I also chose to erase civilian accountability so thoroughly that the dead became a statistic and the living became a story.
Now, that story is accelerating toward sentencing because Selene filed a memo about a corrupted file, because she dared to name sabotage where institutions prefer to call it malfunction. The tribunal is rushing to close its fist before the evidence can slip through its fingers.
And Selene—young, furious, too disciplined to collapse—keeps digging anyway.
I have seen her only in glimpses since the broadcast, but those glimpses have been enough. In the chamber, she stands at the projection console with her shoulders squared, her voice clipped, her eyes bright with contained rage, and she refuses to become what the Senate wants her to be. Outside the chamber, in the audit logs and the procedural memos and the whispered rumors that filter even into custody, her name keeps appearing alongside words likeconcernandintegrityandirregularity, while the Holonet keeps trying to nail her to a headline.
Emotionally compromised.
Biased.
Neutrality risk.
She receives the same kind of institutional pressure that once pressed on me, but she does not have a fleet behind her, and she does not have a Coalition advocate assigned to her protection. She has only her clearance badge, her discipline, and a grief the Senate wants to weaponize.
She is risking career and safety without institutional cover, and the tribunal is letting her do it because if she breaks, they can call it proof that she never belonged.
I run my claws along the edge of the terminal’s housing, feeling the minute vibrations of the device. It is warm from use, the only warmth in this room besides my body, and the sensation is strangely grounding.
“Dammit,” I whisper, because there is no other word for the moment when you realize your martyrdom has become someone else’s target.
Pellorin’s voice echoes in memory—You cannot carry all of this alone—and I realize I have been using that line as a justification to do exactly the opposite. I carried it alone because carrying it alone meant no one else had to bleed for it.
Except they already are bleeding for it.
Selene is.
And if I keep sitting in custody performing noble silence while she gets crushed under the tribunal’s accelerated machinery, then my original bargain becomes the worst kind of cowardice: not sacrifice, but convenience dressed in virtue.
I activate the terminal’s communication interface. It is limited, heavily monitored, and designed to discourage anything outside procedural necessity. The categories are polite, the options narrow, the language prim.
I search until I find the channel I need: diplomatic counsel relay—Coalition liaison office, restricted use.
A warning blooms across the screen:
All outgoing communications are subject to tribunal monitoring. Unauthorized disclosures may result in additional charges.
I stare at the warning and feel something inside me harden.
“Add it to the pile,” I mutter.
I open a message and begin composing, my claws moving carefully across the projected keys.
To:Coalition Liaison Office — Diplomatic Counsel Channel
From:Rhyx Varos — In Custody, League Tribunal
Subject:Authorization Request — Limited Release of Withheld Fleet Communication Fragments (Kirell Window 13:50–14:10)
My fingers pause.
This is the line. Once crossed, it cannot be uncrossed. The Coalition has held fragments of fleet communications under classified seals, partly to protect operational methods, partly to preserve the ceasefire narrative, partly because everyone in power agrees that the safest truth is the one that stays buried.
Releasing anything will be interpreted as escalation.
But not releasing it will be interpreted as consent to the lie.
I keep typing.
