Page 218 of Reaper Said Mine

A shaky laugh escapes me.

Bellamy looks over. “Good news?”

“Maybe.”

I type back.

Tell Skahar I expect that on a review blurb.

Gnash replies almost immediately.

He says he charges by the insult.

I smile despite everything, and the room feels briefly less airless.

Then another alert flashes across the display.

Independent Holonet Review has published the second packet.

The shell freighter footage.

The response is immediate and violent.

Feeds surge. Commentators shout. Officials issue statements filled with careful nothing. Hashtags fracture into competing narratives. Dawson appears again on IHC-Now looking less polished than before, while the network chyron quietly shifts from REAPER AGGRESSION CRISIS to QUESTIONS EMERGE IN BADLANDS ESCALATION.

Bellamy sees it and points at the screen.

“They moved the chyron.”

I stare.

I think of Gnash reading casualty names beneath red light. I think of Reaper children in painted schoolrooms and refugees packed into corridors. I think of Horus IV, of my mother, of Dawson telling me the galaxy did not change because I streamed the dead.

Maybe the galaxy does not change all at once.

Maybe it changes when one lie loses its footing.

Maybe it changes when the next person refuses to look away.

I turn back to the evidence wall with my pulse steadying and my fear still present, still sharp, still honest.

“Get the third packet ready,” I say.

Bellamy’s tired grin returns. “Which one?”

I look at the Coalition compact language, then the Alliance containment doctrine, then the casualty reports from Reaper holdings that make every strategic abstraction taste like blood.

“All of it,” I say. “If they want monster theater, we’re showing them the whole damn stage.”

Outside, Neo Boston’s afternoon light burns against the blinds. Inside, every screen around me fills with proof, pressure, and the first faint signs that people are beginning to ask the right questions.

Somewhere far away, Gnash is still surrounded by impossible choices. I cannot make those choices for him.

But I can make sure the people who built them have nowhere left to hide.

CHAPTER 28

GNASH