Chapter 13
KRISTI
Ipace the perimeter of my apartment like it’s a cell.
Twenty-two steps from the window to the bookshelf, seventeen back to the kitchen counter.
I’ve counted. Recounted. Rearranged the armchair twice.
Still, the loop pulls me back like gravity.
Each pass scrapes something raw inside me.
Every time my heel hits that creaky tile near the wine rack, I hear his voice again.
“You can’t fix a bullet after it’s fired.”
I said I was sorry. Quietly, pathetically, like an apology whispered through a locked door. But sorry doesn’t undo what I did. Intent doesn’t matter when you're holding the match that burned down someone's home.
The comm pad on the table lights up again—an empty pulse. I’ve sent three messages. The last one was two lines long.
Kenron—Please. Just talk to me.
Read: No. Delivered: Yes.
No response.
I drag my hands down my face and exhale so hard it rattles my ribs. Then I grab my coat.
The air is colder than it should be for this district.
It bites. I take the lift to the street level and ride a railcar in silence.
The buzz of city light doesn’t soothe tonight—it stings.
I walk the rest of the way to the restaurant.
It's just past dusk. The signs are lit, the windows glowing gold.
I’m not dressed for a visit. No formalwear, no badge, just a long coat and the bags under my eyes.
Kiv opens the door halfway.
“Hi,” I say. I smile, weak but hopeful. “I was just hoping—”
Her gaze slides right through me.
“We’re not taking walk-ins.”
I blink. “Kiv, it’s me.” I laugh, nervous. “I’m not exactly—”
“Not tonight, Kristi.”
Her tone is quiet. Final. Like a lid being closed over something dead.
I try to speak, but the door shuts before I can finish.
I stand there for a second, hands in my pockets, the warmth of the restaurant bleeding out through the glass. People inside are laughing. Eating. Living.
I turn and walk back to the station. I don’t cry. Not out here. Not where the air tastes like sour concrete and the neon hum won’t let you forget how artificial everything is.
At home, the silence is unbearable.
I talk to no one. Not even myself. I just… move.
Pour a drink. Don’t sip it. Pour another. Let it sit.
I open the zoning proposal again and stare at the lines that razed a hundred dreams. My name is still there on the roll call vote. Proud black ink. Immutable.
I slam the tablet shut and shove it off the table.
Later, I try to sleep. My sheets feel like paper. My body doesn’t settle. I toss, turn, kick off the covers, crawl back under. My mind won’t shut up.
You smiled when he kissed your wrist. You stayed quiet when they gutted his life.
The next day is a blur. I cancel two meetings. Dennis calls twice—I don’t answer. I make tea, let it go cold.
That night, a ping hits my comms.
A live protest feed.
Novaria Prime. Outside the Ministry.
I almost ignore it.
Then I see the name.
Kenron Sarai, featured speaker.
I open it.
The camera is shaky, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere.
He stands at the edge of a platform, flanked by elders and organizers, and he’s wearing full ceremonial Vakutan armor.
Black and silver, layered with history and weight.
The chestplate catches the light like fire.
A sash is tied at his waist in the mourning knot. My breath catches.
He doesn’t need a microphone. His voice is thunder.
“We are not contaminants! We are not intrusions! We built this district with our hands, our fire, our sweat!”
The crowd explodes. The chant rises—his name, over and over.
“You want to erase us? You will have to drag our names from the walls with blood!”
My heart beats like a war drum.
I lean closer to the screen. He’s radiant. Fierce. Alive in a way I haven’t seen since before the vote. His eyes are molten gold.
And none of that fire is for me.
He doesn’t glance at the camera. Doesn’t say my name. Doesn’t even look like he remembers it.
But I feel it.
In every syllable, in every note of righteous fury—he’s putting distance between us.
And the worst part is…
I get it.
I lean back, let the tablet fall to the floor, and close my eyes.
If I were him, I’d never look back either.
The compad blinks on and off like it’s mocking me, casting its ghost-light across my apartment.
It’s been two days since I watched him lead that protest—two days since I heard the crowds roaring his name while I sat alone in a room with the blinds drawn and the sound muted.
Irrationally, I keep expecting to hear from him. A message. A scream. Anything.
Nothing.
So I stop pacing and start digging.
There’s no big cinematic moment. No gust of wind or lightning bolt.
Just a sour prick of dread in my gut as I sit at my terminal and pull up the public archive system with trembling fingers.
I know the districting amendment by heart at this point.
I should’ve memorized it before I voted.
But now? Now it’s burned into the back of my skull like a brand.
I pull it up again anyway.
Zoning Packet 1397. Legislative Summary: Approved.
I scroll past the formal summary. Past the talking points I’d recited in interviews. Past the “neutral descriptor language” that someone spent months scrubbing clean of sentiment.
I need to know why. Why was Dennis so insistent on this specific grid? Why the rush?
I dig deeper, bypassing the summary and going into the budget allocations. It’s boring work. Dense. The kind of thing aides skim over.
But I’m not skimming tonight.
I find a sub-clause regarding “Infrastructure Maintenance.” Standard stuff, usually. Piping. Electrical. Waste management.
But the numbers are wrong.
The allocation for “Sanitation Upgrades” in the Alien Quarter is massive. Astronomical. Ten times the budget of the Human District’s equivalent.
I frown, leaning closer. Why would they pour that much money into a district they’re trying to squeeze out?
I click the budget line item to expand it.
Access Restricted.
I blink. That’s odd. Budget allocation is public record.
I try my secondary clearance—the one I used when I was acting as Dennis’s proxy during the drafting phase.
Processing…
A new window pops up. The sanitation budget isn’t routing to municipal services. It’s routing to a Department of Defense sub-contractor.
Code: 31C-Alpha.
“What the hell?” I whisper.
I try to click the code identifier. I need to know what 31C-Alpha is. I need to know why the military is funding a sanitation upgrade in a civilian restaurant district.
I click.
The screen cuts to black.
Then red.
Authorization denied. Login flagged for administrative review. Unauthorized activity has been logged.
A high-pitched whine builds in my ears.
My hands start shaking. This isn’t some procedural note. This is a lockout. A warning. My own system credentials—credentials I’ve had since I was sixteen, built around the trust my father left me—are gone. Scrubbed.
I sit there with my fingers hovering over the keys, chest so tight I can’t breathe in fully.
They locked me out.
The second I touched that budget line, the system slammed the door on my fingers.
This wasn’t just politics. This wasn’t just gentrification or bigotry wrapped in zoning laws.
This was a trap.
I pull back from the desk, heart pounding.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay. Think.”
I try to open a side archive database. No luck. My clearance has been retroactively altered. That alone is illegal. Someone’s scared enough to bury a legal trail deep enough to take careers with it.
My uncle’s amendments.
His insistence that I push the measure through quickly.
His offhand comments about being “battle ready.”
And now, military funding hidden in sewer repairs.
I don’t know what they’re building. Or hiding. But I played my part in it.
Me. The good little analyst. The one who thought she could do damage control by reading the fine print and asking the right questions. I didn’t read deep enough. Didn’t ask loud enough.
“I helped them strip people’s lives for… something,” I whisper.
I don’t know what yet. But the silence from the terminal screams that it’s worse than I imagined.
I stand up and rake my nails through my hair, pulling until it hurts. A sharp smell of ozone and burned circuits hits my nose—the archive system automatically purging my session.
It’s too quiet in here.
I throw my coat on the couch.
No. Not the coat.
The coat reminds me of the nights I wore it to see him. Of stepping into that restaurant like I belonged. Of sitting across from him and pretending I understood what the stakes were.
I grab my bag. My data chip kit. An old, faded hoodie with paint on the sleeve—my father’s.
I need to get out. I need to see the files. The real files. Not the digitized, scrubbed versions Dennis lets the public see.
I need the physical archives.
And if my digital keys are gone… I’m going to have to find another way in.
I catch the elevator and ride it down twelve floors, heart hammering. I’m halfway to the shuttle terminal when I see him.
Dennis.
Tall, chrome suit, slick smile.
He’s outside my building, talking with a security officer. The man points at something on a datapad. They laugh.
I press myself into an alcove.
Dennis turns, eyes scanning the parking strip.
He doesn’t see me.
But his words carry, unnecessarily loud.
“Lock access tight until the vote cycle closes. Anyone who pokes around gets flagged for interview. No exceptions.”
My stomach drops.
I back away.
Slowly.
Quietly.
And run.
By the time I hit street level, my chest’s on fire.
There’s a newsfeed glowing from a wall-screen nearby.
The protest’s airing again.
I force myself to watch.
Kenron’s voice is thunder through static. His jaw’s set, his armor catching light. Flame-colored banners whip behind him. The crowd roars.
And for just a breath, the world pauses.
Because there he is.
Alive.
Untouchable.
Not mine.
He lifts his chin at a chant I can’t make out. I think it’s his name. Or maybe the district’s. His mouth moves in a half-smile that hurts worse than any silence.
He belongs to them now.
Not to me.
My messages are still unanswered.
My door visits go nowhere.
And every second I used my privilege to keep quiet, he used fire to keep them alive.
I hitch a ride on a public transport rail and drop onto a sidewalk miles away from home. I dig out a redundant access point login chip—a relic from my internship days far before the Senate. I jack in from an old entertainment kiosk.
Nothing.
The lockout is total.
My own name is a dead key card now.
I’m an exile in my own world.
And the truth isn’t hiding anymore. It’s just behind a door I can’t open with a smile and a signature.
I breathe in cold air. I breathe out smoke.
“I’m done apologizing in text,” I say to nobody.
The kiosk boots me out with a beep.
I tuck the chip into my pocket.
Time to stop hiding.
Time to find a way to fix what I broke—even if it burns down everything I believed in.
Even if I have to break into the one place I swore to protect.
I turn my collar up against the wind and head toward the Old District. Toward the physical vaults.
It’s time to see what Dennis is really hiding.