14:09 — Corridor Collapse.
I lean forward slightly, studying the progression. My pulse remains steady, but there is a narrowing behind my eyes that I cannot entirely suppress.
“Expand the interval,” I say.
The officer taps the interface. The blocks widen but do not deepen.
“The prosecutorial reconstruction reflects the issuance window,” she says carefully.
“It omits twelve minutes.”
Her gaze flickers to the display, then back to me. “The recalibration is encompassed within the command sequence.”
“It was not my recalibration.”
She hesitates. “The prosecution asserts that as commanding officer, you retained responsibility for all vector adjustments.”
I feel something tighten along my spine, not anger but something colder.
“Show me the raw log excerpt used to construct this timeline.”
“You will have access to full materials during supervised evidentiary review.”
Her tone is neutral, but I see the calculation behind it. They have compressed the moment into something smoother than truth.
“Very well,” I say.
She deactivates the projection and steps back. “You have restricted access to public archive materials. Communications are monitored.”
“I assumed they would be.”
When the door seals behind her, the room contracts into quiet.
I activate the terminal myself and pull the newly unsealed archive audit logs. Transparency Reform has pried open files that have remained sealed since the ceasefire, and the system is still indexing access records in real time.
Names scroll past in ordered columns—legal architects, senior analysts, oversight auditors.
Then I see it.
Ardent, Selene.
Junior Archival Liaison.
Accessed: Kirell Evacuation Corridor — Raw Command Logs.
Flagged: Timestamp variance — 14:01 recalibration.
My hand stills above the projection field.
She flagged it.
I expand the entry and read the annotation attached to her audit marker.
“Authorization discrepancy. Requires independent verification.”
I close my eyes briefly, not in fatigue but in recognition. During the siege, casualty summaries were delivered to my command console every twelve hours, compressed into impersonal data blocks. I trained myself to scan for patterns rather than dwell on names, because to linger would have been to fracture. Even so, certain surnames threaded through the summaries more than once, and Ardent had been among them.
I access the civilian registry and enter the name.
