I attach the vault audit excerpt. The timestamp. The maintenance window anomaly. The corruption flag screenshot. I add the note about the system health diagnostics spike, because patterns matter, and I refuse to let anyone wave it off as “entropy” without having to explain why entropy follows clearance protocols.
At the end, I add a single sentence that feels like stepping off a ledge.
Request:Immediate inquiry into maintenance authorization, associated personnel clearances, and restoration attempts; preservation of remaining evidence chain to prevent further compromise.
My thumb hovers over SEND.
My compad vibrates on the desk, a soft pulse against metal.
I ignore it.
I press send anyway.
The memo transmits with a small chime that sounds far too cheerful for what I’ve just done.
For a moment, the room feels too quiet, the kind of quiet that comes right before someone decides whether to applaud or shoot.
I exhale slowly, tasting metal at the back of my throat, and only then do I glance at my compad.
It’s not another media alert this time.
It’s tribunal-wide communications.
TRIBUNAL NOTICE:Due to public interest and diplomatic urgency, the tribunal will implement an accelerated procedural timeline. Sentencing phase scheduling will be advanced pending evidentiary review.
I stare at the words until they blur slightly, as if my eyes are refusing to cooperate with the reality my brain is processing.
Accelerated.
Public interest.
Diplomatic urgency.
It’s dressed in polite language, but it reads like a threat:shut up, hurry up, and stop poking at the rot.
A laugh escapes me, short and sharp, more bark than humor.
“Of course,” I mutter. “Of course you’d speed-run justice the second someone points at the evidence vault.”
The glass wall of my cubicle reflects my face back at me—too pale under tribunal lighting, eyes too bright, expression caught between fury and disbelief. I force my shoulders down, force my breathing into something resembling calm, because if I look like I’m spiraling, I’ll hand them the exact narrative they want.
Emotionally compromised.
Unstable.
Remove her.
I stand abruptly, chair scraping softly against the floor, and the sound makes a passing staffer glance my way. She looks away fast, like I’m contagious.
I leave the pod and head toward the secured corridor that leads to custody review suites, moving fast enough that my boots strike sharp, controlled echoes against the marble. The tribunal complex is awake now, fully awake, and it feels like walking through the belly of a beast that has decided it might have swallowed something dangerous.
As I move, compads flicker in hands around me, people whispering, some with excitement, some with fear. A legal clerk mutters to another, “Sentencing’s being moved up—” and the other replies, “They’re trying to stop the bleed—” and then they see me and shut up.
Good.
Shut up.
Let the silence choke you.
