back from the table before I say something I cannot sharpen properly.
Selene straightens, blanket clutched in one fist now like she would rather be wearing armor but this is what the hour provides.
“You agreed,” she says.
“I agreed before the implications finished arranging themselves.”
She laughs once, sharp and furious. “Oh, good. Love that we’re revisiting catastrophic strategy after midnight.”
