“Good,” I murmur, barely moving my lips.
“You sound tense.”
“I’m wearing my past,” I say. “It’s clingy.”
A pause. Then the faintest huff of breath. “You’re doing fine.”
The next door recognizes my biometrics before I touch it.
That part stings.
The hub’s outer security doesn’t even blink at my presence. My clearance ghost—fabricated from old fragments of my real identity—slides through the firewall like it belongs there, because in a way, it does.
I built half these pathways.
I walk.
Every step closer tightens something in my chest.
The broadcast hub waits at the end of the corridor, sealed behind two black composite doors etched with the Coalition’s crest. I remember the first time I saw them, years ago, back when I thought proximity to power meant proximity to truth.
I lift my chin.
Shoulders back.
Authority forward.
My palm presses to the scanner.
For half a second nothing happens.
Then—
“Administrator Vance. Access granted.”
The doors slide apart.
The hub opens around me like the inside of a machine.
Cool air. Recycled and faintly metallic. Rows of consoles arranged in descending arcs around a central command pit, holo-feeds crawling across vertical panels in muted blues andgreens. Bandwidth traffic. Civilian relay channels. Internal comm lattices. All of it pulsing in quiet, obedient motion.
This place hums.
Not loudly. But constantly. Like a living thing breathing data.
Technicians glance up as I enter.
One of them blinks.
“Mara…?”
“Administrator Vance,” I cut in, without breaking stride.
My voice comes out sharper than I expect. Clean. Hard. The kind of tone that makes people stand straighter without knowing why.
“Yes, ma’am—sorry, I just—wasn’t aware you were scheduled in-cycle.”
“I wasn’t scheduled,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”
