Page 238 of Reaper Said Mine

“You sounded terrifying.”

“Good.”

“You also looked like you wanted to crawl through the screen and bite someone.”

“That was restraint.”

“Very proud.”

My compad remains silent.

Gnash does not message again.

That silence becomes its own kind of presence as evening settles over New Boston. We publish the treaty analysis. We publish the intervention-risk explainer. We publish the third evidence packet tying Combine shell movements to manipulated distress claims, and the public reaction fractures into more pieces than we can track.

Some people call me brave.

Some call me compromised.

Some call me the only sane voice in the crisis.

Some call me a Reaper’s pet, a Coalition asset, a traitor, a grief-addicted opportunist, a woman too emotional to understand war, and a woman too cold to understand victims.

Public perception shifts, but it does not shift cleanly. It never does. Respect grows beside suspicion. Recognition grows beside hatred. My evidence becomes harder to dismiss even as my motives become easier to attack.

Dawson appears on IHC-Now at dusk and says, with grave concern, that “personal proximity to power can distort even talented journalists.” I have to leave the room before Bellamy can see my face because I am afraid I might ask Milton whether murder is ever defensible as commentary.

I end up alone in the narrow corridor outside the annex office.

The carpet muffles every step. The overhead lights buzz faintly. Rain ticks against a small window at the far end of the hall, and the city beyond it glows in wet streaks. My reflection looks pale, hollow-eyed, older than twenty-four. For years I wanted people to stop seeing the girl from Horus IV when they looked at me.

I wonder whether she understood war better than I do.

At twelve, I knew who was bleeding and who was lying.

Now everything is clauses, factions, partial truths, strategic necessities, and men I love making choices I can explain but cannot forgive quickly.

My compad vibrates.

I nearly drop it.

Gnash.

A text this time.

Evacuation continues. Protectorate corridors holding. Alliance plans reached our feeds. Theryki says your treaty analysis is inconvenient. Skahar says your anger improves your prose.

I stare at the words until my vision blurs.

Then another message appears.

I am still here.

No apology.

No defense.

Just that.