Back in tribunal territory,the corridors feel sharper, more monitored, as though the building itself has become suspicious. Security drones glide overhead, lenses tracking movement. Staff glance at me and then look away too quickly. My compad vibrates every few minutes with new media alerts—senators talking, pundits speculating, my name wrapped in commentary like barbed wire.
I ignore them.
I file my request for secondary confirmation from the central evidence vault with deliberate calm, hands steady over the interface. The petition is procedural, neutral, boring on purpose.
Request: Secondary archive confirmation file — Kirell corridor recalibration authorization chain.
Purpose: Evidence reconstruction under Transparency Reform provisions.
Priority: High.
The system pings.
Status: Approved. Retrieval scheduled.
A small exhale leaves me.
Approved means someone in the chain hasn’t yet decided to kill it.
I log out, lock my workstation, and force myself to go home—if you can call a tribunal-issued dormitory room “home.” The sheets smell like industrial detergent. The walls are too white. The silence is too complete. I sleep in fragments, waking every hour with Kirell’s corridor line glowing behind my eyelids and Vol’s name stamped across it like a bruise.
When morning comes, the capital’s light is pale and indifferent. I return to the evidence vault early, before the building fully wakes, because urgency feels safer when fewer eyes are watching.
The vault doors open with their usual mechanical sigh, the cold air spilling out like breath from a tomb.
I move straight to the retrieval console, heart hammering once as I input my authorization code.
“Retrieve a secondary confirmation file,” I command, voice low.
The console pauses.
Then a red warning blooms across the projection field.
FILE STATUS: CORRUPTED. UNAVAILABLE.
I stare.
The words don’t make sense at first. My brain tries to interpret them as a glitch, a formatting error, a system hiccup.
Then the meaning lands.
Corrupted.
Unavailable.
My skin goes cold.
“No,” I whisper, and the sound is small, almost childlike. “No, no, no.”
I stab at the interface. “Run integrity check.”
The system responds with a cheerful chime that feels obscene in this moment.
Integrity Check Complete: Data corrupted beyond recovery.
I feel heat surge behind my eyes, hot enough to burn, but I don’t let tears fall. Tears would be satisfying. Tears would be a release. I don’t get releases.
I get procedure.
