The words hit like a physical blow, not because they are new, but because hearing them aloud in her voice gives them shape.
“I know,” I say quietly.
“You don’t,” she snaps back, and then she stops, presses her lips together, breathes once, and her voice returns to controlled cadence like a door slammed shut. “Sorry. That’s not— That’s not helpful.”
“It is helpful,” I reply, because I want her anger. I want it sharp and honest. “Anger is clarity. Let it sharpen your questions.”
She looks at me, startled by that, then shakes her head faintly. “You Vakutans are insane.”
A faint, grim humor rises in me despite everything, and I let it show only in the smallest softening of my mouth. “That is not news.”
She huffs once, almost a laugh, though it dies quickly. Then she gestures toward the timeline again, businesslike. “Okay. After the corridor collapses, after the ceasefire—what happens to your logs?”
I feel something hard settle in my chest.
“After the ceasefire,” I say, “the League requested a joint reconciliation process. They framed it as transparency, as healing. Coalition command agreed, because everyone was exhausted and desperate to believe in peace.”
Selene’s eyes narrow. “And?”
“And they confiscated my internal fleet logs,” I continue, keeping my voice steady despite the pressure behind my ribs. “They said it was for auditing, for shared historical accuracy. They took my bridge recordings, tactical feeds, command authorization strings, everything. They promised a return after review.”
“And they never returned them,” she says, not a question.
“No.”
The word tastes like rust.
Selene’s fingers curl briefly against the edge of the console. “So the only logs left are the ones the League decided to give back.”
“Yes.”
“That’s convenient as hell,” she mutters, and the colloquial bluntness feels like a small act of sanity in this antiseptic room.
“It was not convenience,” I reply softly. “It was strategy.”
Selene’s gaze locks on mine. “You’re saying they scrubbed you.”
“I am saying,” I correct, “that my logs vanished into a process designed to produce a palatable history.”
She exhales slowly, then shakes her head. “And you just… accepted it.”
I hold her gaze. “I was under Coalition house arrest. The ceasefire was fragile. Every faction was armed and waiting for justification. I could either accept the narrative or ignite another war with a suspicion.”
Selene’s expression hardens. “So you chose martyrdom.”
“I chose containment.”
“Call it what it is,” she says, voice low. “You chose to die with a lie in your mouth because you thought it would keep the peace.”
The words are brutal, and they deserve to be.
“Yes,” I admit.
The recording node hums softly, capturing my confession with indifferent precision.
Selene looks away first, not because she is defeated, but because she is thinking too hard, and thought has weight.
When she looks back, her eyes are bright in the projection light. “What do you want from me, Varos?”
