Page 38 of Claimed By the Wraiths

Mid-fifties, trim, silver at his temples. Clean uniform with no insignia, no rank markers. The military showed only in his posture: straight-backed, deliberate, every motion considered.

His eyes were calm and intelligent and patient.

“Ms. Corren. Please, sit.”

The room was a conference space. Polished table, comfortable chairs, that viewport showing nothing but stars and void.

No guards inside. The door closed behind me.

Just him and me and the kind of furniture that said this is a conversation between equals.

I sat. The chair was comfortable. That was deliberate too.

“I apologize for the manner of your arrival,” Vain said. “The team at Meridian was overzealous. I would have preferred a conversation.”

“We’re having one now.”

“We are.” He settled across from me, hands folded on the polished table. “You accessed a restricted diplomatic routing network with Devan Tal’s credentials. You arrived under an identity dormant for more than a decade. And you are connected to the people who have been dismantling my relay structure.”

He watched me.

“I want to understand what you thought you were doing.”

Three thousand people in cells seemed self-explanatory.

I didn’t say it.

Vain already knew what I had done. The only safe answers were conclusions his own evidence had already given him.

“We were building authenticated evidence.”

“The relay raids.”

“Intelligence.”

“And Tal’s access?”

“Authentication through Consortium infrastructure.”

He nodded once. “So the accusation cannot be dismissed as fabrication by hostile actors.”

He had reached that conclusion without me.

Good.

“You think you found a trafficking operation,” he said.

“I found people being shipped under false authorizations.”

“That is the logistical layer.”

There it was.

Not denial. Reclassification.

“You were raised in diplomatic service,” he continued. “You understand what happens when governments encounter a capability before they have language for it. Moral objection comes first. Policy comes second. Procurement comes third.”

“You want me to admire you.”