The corridor light hums overhead. Somewhere far away, the casino laughs at a joke that isn’t funny.
Clint stops too, and when I look at him, his eyes are bleak.
“They don’t care about the truth,” he says. “They care about control. They’re calling you unstable, radicalized, compromised. They’re framing your broadcast as an attack on national security.”
I swallow. My throat feels too tight, like my body wants to reject oxygen.
“So… I’m a problem,” I whisper.
Clint nods once. “And the kind of problem they erase.”
I stare at him for a second, remembering the way Lonari told me the world doesn’t have a free truth. It has truth that costs.
I exhale slowly. “Okay.”
Clint blinks. “Okay?”
I force a humorless smile. “Yeah. Okay. That tracks.”
He looks like he wants to argue with my calm. Like my calm makes it worse.
“It’s not funny, Jordan,” he says sharply.
“I know,” I say. “I’m not laughing because it’s funny. I’m laughing because if I don’t, I’ll scream.”
His jaw tightens. Then he nods, like he understands in the way only someone who’s been close to a machine can understand.
“Show me,” he says.
I lead him into my workroom—my little bunker of screens and encryption and paranoia. The air inside smells like coolant and citrus and the faint metallic bite of overworked electronics.
Clint steps in and freezes.
The holo projection above my table is alive with layers: the evidence vault architecture, the dead-drop release triggers, the chain maps, the relay routes, the “High Lantern” alias threads,the partial biometric imprint file flagged and sealed behind multiple keys.
He stares like he walked into a storm made of data.
“Jesus,” he whispers.
“Yeah,” I say. “That was my reaction too.”
I gesture to the vault interface. “This is the system. It’s redundant. Mirrored across Kaijen servers, civilian clouds, dead storage, and a dead-drop protocol that auto-releases if my biometrics flatline.”
Clint’s eyes flick sharply to me. “You built a dead-man’s switch.”
“Dead-woman’s,” I correct. “And yes.”
His mouth opens, then closes. He looks impressed and horrified simultaneously.
“That’s… that’s not normal,” he says.
“Neither is being hunted by your own government,” I shoot back. “So we’re all expanding our horizons.”
Clint swallows. “Okay. Show me the High Lantern chain.”
I swipe, and the holo shifts—threads of authorization tags, transaction approvals, access keys that appear in the right places at the right times like someone guiding a hand.
High Lantern.
