“Yeah,” I whisper. “It took.”
The green indicator on the main screen slides to red. One after another, encryption keys unfold like blooming iron flowers, and suddenly the room fills with code. I canfeelit—each packet slamming outward through Alliance intranet relays, thousands of lines of Tarek’s falsified orders unspooling into the channels he thought were buried.
A hum becomes a hiss. Then alarms.
The deck lights explode to amber, pulsing like a wounded heartbeat. Across the upper displays, system logs cascade:FLAGGED: SECURITY BREACH?/?WATCHDOG PROTOCOL ENGAGED.
My mouth goes dry. “Oh, hell.”
Drel spins his chair toward me. “Rynn, you tripped Black-Tier oversight. That’s central command stuff?—”
“I know what it is.” My voice cracks. “Pull the feeds before?—”
Too late.
The overhead speaker cuts in with that cold, female voice every soldier learns to hate.
“Internal anomaly detected. Alliance AI?Cynosure now assuming control.”
Every console locks. Every light sharpens to sterile white.
And then—his name.
TAREK?VALIS?—?FLAGGED?FOR?INVESTIGATION?/?CODE?SEVEN.
His voice follows, spliced and broadcast through the open channel logs.
“Initiate bounty authorization Delta-Nine. Civilian targets classified hybrid. Proceed with retrieval?—”
The recording loops. The same cold tone, the same arrogance. Over and over.
Drel’s face drains of color. “They’re airing his voice on the secured net.”
“Good,” I say, even though my hands are shaking.
“Good? Rynn, the watchdog doesn’t differentiate. It’ll lockallof us down. We need to?—”
The deck doors slam open.
Vael bursts in, armor half-latched, eyes burning gold under the strobes. The siren light glints off the metal under his skin. He doesn’t ask what happened; hefeelsit.
“The whole station’s on alert,” he growls. “Command’s in meltdown. Tarek’s files went public?”
“Every dirty line.” I yank the data core from the console, jam it into my pocket. “He’s finished.”
“Then why’s no one celebrating?” Drel mutters.
Because I know the Alliance. They don’t celebrate truth—they contain it.
Overhead, the alarms deepen in pitch. A synthetic voice booms through the speakers:
“Containment lockdown in T-minus sixty?seconds. All personnel report to designated safe zones.”
Vael’s gaze snaps to me. “We have to go. Now.”
“Through where? Every upper hatch is sealed.”
He jerks his chin toward the service access behind the bio-lab partition. “Emergency tunnels. They run under the reactor wing to the southern pads.”
