Weapons don’t lower yet. But theyhesitate—the first crack in their certainty.
I feel her fingers brush mine behind her back. Just a whisper of contact. Enough to tether me. To remind me I don’t have to tear the station apart to survive anymore.
They scan the station logs. They speak with the survivors. They test the fungus still smeared across Ciampa’s lab walls and crystallized in storage.
And then… the questions change.
Not “what are you?”
But “whathappened?”
Jillian speaks for us.
Clear. Calm. Commanding.
She tells them the truth—every twisted bit of it. The spores. The song. The infection that turned their science mission into a cult hive. She doesn’t spare Ciampa. Doesn’t flinch from describing how far gone he was.
And she tells them about me.
Not the war. Not the charges.
Not the bones I left behind on half-dead moons.
But what Ididhere.
What I chose.
They listen. Some frown. Some shake their heads. Some look at me like they’re still trying to decide if I’m savior or weapon.
That’s fine.
So am I.
Three days later, I’m in a chair built for someone smaller, sharper, more easily contained.
The tribunal is smaller than I expected. Just four officers, their uniforms still creased from fresh fabricators. Behind them, holo-screens glow with footage from the last week—Ciampa’s madness, the infected collapse, the battle in the crystal chamber.
And Jillian.
Over and over.
Holding the line.
Saving lives.
And holdingmyhand beneath the table.
The highest-ranking among them, an admiral with snow-white hair and sandpaper eyes, leans forward.
“You could’ve left,” he says. “You had an escape route. A functional starfighter. No legal obligation to intervene. Why didn’t you run?”
I meet his gaze. “Because she didn’t.”
He exhales like he doesn’t want to smile—but does anyway.
“You saved more lives than some of our own ever did,” he says at last. “That’s a hard thing to ignore.”
My claws curl slightly against the chair arm.
