“You do not owe me anything,” I say quietly.
She lifts her chin. “Good. Because I’m not paying.”
A faint, unexpected warmth flickers in my chest at the stubbornness in her tone, and it is not hope—hope is too fragile for this room—but something close to respect.
As the escort guides me out, the corridor lights smear into pale bands in my peripheral vision, and the hum of the binders returns to its steady rhythm, reminding me with every step that the tribunal has me contained. Yet behind me, in that cold bright lab, the twelve-minute seam still glows on the projection table, and now it is not only my private wound; it is a question lodged in Selene’s disciplined mind, sharpened by grief, and that question has teeth.
CHAPTER 7
SELENE
The municipal emergency archives live beneath the capital the way guilt lives beneath a smile: out of sight, unglamorous, and stubbornly necessary.
I find the access corridor after midnight, because that’s when the tribunal complex is at its least theatrical, when the marble halls stop performing righteousness for cameras and return to what they really are—machinery. The lights in this lower wing are dimmer and more practical, throwing long soft shadows along the composite walls, and the air feels different here, less perfumed with polished stone and more honest, carrying the faint damp scent of recycled water and old circuitry. My boots make a quieter sound, as if even my footsteps know they’re trespassing into the part of the world that isn’t meant for broadcast.
A municipal archivist meets me at the door to the emergency repository, her hair pinned back in a sloppy knot like she didn’t expect to be seen by anyone with a tribunal badge. She looks me up and down with that peculiar mix of resentment and curiosity civilians reserve for anyone who works for an institution that claims to speak for them.
“Tribunal?” she asks, voice flat.
“Yes,” I reply, holding up my clearance. “I need evacuation shuttle telemetry from Kirell. Municipal emergency caches.”
She squints at my badge as if she might be able to smell lies through the laminate. “That’s… old.”
“Yeah,” I say, and I let the colloquial softness through because it’s late and I’m tired and there’s no point pretending I’m not human. “So are most ghosts. They still talk.”
She snorts quietly, like she’s trying not to be charmed. “You got authorization?”
I bring up the directive on my compad, the one stamped by tribunal authority under Transparency Reform provisions, the ink digital but still heavy with the implied threat of consequences. She scans it, then looks at me again, and her eyes land briefly on my name.
Ardent.
Recognition flickers, so quick she probably thinks she hid it.
“Oh,” she says, almost under her breath.
I keep my face still. “Yeah. That.”
Her expression tightens. “You okay to do this?”
It’s not kindness. It’s not a pity. It’s a sincere question asked by someone who has seen too many people break apart in these rooms.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
She holds my gaze for a beat, then gestures toward the inner door. “Come on. Don’t touch anything unless I tell you. These systems are… touchy.”
“Story of my life,” I mutter, and she gives a short, reluctant laugh.
The emergency repository is colder than the tribunal vault, but in a different way. The tribunal vault is cold because it is meant to preserve; this place is cold because nobody wanted to spend money making it comfortable. Rows of storage columns stand like skeletal trees, their indicator lights blinking inirregular patterns as if they’re dreaming. The ceiling is lower, the walls less polished, and the hum of the servers is louder, more insistent, the sound of data surviving in spite of neglect.
The archivist keys in a code and a projection console flickers awake, its interface older, clunkier, stubborn in the way municipal tech always is. She slides into the chair and gestures at me. “What exactly are you looking for?”
“Civilian shuttle telemetry,” I say. “Path corrections, timestamps, anything stored independent of military command logs. I need the twelve-minute window after the initial evacuation order.”
The archivist raises an eyebrow. “You mean when everything went to hell.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That window.”
She taps at the console, her fingers moving fast in practiced familiarity. “Most people who come down here want casualty lists. Names. Closure.”
