She takes in the scene the way a person takes in a carwreck. Her eyes go to me first. Then to the gun. Then to Ethan, sitting in the chair with his hands open and my weapon aimed at his heart.
"What's happening?" Her voice cracks on the second word. She steps inside, and the door seals behind her, and the room that was already too small shrinks to the size of a coffin. "Zane, what are you doing?"
I can't answer her.
The truth is a bomb with too many blast radiuses. To explain what Ethan is, I have to explain what he might have been doing with her. Every conversation, every lesson in star charts, every casual touch that might not have been casual at all. Touch-based manipulation is what the Empri are known for, the ability to read and influence through physical contact, and Elissa has been closer to this man than anyone on the station.
If I tell her that, if I crack open that particular box, I don't just reveal Ethan's betrayal. I reveal that her own feelings might not be her own. That the infatuation she thinks is hers might have been planted, cultivated, grown in soil he prepared.
I can't do that to her. Not here. Not like this. Not with a gun in my hand and her looking at me like I've become someone she doesn't recognize.
"Routine debrief," I say. The lie tastes like ash. "Post-siege protocol."
"With a gun pointed at him?" She's not stupid. She's never been stupid, and the hurt in her voice is already crystallizing into something sharper, something that looks like the beginning of choosing a side. "Zane."
"Elissa." Ethan's voice, warm again, and I want to shoot him for that warmth, for the way she turns toward it like aplant toward light. "It's fine. Your brother has questions. He's entitled to them."
"He has a weapon aimed at you."
"He has good reasons." Ethan looks at me over her head, and there is something in his grey eyes that might be gratitude or might be the most sophisticated manipulation I've ever witnessed. He's giving me an out. He knows I can't explain, and he's making it easy for me to step back from the edge, and I can't tell if that's mercy or another play.
I holster the sidearm. The click of the retention strap is loud in the silence.
"We're done here," I say to Ethan. My voice sounds like someone else's, flat and controlled in a way that costs me more than anyone in this room will ever know. "For now."
He stands. Smooth, unhurried, every movement telegraphed and nonthreatening in a way that only someone trained to be dangerous would bother performing. He passes Elissa on his way to the door, and I watch his hand, watch it like a hawk on a thermal, and he doesn't touch her. Not even a brush of the shoulder. He leaves the narrowest possible margin of space between them, and whether that's restraint or strategy, it's the only reason he walks out of this room alive.
The door seals behind him.
Elissa stares at me. "What was that?"
"Leave it, Elissa."
"Don't do that. Don't give me that command-voice like I'm one of your officers. I walked in and you had a gun on him. On Ethan. You owe me an explanation."
"I owe you nothing that compromises station security." The words come out harder than I intend, and I watch them land on her face like a slap. Her chin comes up. Her eyes go bright, and not with tears. With the particular fury thatruns in our family like a genetic defect, the kind that makes us hold on tighter when anyone tries to pry our fingers loose.
"One more secret," I say, and I'm not sure if I'm talking to her or to the ghost of Ethan still sitting in that empty chair. "One more lie. And I'll handle it the way I should have handled it today."
She leaves without another word.
The door closes, and I'm alone in a room with the electric aftermath of something that isn't over.
I press my hands against the table. Lean my weight into it until my arms shake. Close my eyes and see the blue flash behind Ethan's grey, that pulse of something alien wearing a human face, and I breathe through my teeth until the shaking stops.
Then I go find my brother.
Dexter isin the command center, because Dexter is always in the command center when there's a problem he can solve with data instead of conversation. He's pulled up the anomaly readings on three separate displays, cross-referencing energy signatures with the Vex attack patterns, and the shadows under his eyes are so deep they look like bruises. He doesn't look up when I walk in.
"You let him go," he says.
Not a question. He already knows. Of course he already knows. Dexter's surveillance net runs deeper than the official systems, and he doesn't apologize for it any more than I apologize for the gun I pointed at a man I used to trust.
"I let him go." I drop into the chair beside him. The display light catches the angles of his face, sharpeningthem, making him look less like my brother and more like something carved from the same cold material as the station itself. "With conditions."
"Conditions." He says the word like it tastes bad. His fingers move across the display, pulling up Ethan's movement data from the siege, the same data I just spent an hour studying. "You should have let me handle him."
"I know."
