37. Jordan
JORDAN
The camera light is a small, pitiless sun.
It bakes everything into permanence—the blood on Morazin’s shirt, the tremor in the moderator’s hands, the way Lonari’s body is angled between the witness and the world like a damn fortress with a pulse.
The stream chat is a waterfall of disbelief and rage and emojis that make me want to scream, but the numbers in the corner keep climbing.
Millions of eyes. Millions of witnesses.
And somewhere out there, the person who just tried to silence Morazin is watching too.
Morazin’s breathing is ragged. The medic’s hands press gauze hard into the wound. It’s not a kill shot, not quite—high shoulder, near collarbone. A message shot. A shut up you can survive.
If you’re lucky.
If they don’t take a second.
I taste copper—my own adrenaline, my own bitten tongue—and my compad is already in my hands. I’m not thinking about whether my fingers are shaking. I’m thinking about the line the bullet traveled, the signature it left behind, the telemetry it whispered into the air.
Because every weapon talks.
You just need to know how to listen.
“Jordan,” Lonari murmurs, close to my ear without blocking the mic, “what do you need?”
His voice is steady, but I can feel the tension in him—an animal held back by will. He wants to hunt the shooter. He wants to tear the room apart until he finds the source.
I want that too.
But I want something worse.
I want proof.
“Five seconds,” I whisper back. “Keep him breathing. Keep him on camera.”
Lonari’s jaw tightens. “Already.”
The moderator tries to reclaim the narrative, voice cracking. “We are—uh—we are experiencing a security incident. Please remain—”
“Don’t,” I snap, sharp enough that the mic catches it. I don’t care. “Don’t you dare tell people to stay calm when someone just tried to execute a witness live.”
The moderator blinks at me, pale, then nods like a chastised child.
Morazin groans, and his eyes roll toward me. For a second the arrogance is gone. There’s only animal fear.
“They’ll—” he rasps. “They’ll finish it.”
“Not if you talk,” I say, low.
He gives a wet, bitter laugh. “You still think words save you.”
I don’t answer him. I turn my compad to the security overlay Lonari’s team feeds me—internal maintenance lines, camera loops, door access logs.
Then I switch to the thing the Nine never respects enough:
Telemetry.
“Clint,” I say, voice tight, “I need the shot signature. Now.”
Clint’s voice hits my earpiece, breathless. He’s watching from a back channel, not on camera, because he’s not built for public spectacle. He’s built for quiet wars.
“I’m pulling it,” he says. “Jordan, that was a clean shot—”
“Yeah,” I hiss. “It was.”
My compad pings as a file drops into my sandbox: a burst pattern, an energy discharge profile, a micro-timing jitter unique to the weapon’s regulator. Like a fingerprint made of light.
I expand it across my screen and my stomach goes cold so fast it feels like someone poured ice water into my veins.
Because I know that profile.
Not personally. Not intimately.
Institutionally.
Alliance-issued energy rifle telemetry is standardized in a way that makes it efficient to service and easy to audit—unless the person auditing is the same person hiding the report.
The bolt profile has a signature prefix: a regulator handshake that says who issued it, who owns it, what unit it’s registered to.
A polite little metadata halo around murder.
And there it is.
ALLIANCE ARMORY REGISTRY: ACTIVE
UNIT: HIGH COMMAND SECURITY (HCSU)
STATUS: IN SERVICE
I blink once, hard, like my eyes might be lying.
They’re not.
“Clint,” I whisper, and my voice sounds wrong to my own ears, “the weapon is Alliance-issued.”
A beat of silence.
Then Clint’s voice cracks. “No.”
“Yes,” I say. “And it’s registered to High Command security.”
Lonari turns his head slightly, eyes narrowing. He doesn’t ask me to repeat it. He heard the shift in my tone. He knows.
Morazin hears it too.
His eyes widen, and something ugly flickers across his face—vindication. Horror. Relief that he wasn’t crazy.
“Told you,” he rasps.
I ignore him and keep digging.
Because one data point is a spark. Two is a fire.
I pull up the dead-man packet from the captured Nine agent—the jaw implant file Lonari dragged out of the tunnels like a prize.
I’ve already been chewing on its outer layers in the background, like a dog with a bone.
The header tags are encrypted, but the routing scaffolding?
The scaffolding is always where human arrogance hides.
I cross-match.
Telemetry signature on one side. Dead-man packet liaison channel on the other.
My compad hums as it compares handshakes, key-exchange formats, timing pulses.
The screen flashes:
MATCH FOUND: LIAISON CHANNEL IDENTIFIER CONSISTENT
ROUTING: AHC LIAISON NODE / CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE LOOP
My mouth goes dry.
Same liaison channel.
Same bridge.
The sniper’s weapon isn’t just Alliance-issued. Its communication handshake uses the same hidden corridor as the Nine agent’s dead-man packet.
Which means this isn’t theft.
This isn’t the Nine stealing a rifle off the back of a truck and hoping nobody notices.
This is coordination.
High Command isn’t just infiltrated.
Someone inside High Command is actively working with them.
The nightmare truth blooms fully formed, and I feel it settle into my bones like gravity.
I look up at the main camera and for a second, the world feels too bright.
Millions of eyes.
One redacted name.
A bridge built to prevent war, hijacked to restart it.
Lonari’s voice is low, dangerous. “Jordan.”
I swallow. “It’s the same channel.”
His eyes sharpen. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the Nine didn’t just infiltrate High Command,” I say, and my voice comes out steady by sheer spite, “someone in High Command is coordinating with them.”
The moderator hears enough to flinch. The chat overlay spikes into a frenzy. I can feel the internet—holonet, whatever we call it—reacting like an animal sensing blood.
Clint’s voice hits my ear again, panicked now. “Jordan, no—no, you can’t say that like that.”
I almost laugh.
“I just did,” I whisper back.
Clint’s breath is frantic. “You don’t understand. If this points above Dowron—if this points council-tier—then the response won’t be ‘investigation.’ It’ll be eradication. They’ll erase you. They’ll erase Lonari. They’ll erase the whole hearing.”
“I understand perfectly,” I snap. “That’s why we’re live.”
Clint sounds like he’s shaking. “Jordan—”
“Clint,” I cut in, softer for half a second, “breathe.”
He tries. Fails. “This is bigger than us.”
“No,” I say. “It’s exactly us. It’s what happens when we don’t shut up.”
Morazin coughs, and the medic swears quietly as the wound seeps again.
Morazin’s eyes are glassy. He looks like he’s balancing on the edge of shock.
And then he does the thing that makes me want to throw him into a furnace even while he’s bleeding.
He smirks.
“You’re so close,” he whispers. “And you still don’t know how power works.”
Lonari’s hand flexes on the edge of the cover panel. He wants to slam Morazin’s head into the table. I can feel it radiating off him.
I lean closer to Morazin so the camera catches my face clearly, so the world sees exactly who I’m speaking to.
“Morazin,” I say, voice low and sharp, “finish your testimony.”
Morazin’s lips part. “Immunity.”
I feel something in me go cold.
“No,” I say.
His eyes flick wildly. “Then I don’t—”
I cut him off. “You don’t get to hold the truth hostage anymore.”
He laughs wetly, pain making it ugly. “You can’t force me.”
I glance at his monitor feed—heart rate elevated, blood oxygen stable for now, stress markers spiking.
Then I bring up the biometric trigger interface on my compad.
A simple screen. A single toggle.
PUBLIC-RELEASE TRIGGER: ARMED
CONDITION: WITNESS BIOMETRIC FAILURE OR TAMPERING DETECTED
EVIDENCE DUMP: GLOBAL
I angle it so the camera can catch the general shape of what I’m holding without reading the exact code. Just enough for the world to understand: there’s a detonator, and my finger is on it.
Morazin’s eyes widen.
“You wouldn’t,” he whispers.
I meet his gaze with no warmth at all.
“Oh, I absolutely would,” I say. “If you die, the evidence releases anyway. The world burns anyway. The only thing you control is whether you’re alive when it happens.”
Morazin stares at me like I’ve finally spoken his language.
Bargaining.
Leverage.
Mutual assured destruction.
His breathing stutters. “They’ll kill me if I name—”
“They’re already trying,” I snap, gesturing at his blood. “What’s your plan? Die quietly later? At least die loud.”
Lonari’s voice drops in beside me, calm as a grave. “Speak.”
Morazin flinches at that—at the absolute certainty in Lonari’s tone, like this room belongs to him more than it belongs to governments.
The moderator swallows, voice trembling. “Mr. Valeer… for the record… you have stated the existence of ‘High Lantern.’ Are you prepared to identify the individual or office responsible?”
Morazin laughs once, cracked. “Office. Always an office.”
Jordan, my brain screams. Stay on timeline. Keep him on the hook.
I lean in.
“Morazin,” I say, “who authorized the cruiser capture cover-up route?”
His eyes flick to me, sharp despite the blood. “That’s… not what you asked.”
“It’s what you can answer without turning yourself into confetti,” I reply. “Who signed that route. Who made the disappearance possible.”
Morazin swallows hard. His smirk is gone now. Only fear, and the faint glimmer of a man realizing he has no exits.
He closes his eyes for a second.
Then he spits it out like poison.
“An Alliance High Command Councilor,” he says, voice raw. “Council-tier. Security liaison authority. They authorized the capture cover-up route through the civilian oversight loop.”
The chat overlay explodes.
The moderator stammers. “Name the councilor.”