I lean in.
“Morazin,” I say, “who authorized the cruiser capture cover-up route?”
His eyes flick to me, sharp despite the blood. “That’s… not what you asked.”
“It’s what you can answer without turning yourself into confetti,” I reply. “Who signed that route. Who made the disappearance possible.”
Morazin swallows hard. His smirk is gone now. Only fear, and the faint glimmer of a man realizing he has no exits.
He closes his eyes for a second.
Then he spits it out like poison.
“An Alliance High Command Councilor,” he says, voice raw. “Council-tier. Security liaison authority. They authorized the capture cover-up route through the civilian oversight loop.”
The chat overlay explodes.
The moderator stammers. “Name the councilor.”
Morazin shakes his head violently, then winces in pain. “No. I won’t say the name on-air without?—”
Lonari’s voice is immediate, lethal. “Without what?”
Morazin’s eyes dart. He’s calculating survival math with blood loss fogging his brain.
“Without a guarantee I don’t die in the next ten minutes,” he snaps.
I lift my compad again, the biometric trigger interface glowing like a threat.
“You’re already dying,” I say. “So here’s your guarantee: if you die, the world gets the name anyway.”
Morazin’s face contorts. “You don’t have the name.”
I smile, cold. “Not yet.”
His eyes widen in sudden understanding. “You’re going to pull it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Live.”
Because if I say the name myself, they can call it fabrication. They can call me compromised.
But if I pull the councilor’s trail—procurement, finance, routing approvals—on stream, in front of millions?
Then the system has to fight in the open.
And systems hate sunlight.
I pivot hard, adrenaline making my hands steady in a way that feels unreal.
“Clint,” I bark into my earpiece, “I need the council-tier roster mapping for High Command security liaison authority. The ones with civilian oversight routing privileges.”
Clint’s voice is a strangled sound. “Jordan, that’s?—”
“Now,” I snap.
His breathing is frantic. “Okay—okay—give me a second.”
I open my own channels—Kaijen archives, the dead-man packet, the procurement trails I decrypted earlier. I start building a live cross-correlation on screen, pushing it into the public feed as a split panel beside Morazin’s bleeding face.
