“Well, thanks. Glad it has your endorsement.”
A corner of his mouth shifts. “You’re welcome.”
I take a sip of tea and burn my tongue because apparently my relationship to caution remains deeply adversarial.
The comm slate on the table vibrates.
Not one of our personal channels. Controlled signal.
Rhyx glances down first. “Serr.”
I set the mug down carefully.
“Already?” I ask.
“We expected oversight to move quickly if you actually intended to use controlled channels.”
“I did not expect them to be this offensively functional.”
He slides the slate toward me. “Perhaps they also hate sleep.”
I accept the incoming.
Commissioner Inaya Serr appears in projection, seated in what looks like an office designed by someone who mistrusts all decorative ambition. Dark walls. Clean lines. A single paper file on one side of the desk like she keeps one old habit around to remind digital systems they are not gods.
“Ardent,” she says.
“Serr.”
Her eyes flick once past me, enough to acknowledge Rhyx without formally engaging him. “I received your encrypted continuity request.”
“Good.”
“That is not reassurance.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
That almost earns me something from her that might be respect or might just be professional fatigue taking on new facial structure.
“I am prepared to open a restricted review cell,” she says. “Small. Cross-indexed through archive reform authority, not Senate channels. No public trigger. No partisan access. But before I do that, I need you to say out loud whether what you have rises above inference.”
I feel Rhyx’s attention sharpen across the table without looking at him.
“It rises above inference,” I say. “The packet includes closed Senate emergency subgroup briefing notes, threshold framework language, conditional tolerance phrasing, anddelegable formalization references predating Vol’s doctrine model by months.”
Serr goes very still.
“Authenticity confidence.”
“High.”
“Compromise risk.”
“Unknown source path before it reached Oversight Analyst Vehr. Internal suppression likely if routed through ordinary review.”
She nods once. “Yes.”
No false comfort. I appreciate that. Or I would, if appreciation were less exhausting.
