The word rings strangely in my head, because my body has just rewritten the definition of it without consulting my plans.
They escort me back into the tribunal corridor, and the air feels different now, not because it changed, but because I did. Every scent—antiseptic, coffee, polished stone—feels sharper. Every sound—the whisper of drones, the click of boots, the hum of security fields—feels closer. The world has become painfully tangible, as if my senses are trying to anchor me against the shock.
I walk anyway.
When I reach the archive lab, the projection table awaits, Kirell still rotating, the convoy vector still glowing faint gold beneath the corridor line like a secret artery.
I stand at my station and rest both hands on the console, feeling the cold metal steady me.
“You don’t get to do this to me,” I whisper, not sure if I mean the tribunal, the war, Admiral Vol, or my own body.
The projection doesn’t answer, but the data remains.
Convoy shield perimeter.
Corridor shift.
Forty-three percent increased exposure.
If I let myself think about the pregnancy too long, my knees might buckle, so I don’t. I tuck it into the same compartment where I keep grief, fear, and the constant awareness that my name is being chewed on by senators like meat.
Later, I tell myself. Later I will process it. Later I will panic. Later I will decide what it means.
Right now, I have a corridor to prove and a record that someone is actively trying to break, and if they think they can rush sentencing before the truth surfaces, they are about to learn that I can run on anger and discipline longer than they can run on optics.
I reopen the model output and encrypt it twice, then begin drafting the next internal submission, my fingers steady despite the tremor that keeps trying to rise in them.
Outside the lab doors, the tribunal continues to hum, to watch, to reposition its cameras and its politics and its urgency.
Inside, I keep working, because whatever is growing inside me does not erase what was destroyed over Kirell, and if anything it makes the need for accountability sharper, because I am suddenly, horrifyingly aware of how small a life is, and how casually institutions move them around like pieces on a board.
CHAPTER 12
RHYX
The preparation room the tribunal assigns me is not a room so much as a controlled contradiction, an attempt to mimic the privacy of strategy while ensuring no strategy can truly breathe. The walls are a dull composite gray, the lights softened just enough to suggest humanity without granting comfort, and the air is scrubbed so clean it tastes like metal left too long in rain. A terminal is embedded in one wall with a restricted interface that pretends to offer agency while carefully fencing the edges of what I can touch, and a projection table sits in the center like an altar for evidence that has already been blessed—or cursed—by institutional hands.
Selene stands across from me at the console, sleeves rolled just enough to make movement easier, braid tight, posture hard, her eyes fixed on the corridor overlays with a concentration that would be admirable if it did not look like a form of self-harm. The pale holographic line of the evacuation vector floats between us, and the convoy buffer layer—faint gold, predatory in its elegance—flickers at the edge of the display before she minimizes it again, as though even allowing it to exist in the air is a violation.
Two tribunal officers linger by the door, their presence framed as security but functioning as pressure, and the recording node in the ceiling hums a low, constant note, reminding us that every syllable is being stored for future weaponization.
Selene drags the timeline marker toward 14:01, then stops with her fingers hovering a fraction above the interface. The pause is small, almost nothing, but I have spent enough years watching bridge crews die without screaming to recognize the subtle moments when focus fractures. Her breath catches slightly, her shoulders stiffen, and for a heartbeat the corridor line seems to shimmer as if the air itself is uncertain.
“Ardent,” I say quietly.
Her jaw tightens. “Commander.”
“We are not in session,” I reply, keeping my voice low enough that it feels like a private thread in a room designed to deny privacy. “And you just blinked like the floor moved.”
Her gaze snaps to mine, sharp and defensive. “I’m fine.”
I do not allow myself the impulse to press too gently; gentleness is a lie here, and lies are what we are trying to kill. “You’re not fine. You lost focus on the overlay, and you don’t lose focus. That’s your whole thing.”
Her eyes narrow. “My whole thing is procedure.”
“Your whole thing,” I counter, “is control, and control is starting to slip.”
One of the officers by the door shifts slightly, attention sharpening, but Selene’s posture doesn’t change. She turns back to the projection and slides the timeline marker forward, as if movement will erase my question.
