Page 19 of Big Bad Red Protector

"Several somethings." She pulls the first file forward. "Start here."

The fragment is from the deepest layer of the classified Bridge archive—the section below the redacted research records, below the partial notes on human genetic markers. Someone filed it under a maintenance routing log, which is either a filing error or the most obvious hiding place imaginable. The text is partial and the encoding is old enough to require Orrik's decryption overlay to read.

Two words surface clearly in the recovered text:bridgeborn descendants.

No definition. No context. No explanation of what the designation means or who assigned it. Just the phrase, embedded in a research notation that cross-references human genetic sequencing data with Precursor field emission responses and then cuts off mid-sentence where the redaction begins.

"That phrase appears in four separate archive layers," Zevra says. "Oldest record is pre-war. Someone has been sitting on this classification for a very long time."

"And somebody else," Orrik adds, pulling up the maintenance overlay, "has been using the ventilation routingin sublevel fourteen to move equipment toward the Bridge's outer structural access. Heavy equipment. The kind of weight signature you get from power generation or signal amplification hardware." He traces the route on the overlay. "It's been running for eleven days. The deliveries line up with the diplomatic negotiation schedule."

I look at the schedule he pulls up beside the overlay.

The joint Alliance-Coalition negotiation session is in six days. Every remaining diplomat aboard Orpheus Station will be in the same secured chamber after the crisis began. Every faction representative, every military liaison, every political target the conspiracy has been managing one by one will be concentrated in a single location with a single security perimeter.

"They've been waiting for the negotiations," I say. "They didn't need to eliminate everyone individually. They needed to wait until everyone was in the same room."

"With whatever they've been building in sublevel fourteen," Zevra confirms.

The silence that follows has weight.

Orrik breaks it carefully. "Whatever they're planning to do—it's tied to the Bridge systems. The signal amplification hardware doesn't make sense otherwise. They're not just targeting the diplomats."

They are targeting the Bridge. And whatever the Bridge does when it activates around my genetic signature, the extremists understand it better than I do.

Everyone in this room is in danger because of me. Calyra was almost killed because she told me the truth. Orrik is bypassing security systems in a station that has already murdered one witness. Zevra is selling information to both sides of a conspiracy that sends shooters to sanctuaries. Kheltor has been branded an unofficial liability by his own command structure.

"I need a minute," I say, and no one argues.

I make it three steps toward the corridor before Kheltor falls into step beside me, and his hand closes briefly on my arm—not a restraint. A stop.

"Whatever you're about to say to yourself," he says quietly, "you are wrong."

"You don't know what I'm about to say."

"You were looking at the list of people this investigation has put in danger and calculating how much of that is your responsibility." His voice carries no softness, but it carries precision, which from Kheltor is the same thing. "People who pursue truth and find it inconvenient to powerful institutions are not responsible for the violence those institutions use to protect themselves. That is a calculation designed to make you stop." His grip releases. "Do not stop."

I hold that for a moment.

"Eloquent," I say.

"Accurate," he corrects.

When we return to the analysis room, two of Kheltor's officers at the door step aside with the particular efficiency of people who have revised their assessment of a situation. One of them—the large officer who challenged me in the corridor two days ago—gives me a single nod. Not warmth. Acknowledgment. The kind that costs something.

Inside, Zevra has pulled the sublevel fourteen equipment list onto the main display.

"The hardware configuration," she says, "matches the field resonance specifications in the Bridge's classified research files. Whatever they're building down there—" She looks at me. "It's designed to interface with the same systems that respond to you."

The negotiations are in six days.

Whatever the extremists are planning, they don't need it finished before then.

They need it finished before I learn enough to stop them.

CHAPTER 14

KHELTOR