Lorne stared at Ethan like the room had shifted under his feet.For a few seconds, he said nothing. The anger was still there, but confusion had cut into it so sharply that it could no longer move the same way. Ethan sat where he was, one hand near the cold tea, the other resting beside the burned teddy bear, as if he had not just said something insane.Then Lorne found his voice.“What do you mean it worked?”Ethan did not answer immediately.Lorne took a step closer to the bed. “We almost died out there. A good number of our soldiers died, patients in critical conditions were hit, Nira died. The helicopters were hit. Rathenfall burned. And you are sitting there telling me your plan worked?”Ethan looked up at him calmly. “Almost is not the same as did.”That answer did not help.Lorne laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “That is what you say to me?” He pointed toward the dark screen where Varros had just vanished. “After all that, that is what you say?”Ethan reached for th

Then Ethan nodded once. “Correct.”That answer seemed to surprise Lorne more than argument would have.“So you agree.”“Yes.”Lorne frowned. “Then why are you sounding so certain?”Ethan zoomed farther in.New symbols appeared on the map. Defensive rings. Air response zones. Automated firing points. Lorne recognized the pattern almost immediately, and when he did, something changed in his face.“No,” he said quietly.Ethan did not smile this time. He only watched him understand.Lorne looked back at the highlighted sectors. “That’s the real strike.”Ethan said, “No… disabling their interceptors is.”The words hit harder than anything else he had said.Not because they were louder, but because they completed the picture. Everything before it had been movement. This was the point where movement became inevitability.Lorne’s head lifted slowly. “You went after the interceptors?”“Yes.”There was no hesitation in the answer. No need to justify it. The decision had already been made long b

Lucien Varros was smiling when the first sign of failure appeared, and that made what followed even uglier. He stood at the center of his command room in a clean uniform, speaking to his officers as if the war had already bent itself to his will. Screens glowed around him with troop markers, supply routes, and damage reports from the western front. Everything in the room reflected order, discipline, and control. That was why the first interruption felt so wrong.That order had been built over weeks of victories, reinforced by success after success until no one in the room questioned it anymore. Even the smallest movements of the officers carried quiet confidence, the kind that came from believing the enemy which was the tribunal army had already lost.“The war is already decided,” Varros said, looking over the map table. “The Tribunal army is reacting. We are dictating the pace.” His officers stood around him in silence, listening carefully. One of them handed him a fresh tactical

Lucien Varros knew he was underground before they removed the sack from his head.The air had changed minutes earlier. The smoke and burning metal of the ruined base were gone. In their place came damp stone, old concrete, and the cold smell of a place built to hold sound and secrets. His boots dragged more than walked now. The Tribunal soldiers hauling him forward did not care when he stumbled. They only pulled harder.“Take this thing off my head,” Varros snarled. “If you mean to kill me, then do it properly.”No one answered him.The silence pressed against him harder than any blow. It was not the silence of hesitation, but of certainty. These men were not deciding what to do with him. That decision had already been made.His shoulder slammed against a rough wall as they forced him around a bend in the tunnel. Pain shot through his ribs where they had already beaten him near the G-wagon. He hissed through his teeth, then turned that pain into rage.He felt something shift inside t

The sound of the order stayed in the courtroom longer than it should have.“Bring in the containment execution chamber.”Ethan did not raise his voice when he said it. He did not need to. The words landed in the chamber with the weight of something already decided. Lucien Varros felt them like a hand tightening around his throat.One Tribunal officer rose at once, gave a short nod, and walked out through the side door without hesitation. The room stayed silent after he left. No one tried to soften the meaning of what Ethan had said. No jurist objected. No general looked uncertain. That silence broke something inside Varros faster than the beatings had.He jerked against the soldiers holding him. “No,” he said, then forced anger into his voice. “You are bluffing. This is theater. This whole room is theater.”No one answered.He looked from one face to another, searching for doubt, or pity, or even disgust strong enough to interrupt the moment. He found none of it. The Tribunal jurists