Silence is how corridors shift.
I press send.
The memo transmits.
For a moment, the vault hum seems louder, as if the building itself has noticed I just kicked the hornet’s nest.
I stand, straighten my jacket, and look once more at the corridor map hovering in pale blue above the projection table. Somewhere in that twelve-minute seam is the truth that Vol’s clearance touched the lives of tens of thousands, and someone powerful enough to erase vault logs just told me, without words, that I’m close enough to matter.
My chest tightens.
Not with fear.
With resolve sharpened by grief.
“Alright,” I whisper into the cold air, my voice steady now, almost calm. “You want to play dirty? Cool. I grew up in the aftermath. Dirt doesn’t scare me.”
And then I turn away from the corrupted file and head back into the tribunal’s bright halls, carrying the municipal telemetry like a secret blade beneath my ribs, because if the official record can be broken, then the truth has to live somewhere else long enough to bite back.
CHAPTER 8
RHYX
Recess in a tribunal is not rest; it is merely the moment when the knives are sharpened off camera, when people inhale, adjust their masks, and decide how much blood they can afford to spill without staining their own hands. The chamber doors have barely sealed behind the procession of robes and escorts when the air in the adjoining corridor thickens with whispering clusters, the low hiss of compads opening private channels, and the soft mechanical glide of broadcast drones repositioning for whatever drama comes next. Even here, beyond the central dais, the building feels like it is still being watched, because it is, and the quiet hum of surveillance fields runs through the walls the way a ship’s vibration runs through bone.
They guide me through the recessed hallway with practiced choreography, binders humming at my wrists, tribunal officers flanking me with the polite wariness reserved for dangerous animals that have been trained not to bite. The corridor is all brushed alloy and inset lighting, designed to look calm while functioning as a pressure valve for institutional panic. The air tastes faintly of antiseptic and old stone, a sterile tang thatcannot quite mask the smell of too many bodies moving too quickly.
Pellorin walks at my shoulder, his mouth set in a line so tight it looks painful, his eyes flicking constantly toward the security drones as if he expects them to grow teeth. He leans in without turning his head, voice low.
“You just made enemies on three committees,” he murmurs.
“I did not come here to collect friends,” I reply, and the words are blunt because my patience for softness has been burned out of me.
Before he can answer, a tribunal aide appears at the far end of the corridor, face pale, compad clutched like a life raft. She sees me, hesitates, then approaches Drax’s office door and disappears inside with the quick, furtive motion of someone delivering poison.
Pellorin’s gaze follows her. “Something happened.”
I feel it too, the shift in the air, the way certain staff suddenly look away when they see me, the way whispers tighten and then break off like snapped wires. I do not need prophecy. In war, you learn to read microfractures before they become breaches.
I angle toward Drax’s office, and the officers tighten subtly, ready to redirect me, but I stop just far enough from the door to make it clear I am not asking.
“I need to speak with the High Arbiter,” I say.
One officer’s expression remains neutral. “You may submit a request through counsel.”
Pellorin’s jaw tightens. “He is counsel.”
The officer’s gaze flicks briefly toward Pellorin, then back to me. “During recess, the High Arbiter is unavailable.”
I lean forward just slightly, letting my height and mass do what the League thinks it needs partitions to prevent. “Then make her available.”
The officer hesitates, and in that hesitation I see the truth: they are not afraid I will hurt Drax. They are afraid I will make her answer.
The door opens before the standoff can harden.
Drax stands in the doorway, her robe immaculate, her expression the same controlled austerity she wears in session, though I can see the faint tightness around her eyes that suggests she has been awake too long and has not been allowed the courtesy of pretending.
“Commander Varos,” she says, voice flat. “This is highly irregular.”
