Of the corridor.
Of standing in surrender and believing the cleanest thing I could do was let the lie finish with me.
I was wrong.
Not about the danger. Never about the danger.
About the available choices.
The window is cool under my fingertips. Outside, a breeze lifts the loose leaves in the courtyard and turns them silver-green for a second before they settle again. Astera makes another small protesting sound. Selene shifts her, one hand under the baby’s head, the other broad and sure across the tiny spine, and says something that makes Astera still.
I know that rhythm too.
That is not instruction.
That is witness.
My slate vibrates once more on the desk behind me—residual archived channel warning, likely the final closure confirmation catching up through old system lag. I go back to the desk and open it.
The military archive tree is gone. In its place: a small final note attached to the closure packet.
Historic communications retained under sealed civilian archive request. Reactivation impossible.
Good.
I open the archive controls one last time.
Rows of old channels appear. Theater command, sector relay, strategic triage feeds, encrypted ship-to-fleet histories, emergency doctrine review boards. Dead worlds in menu form.
I select all.
A warning appears asking if I wish to permanently close personal access to historic military communication streams.
Yes.
Another warning. Irreversible.
Yes.
My thumb hovers only long enough to recognize the weight.
Then I confirm.
The list vanishes.
No fanfare.
No grief fit for music.
Only the quiet certainty that I no longer belong to those voices and they no longer belong in the walls of this house.
I stand there for a long moment with the now-dark slate in my hand.
Then I set it down, finish the tea in three slow swallows, and go outside.
The air meets me warm and carrying all the ordinary scents of a lived afternoon—sun-heated stone, damp soil, a little laundry soap from somewhere over the fence, the faint peppery trace of the herb bed trying to become respectable. The sky above the courtyard is a clean late-blue. No threat in it. Just weather.
Selene looks up as I step onto the path.
