Jordan’s earlier assassin wasn’t a one-off. The Nine is inside our walls. Or someone wearing their skin is.
Morazin gasps, pain making him honest. “They’ll— they’ll kill me.”
Jordan leans in, voice icy. “Good. Then talk.”
Morazin’s eyes flick wildly. “Immunity?—”
I bend close to his face, voice low enough only he hears.
“You want to live?” I whisper. “Then you stop negotiating like you’re still protected.”
Morazin’s lips tremble. “I?—”
Jordan cuts in, loud, for the cameras, for the world. “Someone just tried to assassinate a witness live. If anyone still thinks this is ‘conspiracy,’ congratulations—you’re watching the proof.”
The chat overlays explode again.
The hearing’s audio stabilizes despite comm spikes. Jordan’s redundancy routes around the interference like it’s laughing.
Outside, Gur trembles under staged riots and power dips, and my people keep civilians moving through corridors like blood through arteries.
Fyr’s voice comes through again, breathless but steady: “Transit Hub corridor is clear. Families moved. No stampede.”
Good.
Strategy over rage.
Morazin is breathing hard, blood soaking. The medical team rushes in, hands steady, applying pressure, sealing the wound.
He’s alive.
Barely.
And the world is watching.
I look up into the primary camera lens—feel the weight of millions of eyes like a physical pressure.
“This,” I say, voice steady, “is what silencing looks like. Remember it.”
I don’t know if the moderator hears me. I don’t care.
Because the Nine just made their move.
And everyone saw.
CHAPTER 37
JORDAN
The camera light is a small, pitiless sun.
It bakes everything into permanence—the blood on Morazin’s shirt, the tremor in the moderator’s hands, the way Lonari’s body is angled between the witness and the world like a damn fortress with a pulse. The stream chat is a waterfall of disbelief and rage and emojis that make me want to scream, but the numbers in the corner keep climbing. Millions of eyes. Millions of witnesses.
And somewhere out there, the person who just tried to silence Morazin is watching too.
Morazin’s breathing is ragged. The medic’s hands press gauze hard into the wound. It’s not a kill shot, not quite—high shoulder, near collarbone. A message shot. Ashut upyou can survive.
If you’re lucky.
