37. Jordan #2
Morazin shakes his head violently, then winces in pain. “No. I won’t say the name on-air without—”
Lonari’s voice is immediate, lethal. “Without what?”
Morazin’s eyes dart. He’s calculating survival math with blood loss fogging his brain.
“Without a guarantee I don’t die in the next ten minutes,” he snaps.
I lift my compad again, the biometric trigger interface glowing like a threat.
“You’re already dying,” I say. “So here’s your guarantee: if you die, the world gets the name anyway.”
Morazin’s face contorts. “You don’t have the name.”
I smile, cold. “Not yet.”
His eyes widen in sudden understanding. “You’re going to pull it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Live.”
Because if I say the name myself, they can call it fabrication. They can call me compromised.
But if I pull the councilor’s trail—procurement, finance, routing approvals—on stream, in front of millions?
Then the system has to fight in the open.
And systems hate sunlight.
I pivot hard, adrenaline making my hands steady in a way that feels unreal.
“Clint,” I bark into my earpiece, “I need the council-tier roster mapping for High Command security liaison authority. The ones with civilian oversight routing privileges.”
Clint’s voice is a strangled sound. “Jordan, that’s—”
“Now,” I snap.
His breathing is frantic. “Okay—okay—give me a second.”
I open my own channels—Kaijen archives, the dead-man packet, the procurement trails I decrypted earlier. I start building a live cross-correlation on screen, pushing it into the public feed as a split panel beside Morazin’s bleeding face.
The moderator starts protesting. “Ms. James—this forum—”
“This forum is already under attack,” I cut in, voice like steel. “So we’re done pretending there are rules that protect us.”
Lonari watches me, eyes dark, and I can feel his concern underneath his approval. He’s thinking about civilians. About retaliation. About the shielding plan holding by its fingernails.
But he doesn’t stop me.
He asked for leverage.
This is leverage.
On the public feed, a new window blossoms: PROCUREMENT TRAIL ANALYSIS — LIVE.
It’s messy, fast, but readable. Lines connecting shell companies to Alliance armories.
Approval codes routed through “civilian oversight committee.” Now I overlay the sniper telemetry registry stamp—High Command security unit.
Chat goes insane. People are screen-capping. Mirroring. Sharing. The evidence is spreading faster than any censorship can chase it.
Clint’s voice comes back, shaking. “Jordan… there are only three councilors with that authority.”
“Send them,” I say.
“I can’t send names,” he whispers. “Executive block—”
“Then send me the non-name identifiers,” I snap. “Office codes. Procurement signature fragments. Anything that isn’t redacted.”
Clint swallows hard. “Okay. Okay.”
Data pings into my terminal: three high-level office signature patterns, each associated with a councilor role—still redacted, but the structure is there.
I slam them into my live cross-match.
The system crunches for a heartbeat.
Then one candidate lights up.
A procurement signature fragment that matches the “civilian oversight committee” loop and the sniper registry routing and matches the liaison node embedded in the Nine agent’s dead-man packet.
The screen flashes.
SIGNATURE CORRELATION: 94.7% CONFIDENCE
ROLE: ALLIANCE HIGH COMMAND — COUNCIL SECURITY LIAISON (EXECUTIVE OVERRIDE CLASS)
ROUTING AUTHORITY: CRUISER CAPTURE PROTOCOL / CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT LOOP
My breath catches.
The name field is still a black bar.
But the structure is screaming.
I feel it before I fully understand it—the shape of the betrayal, the architecture of it. This isn’t a rogue colonel. This isn’t a mid-level operative skimming weapons off the top.
This is council-tier authorization.
This is someone who sits at a table where wars are prevented and chooses instead to weaponize the prevention mechanism itself.
“Jordan,” Clint whispers, voice thin with dread, “you’re about to implicate a sitting High Command Councilor.”
“I’m about to implicate a routing structure,” I correct, even as my pulse thunders. “If they want to step forward and deny it, they can do it in daylight.”
Lonari’s gaze shifts to the split-screen data, then back to Morazin. He doesn’t look surprised.
He looks like someone who expected rot and is finally seeing how deep it goes.
Morazin stares at the live cross-match with something like horror.
“You’re actually doing it,” he breathes.
“Yeah,” I say. “You don’t get to gatekeep this anymore.”
The moderator’s voice cracks through the noise. “Ms. James, you are making extraordinary allegations against Alliance High Command—”
“I’m making documented correlations,” I snap. “The extraordinary part is that someone thought this would stay buried.”
I expand the highlighted candidate signature on the public feed—showing the procurement approval stamps, the civilian oversight routing loops, the cross-jurisdiction encryption handshake. I annotate in real time, my voice steady even though my skin feels too tight for my bones.
“Here,” I say, pointing to the screen, “is the armory shipment authorization used in the safehouse assault. Here is the civilian oversight committee routing tag that allowed it to bypass standard military audit. And here—” I pull up the sniper telemetry registry— “is the weapon that just tried to kill our witness, registered to High Command security.”
The chat feed is no longer coherent. It’s a storm.
Somewhere in High Command, someone is either hyperventilating or already drafting my obituary.
Clint’s voice drops to a whisper. “Jordan… this isn’t going to trigger a quiet response.”
“It was never going to be quiet,” I say.
Morazin coughs again, wincing as the medic seals the wound with a stabilizing foam. His eyes lock onto mine.
“You think you’re brave,” he says hoarsely. “You’re just loud.”
“Loud works,” I reply.
His lip curls faintly. “You still don’t have the name.”
I look at him carefully.
“You’re going to give it to me,” I say.
Morazin shakes his head weakly. “You’ll get me killed.”
“You’re already on a sniper’s list,” I shoot back. “So let’s stop pretending silence is safety.”
Lonari steps slightly into frame—not blocking me, not overshadowing, but present. Protective without stealing the moment.
Morazin looks between us.
His fear is no longer abstract. It’s immediate. He just felt the bullet. He saw the live feed spike. He knows that whoever authorized that shot is watching.
His voice drops to a rasp.
“They won’t forgive this.”
I lean in closer, lowering my tone so it feels intimate even though the camera is still rolling.
“Good,” I whisper. “I’m not asking for forgiveness.”
The moderator swallows hard. “Mr. Valeer… for the sake of clarity… you have indicated a council-level authorization. Are you prepared to identify the individual responsible?”
Morazin’s eyes flick upward, as if he can see the council chamber in his mind. The polished table. The quiet nod that set this in motion. The confidence that no one would ever trace it back.
His breathing stutters.
Lonari’s voice is low, even. “This is the part where you decide what kind of man you are.”
Morazin gives a broken laugh. “You think I have that luxury?”
“No,” Lonari replies. “I think you have this moment.”
Silence stretches.
Outside, through my peripheral feeds, I see Gur still holding. The riots contained. The transit corridors flowing. Power dips stabilizing under Kaijen reroutes. Fyr’s channel quiet but steady.
Strategy over rage.
Inside, this is the war.
Morazin closes his eyes briefly.
When he opens them, the arrogance is gone. Not replaced by nobility—just by a grim, exhausted clarity.
“It’s a sitting Alliance High Command Councilor,” he says slowly. “Security liaison authority. They authorized the cruiser capture cover-up through the civilian oversight loop to avoid escalation inquiries.”
The moderator presses, voice shaking. “Name.”
Morazin hesitates.
I feel the biometric trigger in my hand like a heartbeat.
“If I say it,” he whispers, “there’s no coming back.”
I meet his gaze.
“There never was,” I say.
He inhales sharply.
And then—
The building shudders.
Not a dip.
Not a flicker.
A concussive shock that ripples through the Nun’s substructure like someone just punched the city in the ribs.
Alarms spike.
Sable’s voice explodes in my ear. “External blast near Industrial Ring! Controlled charge—non-lethal but high-impact!”
Diversion.
Pressure.
Make the hearing look like the cause of chaos.
Morazin flinches at the vibration, eyes wide.
“They’re escalating,” Clint breathes.
“Good,” I say through clenched teeth. “So are we.”
I look back at Morazin.
“Name,” I say again.
He stares at me like I’m insane.
Maybe I am.
But I’m not backing down.
Morazin’s lips part—
And then—
A priority channel cuts through every feed at once.
Executive override.
Not a jammer.
Not interference.
A sanctioned insertion.
The screen flickers, and for a split second, the council-tier liaison channel watermark flashes across the lower corner of the stream—subtle, but I see it.
So does Clint.
“Oh no,” he whispers.
The moderator’s display glitches, then stabilizes.
A new window begins to open.
Incoming statement request.
High Command channel.
Live.
They’re not hiding.
They’re stepping into the feed.
Lonari’s eyes meet mine.
This just got bigger.
I feel the air in my lungs go thin and electric.
We pulled the thread.
And now the fabric is moving.
Morazin’s eyes are wild.
“You see?” he breathes. “You see what happens when you get close?”
I don’t look away from the incoming channel.
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
Then I lift my chin.
“Let them talk.”
The world is still watching.
And this time, so am I.