The political factions have begun issuing statements.
You can feel it in the room—the subtle increase in tension, the way people sit straighter, the way prosecutors glance toward the broadcast drones as if calculating how their words will land on a billion screens. Somewhere beyond this chamber, senators are already shaping narratives: Coalition outrage, League defensiveness, tribunal neutrality in question, the word ceasefire hanging over everything like a storm cloud.
Drax raps her hand once against the bench, the sound sharp. “Order.”
The chamber stills, but only barely.
She looks down at the petition, then back at Thane, then at Pellorin, then finally at me, her gaze steady and heavy.
“The tribunal will take this motion under advisement,” she says, voice carefully controlled. “The prosecution’s scope objection is noted. The defense’s relevance claim is noted. We will recess for procedural review.”
Thane looks satisfied; delay is a weapon.
Pellorin looks strained; delay is also danger.
I feel the binders hum as I tighten my hands again, because the chamber’s clean narrative is cracking, and everyone can hear the sound.
As the recess is called, the broadcast drones adjust, eager to capture reactions, and I know—without needing any new audit log—that the moment Selene’s request was “corrupted” in the vault was not an isolated act. It was the first move in a tighteningspiral of containment, and by naming Vol aloud in open session, I have forced the spiral to accelerate.
Pellorin leans close as officers prepare to escort me out again. “This is going to blow up.”
“Good,” I murmur, and the word is not triumph so much as exhaustion sharpened into resolve. “Let it blow. I’m tired of quiet explosions that only kill civilians.”
He closes his eyes briefly, then opens them again, resigned. “You’re impossible.”
“I know,” I say, and despite everything, a faint grim humor touches my voice. “Write that in the record too.”
The escort tightens around me, and as they guide me down the corridor I can already hear the distant roar of the Holonet outside the tribunal walls, public opinion igniting like a brushfire fed by senators and strategists and all the people who were never in that corridor but love to claim its dead.
Somewhere in the building, Selene is staring at a corruption flag that reeks of sabotage, and now—whether she wants it or not—her twelve-minute seam has become a political fault line.
And I have just stepped on it hard enough to make the ground shake.
CHAPTER 9
SELENE
The memo interface hangs in the air above my desk like a confession waiting to be signed, its blank fields crisp and unforgiving beneath tribunal-white light. My fingers hover over the projected keyboard for a long moment, not because I don’t know what to write, but because I know exactly what writing it will do; once you name sabotage inside a machine that survives by pretending it cannot be sabotaged, the machine either swallows you or tries to make you look insane.
Outside my office pod—if you can call a glass-walled cubicle with a locking door an office—tribunal staff move in brisk, anxious patterns, their voices muffled by privacy fields but still detectable in the small rises and falls of tone that signal panic. The building smells of warmed circuitry and over-brewed stimulants, the bitter tang of coffee clinging to recycled air like an accusation. Somewhere overhead, broadcast drones reposition, their stabilizers whispering, because even administrative hallways have become part of the show now.
I do not look up.
I type.
To:High Arbiter Solenne Drax — Office of Tribunal Authority
CC:Internal Ethics Review Panel; Evidence Chain Oversight
Subject:Internal Concern Memo — Evidence Integrity Irregularity / Unlogged Maintenance Window / Secondary File Corruption
Case:Kirell Evacuation Corridor — Varos, R.
I force myself to keep the language dry. Not because I feel dry, but because dry language is armor.
Summary:Secondary archive confirmation file retrieval (approved under tribunal authority) was rendered unavailable via “corruption” flag following an unlogged overnight maintenance override. Audit trail indicates anomalous access permissions spike within maintenance interval, and supporting log data is unavailable. The sequence suggests deliberate tampering with evidentiary chain.
My jaw aches from how hard I’m clenching it.
