Chapter 15
SELENE
The archive chamber after hours is a different country than the archive chamber under tribunal daylight; the lights dim to a lower, more honest register, the ceiling panels shifting from crisp white to a cooler glow that leaves long, soft shadows in the seams of the walls, while the storage columns keep humming their steady, subterranean song as if they never learned the difference between day and night, between public righteousness and private rot.
My boots sound louder in the emptiness, each step echoing against alloy and composite, and the air tastes faintly of chilled metal and dustless filtration, so clean it feels like the building is trying to scrub away whatever I’m about to do.
I’ve been here so long the console’s surface has warmed slightly under my palms, a small living heat against the lab’s cold, and my eyes ache from staring at lines of light that represent people who once had weight and breath and names spoken aloud by someone who loved them.
The casualty overlays float above the central table in layered sheets—manifests, vectors, exposure models, artillery arcs—each one a translucent veil pulled over the last until the whole thing becomes a cathedral of math built over a grave.
“Okay,” I whisper, not because the room needs reassurance, but because I do. “One more.”
The projection responds to my voice print, expanding outward as I pinch and drag the orbital grid wider, widening the slice of Kirell’s upper atmosphere until the corridor line becomes a thread stretched across a sea.
The blast radius overlay blossoms into view like a bruise spreading under skin: concentric gradients of probability, the outer edge faint and uncertain, the inner core a dense red that leaves no room for optimism.
I bring the twelve-minute seam into sharp focus again—13:57 through 14:09—then expand the blast radius at 14:06, 14:07, 14:08, watching the kill geometry tighten like a fist.
The model I built earlier—the one that shows forty-three percent increased exposure—updates as the grid expands, filling in the empty spaces with additional telemetry and corrected shield-buffer boundaries.
When the convoy perimeter layer flickers at the edge of my interface, I keep it minimized, not because I’m ashamed of it, but because I’m tired of seeing that elegant gold line next to the blood-colored exposure zones; it feels obscene to let it glow.
I open the redirected corridor manifest and search the segment identifiers until my tongue goes numb from not speaking, and then there it is again, the same line I found in the vault the first day and kept trying to pretend I could handle without flinching.
Shuttle 447-A.
Corridor extension C-23.
Redirected segment: C-23-Delta.
My parents.
Tomas Ardent. Lysa Ardent.
Their names don’t appear with drama or flourish; they sit there in the manifest like any other entry, letters and numbers pretending to be neutral. The cruelty of that neutrality makes my throat tighten.
“Hi,” I say softly, to nobody, to the projection, to the dead, to the part of me that still expects them to answer. “I found you again.”
I expand the projected blast radius one more increment and isolate C-23-Delta, highlighting the segment in pale violet while everything else dims, because if I don’t make the world smaller I’ll drown in it.
The corridor line bends, and the artillery arcs intersect it exactly where the model says they do, and the exposure gradient around that segment blooms into a saturated red that makes my stomach roll hard enough I have to pause and breathe through it.
The nausea is sharper tonight than it has been, a sudden wave that rises from nowhere and makes the air taste wrong, metallic and sour, and I clamp down on it the way I clamp down on everything else, my hands gripping the console until the cold bites.
“Not now,” I mutter. “You do not get to knock me over right now.”
I focus on the visual, not the feeling, because visuals are controllable.
I pull up the corrected path overlay and watch shuttle 447-A’s telemetry line shift at 14:01, the vector adjustment clean and coordinated, the vessel obeying its guidance update like a trusting animal following a leash, and then I watch it enter the hazard envelope it never should’ve touched.
My chest tightens, and for a moment I can almost hear my mother’s voice, gentle and annoyed, telling me to stop hunching over screens, telling me to eat something that isn’t ration gel, telling me the war doesn’t get to take my posture too. The memory is so vivid my eyes burn.
I blink hard, and the projection remains.
I’m still here.
They’re still dead.
And somewhere above this chamber, senators are arguing about “diplomatic urgency” while a tribunal accelerates sentencing to outrun its own evidence.
I straighten slowly, and the movement makes the nausea flicker again, a warning tap against my ribs. I ignore it and keep working, because the only way I know to survive grief is to turn it into something sharp enough to cut through lies.
A soft hiss at the chamber door interrupts me.
I freeze, fingers hovering above the console.
The door opens, and the cold air shifts, bringing in the faint scent of security field ozone and the muted sound of boots in the corridor.
Two tribunal officers step inside first, their posture rigid, eyes scanning the room.
Behind them, Rhyx Varos enters with measured restraint, his binders emitting that faint blue shimmer that makes my teeth grind, because even now, even here, the building insists he be packaged as danger.
He looks larger in the dimmer light, his scales catching faint highlights like wet stone under moonlight, the old scars along his shoulders and forearms pale against the dark.
His gaze lands on the projection above the table immediately, and I watch his attention tighten, the way a predator’s attention tightens, not hungry but focused.
“Liaison Ardent,” one officer says, voice formal. “Supervised review. Limited duration.”
“Yeah,” I answer, and the casualness in my tone is a small act of defiance. “I know how clocks work.”
The officer’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t respond. He steps back to the door and remains there, a silent anchor of surveillance.
Rhyx approaches the projection table slowly, and the closer he gets, the more I feel the room change around him, like gravity shifts subtly when a larger body moves near.
He stops at the edge of the projection field, eyes scanning the corridor line, the isolated segment, the blast radius gradient that stains the air red.
He exhales once, slow, and the sound is low enough to feel more than hear.
“That’s… recalculated,” he says.
“Yes,” I reply, my voice steady. “Expanded blast radius, corrected for convoy shield perimeter clearance.”
His head tilts slightly. “You went outside scope.”
“I live outside scope,” I say, and I hate that my voice shakes on the last word, because I’m tired and nauseated and furious and carrying too many secrets.
Rhyx’s gaze flicks to me, sharp. “You’re unsteady.”
“I’m fine,” I snap automatically.
His eyes narrow, the same look he gave me in the prep room when he called my bluff. “You’re not fine.”
I swallow hard, and the swallow hurts, because my throat is tight with everything I haven’t said.
“Look,” I say, gesturing to the projection because evidence is easier than confession, “this segment—C-23-Delta—this is where shuttle 447-A gets redirected. The model shows the corridor shift increases exposure by forty-three percent overall, but in this segment it spikes even higher because of the intersection with the artillery arc.”
Rhyx stares at the segment, and I watch his hands tighten slightly against the binders, the energy field humming a little louder as it responds.
“447-A,” he repeats, voice low.
“My parents,” I say, and the words are simple, brutal, and they hang in the air like smoke.
He goes very still.
For a heartbeat, neither of us speaks. The storage columns hum. The projection glows. The officers at the door breathe quietly, pretending they’re not listening while listening to everything.
Rhyx’s voice is quiet when it comes. “Selene…”
I flinch at my name in his mouth, not because it’s intimate, but because it’s human, and human is what this building keeps trying to grind out of us.
“Don’t,” I say sharply. “Don’t you dare do that soft voice thing at me. I didn’t invite you down here for sympathy.”
His gaze holds mine, steady, heavy. “Then why did you invite me?”
“I didn’t invite you,” I reply. “You were assigned a supervised review. You showed up.”
He glances briefly toward the officers, then back to me, and I see something in his eyes that feels like recognition of the trap we’re both in.
“Fine,” he says quietly. “Then talk to me like you’d talk to the record.”
I laugh once, short and bitter. “The record doesn’t get nauseous.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I regret them, because they’re a crack, and cracks let people see inside.
Rhyx’s gaze sharpens. “Nauseous.”
I press my lips together and feel heat climb into my face. “Forget it.”
“No,” he says, voice firmer. “You’ve been pale for days. You almost swayed in chamber. You went to medical.”
My stomach drops. I hadn’t told him. I hadn’t told anyone.
“How—” I start.
“I watch,” he replies simply. “I pay attention.”
The officers at the door shift slightly, as if sensing the conversation turning personal, but they don’t interrupt.
I inhale slowly, tasting chilled air and the faint ozone scent from Rhyx’s binders.
“Okay,” I say, and my voice is careful now, too careful. “You want the record? Here’s the record.”
I step closer to the projection table and tap the console to lock the overlays, freezing the corridor segment in place as if I’m pinning a butterfly for examination. Then I turn to face him fully, shoulders squared, hands flat on the console edge so he can see they’re steady even if I’m not.