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Nykos didn't wait for Corian to answer. "Because I took it off her."

Master Edrin's eyes moved to him, then to Corian, silently asking whether the answer needed correcting.

Corian didn't correct it. "On my authorization. The Council assigned her to my squad and placed her under my operational authority. I decide what restrictions are required in the field and in Nephrite's house."

"A commander cannot overrule an individual containment order."

"Then the Council should not have transferred responsibility for her safety and conduct to me."

Councilor Vale answered, and Nykos cut in before she had finished. Alex followed him with none of his usual humor, while Halver's voice stayed low enough that everyone else had to stop speaking to hear it. I lost parts of the argument because I couldn't follow all of them at once. Nykos called forced suppression a violation disguised as caution. Alex asked what danger the collar was meant to prevent when I had spent eight days healing people and refusing to hurt the creatures driving us off an island. Halver said it would not be worn in our home. Our home.

I knew I should have spoken. The collar had been mine to wear, mine to fear and mine to wake beneath when I had fallen asleep badly enough to forget its weight. Instead, I sat with my hands locked beneath the table and listened to four men defend my right to breathe without metal against my skin. None of them asked whether I was grateful or looked toward me for proof that they were being generous.

Janus placed one hand flat on the closed file.

The room stopped.

"They are right," he said.

Councilor Vale turned toward him. "High General."

"The collar was attached to Jade's restricted training conditions. Those conditions ended when the Council transferred her into active squad service. It is not part of standard trainee equipment, it is not required inside Nephrite's home, and it will not be reinstated because its absence makes someone uncomfortable." His gaze moved to Corian, then to me. "If Favaris identifies an immediate operational need, he can raise it with Jade. If Jade requests suppression, it will be available. Otherwise, the collar stays off."

Councilor Vale did not agree. Her face made that clear, but she closed her mouth and turned the report crystal toward Master Edrin. I knew he would keep making the same argument in the council chambers long after we had left the room.

My lungs expanded without permission.

Janus noticed. He noticed everything involving me, but he didn't soften his expression or turn the moment into something the room could examine. "The field report is complete. The evidence will be transferred to Crown enforcement, and Councilor Raymer's team will submit a separate flare analysis tomorrow."

Master Edrin touched the crystal, sealing the first section. I expected him to gather the forms and dismiss us. Instead, Janus opened the file beneath his hand.

"There is another reason you were called here," he said. "Someone requested access to Jade's standard Citadel record while you were in the Rift."

The relief left my body so quickly that the room seemed to tilt.

Ashter's nose found my hand where it rested against my knee, cool and steady beneath the table where nobody but me could see it. I didn't reach for him. I let him hold there anyway.

"Who?" Corian asked.

"We don't know yet. The request came through a general academy terminal using a valid training-review code. It was not an attempt to reach the restricted archive, so it did not trigger a security lock."

Nykos's voice had gone very quiet. "Whose code?"

Master Edrin answered. "The code belongs to the Advanced administration pool. Masters, placement staff and authorized league assistants use the same access level. The request was broad. Training history, classification, deployment record and transfer authority."

Everything that did not make sense about me.

Someone placed directly into a battalion squad with no history of basic or advanced training without giving anyone a reason. Someone raised and trained in the restricted Citadel instead of a medical academy. Years of assessments with no public instructors attached. If someone pulled at any one of those threads, the rest of the record would open behind it.

My fingertips found the bare skin at the base of my throat. "What did they see?"

"Almost nothing," Janus said. "Your standard file was already limited, but the gaps invite questions. The request was rejected as incomplete while Records reviewed the access path."

"And now?"

He turned the file around and pushed it across the table.

The first page held my name, age, classification and current placement. Most of it looked ordinary until I reached the training history. Restricted medical apprenticeship. Private Apex control instruction. Council-approved equivalency assessment in place of Basic training. No list of childhood tests. No Menagerie containment exercises. No collar orders or records of what happened when someone asked me to change a living body in ways that had nothing to do with healing.