“You look like you want to throw up,” I murmur, low enough to sound like procedural concern rather than intimacy.
Selene’s mouth tightens. “I’m fine.”
I don’t challenge her in front of the officers, because arguing about her body in a monitored room would be handing Vol a handle. Instead I nod slightly, as if accepting a report.
“Show me what you’ve got,” I say.
She doesn’t hesitate. “I bypass the prosecution summaries,” she replies, voice steady, and taps the console to expand a directory tag that makes my stomach tighten even before I understand it:Strategic Doctrine Materials.Then she opens a subset and keeps her tone dry. “There’s a framework tied to Vol’s clearance code.”
I keep my face still, but my pulse jumps.
Selene flicks her eyes briefly toward the officers, then back to the projection, and her voice remains clinical. “It outlines calculated civilian exposure as a tool for maintaining long-term political cohesion. It includes modeling tables projecting acceptable casualty thresholds under convoy shielding conditions.”
For a moment, the room seems to tilt, not physically, but morally, because hearing it said aloud in this clean tribunal space makes the concept obscene in a new way. I think of Vol’s calm voice in the corridor—war is calculus—and I realize the calculus has a name and a table and a set of signatures.
“Do you have it?” I ask softly.
Selene’s fingers move fast, efficient. “Not the content,” she says, careful. “The vault is monitored. But I have metadata headers and cross-references. Creation stamps, revision chains, signatory tags. Enough to prove it exists and that Vol’s clearance is threaded through it.”
I exhale slowly, tasting cold air. “That’s enough to force disclosure.”
“It’s enough to force a question,” Selene corrects, and her eyes flash. “And questions are dangerous in this building.”
I look at the officers, then back to her. “We’re out of time for safe.”
Selene’s jaw tightens. “Agreed.”
I lean slightly closer to the console, keeping my hands visible. “Here’s what we do. In the next broadcast session, we don’t try to drag the entire doctrine into open air all at once. We force the tribunal to acknowledge the existence of the file set and the modeling tables, on record, while Coalition fragments are entering evidence intake. If they deny the file exists, we trigger independent validation through municipal cache storage—your redundancy.”
Selene nods once, sharp. “I already routed the headers to independent storage.”
My chest tightens with something like fierce gratitude. “Good.”
She looks at me, and her voice drops just a fraction, still controlled but more human. “Vol knows.”
I feel my jaw clench. “He told you.”
“He offered protection,” she says, voice flat, the word protection sounding like a curse. “Medical immunity. Career elevation. Security. All of it, if I shut up.”
My hands curl into fists inside the binder constraints, and the hum grows louder. I force my fingers to relax. “And you refused.”
Selene’s eyes burn bright. “Obviously.”
A faint shift in her posture suggests nausea, a tiny tightening at the corner of her mouth, and I hate the building for making her endure this while it calls itself just.
“We keep this procedural,” I say quietly. “We don’t mention your personal risks. We present it as evidence integrity: doctrine file set exists, tied to Vol’s clearance, contains acceptable casualty thresholds under convoy shielding. That forces Drax to either expand inquiry or openly restrict truth on air.”
Selene’s lips press together. “And if she restricts it, the public sees it.”
“And the Coalition sees it,” I add. “And their oversight clause becomes harder to dodge.”
Selene nods again, then tilts her head slightly. “You think Drax will crack.”
“I think she’ll try not to,” I reply. “But I also think she can’t outrun this forever. Not with log fragments going public and fleets shifting posture. The tribunal can rush sentencing, but rushing starts to look like cover, and cover is what they fear most.”
Selene’s gaze flicks to the door, then back. “Security is tightening. They’re restricting movement. If they suspect I have doctrine metadata, they’ll try to isolate me.”
My voice stays steady, but something hard settles in my chest. “Then we don’t let them isolate you.”
