Page 158

“This is a poor moment for jokes.”

“It is my emotional support bad habit.”

Rolaev watches us with an expression I cannot read. Maybe sorrow. Maybe calculation. Maybe memory of who she was before she became the sort of woman who could order deaths and carry the names without flinching.

“The archive must be destroyed permanently,” she says.

The words seem to dim the chamber.

Sira inhales sharply. “Destroying it could damage the preservation field beyond prediction.”

“I know.”

Brakk throws up both hands. “Of course she knows. Everyone knows the bad ideas now and does them anyway.”

Rolaev continues as if he has not spoken. “Partial preservation invites future catastrophe. Any fragment will become leverage. Any hint will attract zealots, tyrants, scholars, thieves, and wounded idealists who believe themselves uniquely qualified to judge what billions should know.”

“That last one was aimed at me,” I say.

“Yes.”

“Subtlety is dead. Add it to the casualty list.”

Rolaev ’s face tightens. “You are brilliant, Anita Prentiss. You are also young, angry, and proud of your appetite for forbidden doors. You have already begun to understand the danger, but you still believe your discomfort makes you responsible enough to hold the blade.”

My cheeks burn because she is close enough to true to make me want to bite.

“I do not want the blade,” I say.

“But you refuse to surrender it.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The question is soft, and it is the most dangerous thing she has said.

I look past her at the records extending into impossible depth. First One cycles. Precursor councils. Civilizations broken by revelation. Civilizations protected by lies. The oldest truth in the galaxy waits there, not sacred, not noble, not kind, but real.

Why not destroy it?

Because Teren died for it?

No. That is not enough. Dead people should not become arguments used to justify whatever the living already wanted.

Because truth is inherently good?

No. I can no longer say that without lying.

Because Rolaev should not win?

Satisfying, but childish.

I feel Ghar beside me. I think of him in the side chamber, ruined and still choosing to build one small certainty from lived experience rather than cosmic instruction. I think of Sira’s tears and Brakk’s rage. I think of the possibility that one day civilizations might become strong enough, compassionate enough, humble enough to receive the truth without turning it into a weapon or a suicide note.

I think of myself as a child on a cheap tourist colony, watching frauds sell fake miracles, and I realize the answer is not that every truth deserves immediate release.

The answer is that no one person deserves permanent ownership of reality.