Serr folds her hands. “Then listen closely. If you bring this into my review cell, I can protect the archive chain. I can build statutory locks around what future emergency committees are not permitted to do. I can force trace preservation. I cannot promise full public exposure in the present term.”
I let out a short, brittle laugh. “You make ‘partial institutional honesty’ sound almost romantic.”
“I am not in the romance trade.”
“Tragic.”
Serr’s gaze stays steady. “This is the best channel available without shattering three governments before lunch.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I know.”
Her expression shifts by one degree. Human enough to register what that costs.
“Submit the material at fourteen hundred. Physical transfer only. No open relay. One companion permitted.”
Rhyx says, from across the table, “I’ll attend.”
Serr’s eyes move to him properly this time. “You will not speak for the archive.”
“No,” he says. “I’ll carry the box.”
That lands better than any declaration would have.
“Fourteen hundred,” Serr repeats. “Miss the window and the review pauses until next cycle.”
The projection dies.
I stare at the empty air where she was.
“Well,” I say.
Rhyx picks up his mug. “That could have gone worse.”
“It’s seven in the morning. Please don’t tempt fate.”
The rest of the morning is logistical, which is somehow worse than panic because logistics always means the bad thing is real enough to need a schedule.
I shower. Dress. Rebraid my hair with hands that only shake once. Print a physical route seal because apparently I’m old enough now to distrust purely digital access on principle. Pull the encrypted copies into a transport partition and then stare at the cabinet for a full thirty seconds before opening it.
The folio is exactly where I left it. Matte black. Innocent-looking in the way only bureaucratic horror can be.
When I bring it to the table, Rhyx looks up from his own comm slate.
“Still ugly?” he asks.
“Somehow more so.”
“That seems rude.”
“I agree.”
He closes his slate and reaches for his coat. “We should go.”
The city outside is wetter, brighter, and somehow more abrasive than yesterday’s memorial weather. The streets shine under washed daylight. Public screens along the transit lanes cycle through reform headlines, memorial recap segments, Senate denials, and one truly spectacularly smug legal commentator insisting the League is “proving the resilience of democratic wartime conscience,” which nearly makes me walk directly into oncoming foot traffic out of spite.
Rhyx catches the back of my elbow and steers me away from a courier skimmer with the kind of understated efficiency that suggests he has accepted my self-preservation instincts are decorative.
“You almost died because of a commentator,” he says.
