I exhale through my nose. “Yeah. Sure. I also got myself captured, so let’s not hand out medals yet.”
Lonari’s gaze sharpens. “You did what you had to do.”
“I did what I always do,” I mutter. “I trusted the wrong people and then built a hack to survive it.”
Lonari’s voice drops. “Clint.”
My jaw tightens. “Don’t.”
He pauses. “I’m not blaming him.”
I open my mouth to snap something stupid, then realize he’s right—he’s not blaming Clint. He’s watching me, reading the way my shoulders tense at the name.
The medic finishes his work and steps back. “She needs rest. No stress. No shouting.”
Lonari looks at him like he might eat him.
The medic holds his gaze like a man who isn’t impressed by predators in suits. “I mean it. I can sedate her if you want to argue.”
Lonari exhales, controlled. “We’re not arguing.”
The medic nods once and walks off, leaving the faint scent of antiseptic and a small trail of competence.
Lonari pulls a chair closer and sits, slow and deliberate. The chair creaks under his weight. He keeps his voice low.
“You got the proof out,” he says.
I swallow. “Did it land?”
Lonari’s eyes flick to a side screen in the medbay—muted news feeds, comm alerts, text crawling so fast it’s almost unreadable. Even muted, I can see the panic in the visuals: emergency sessions, markets frozen, officials avoiding cameras, pundits shouting.
“Yeah,” he says. “It landed.”
A tremor goes through me that has nothing to do with pain. A weird, sharp satisfaction—like I shoved a crowbar into a locked door and heard the hinge crack.
“Good,” I whisper.
Lonari leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees. “Morazin’s screaming about propaganda.”
I smile faintly. “Of course he is.”
“He thinks if he calls it criminal, people will ignore it,” Lonari says.
I stare at the ceiling for a second. “He’s not entirely wrong. Institutions hate admitting they were played. They’ll try to bury it.”
Lonari’s voice goes colder. “Not if he’s alive in cuffs and on camera.”
My chest tightens again—this time not warmth, not fear. Something like gratitude that I don’t want to name because naming it makes it real and real things can be taken.
“You broadcasted his arrest,” I say.
Lonari nods once. “To IHC and Alliance channels. They can’t pretend he died in transit. If they do, everyone saw the lie coming.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Smart,” I whisper.
Lonari’s mouth curves, all teeth. “I’m a criminal, sweetheart. Smart is the job.”
