Where truth waits to be shaped into something palatable.
Or buried.
My hands hover.
The console hums under my palms.
I close my eyes for half a second.
This is the part I never imagined.
Standing inside the machine I helped build.
About to turn it against itself.
“You still with me?” I whisper.
“Always,” Tatek says. “Whatever you need.”
I open my eyes.
“I need about three minutes of silence,” I say. “And for you to tell me if anyone breathes wrong in my direction.”
“Done.”
The interface screen in front of me hums with silent energy, the relay grid illuminating lines of data like veins under skin. Blue light paints my hands, flickering as the files cascade into the Coalition’s backbone system—files they never meant to surface again. Files they buried, rewrote, and redacted into ghosts.
But ghosts remember.
The encryption renders in layers, the annotations embedded like teeth—each one a bite of truth. My breathing is shallow but steady, synced to the progress bar ticking upward. Every tick is a nail in their constructed reality. Every green light a pulse returning to a body left for dead.
I don’t blink. Don’t flinch.
I’ve spent years watching this screen from the other side. Feeding it justifications. Codes. Clean slates. Back when I believed we were protecting something worth defending. BeforeI realized what we were really building wasn’t peace—it was amnesia.
Tatek’s voice crackles softly through my earpiece. “Status?”
I answer without looking away. “Upload at eighty-three percent. Still stable.”
“Good. Keep your posture tight. Cameras might be scraping for profile matches. Don’t give them any.”
“Copy.”
I adjust my stance, shoulders square, chin lifted. Borrowed authority fits me awkwardly, like a uniform tailored for someone else’s spine. But I fake it well. The guards at the checkpoint didn’t so much as twitch. Authority isn’t about truth. It’s about performance. And I’ve been performing survival since they tried to erase me.
Ninety-one percent.
I flex my fingers to keep them from stiffening.
One of the technicians in the room turns slightly toward me, blinking behind pale amber lenses. His gaze lingers. I meet it, hard.
He looks away.
That’s right.
Tatek’s breathing is faint in my ear. I imagine him just down the corridor, leaning against a steel support beam, one hand on his shortblade, the other on the frequency dial. Silent and waiting. My shadow in the walls.
Ninety-nine percent.
