2026-04-13 18:45:23
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Controlled Access
The room remained silent after Lucien’s last words.No one spoke immediately. The weight of what he had implied still lingered, unresolved, pressing against the edges of the conversation.Lucien did not rush to fill it.He watched them instead.Measured. Patient.Then, as if deciding the timing himself, he spoke again.“You want something you can verify,” he said calmly. “Fine.”The officers exchanged brief glances.Lucien continued without waiting.“Sector nine. Outer relay chain. There’s a supply corridor Velmora still relies on. It’s not protected the way you think it is.”One of the officers immediately began inputting the coordinates.Lucien’s gaze did not shift.“There’s a delay in their rotation cycle,” he added. “Twelve-minute gap. That’s your window.”Silence tightened slightly.The general did not interrupt.Lucien went on.“Secondary node in that sector is already unstable. If you apply pressure there, it won’t hold.”The officer looked up from the console. “We’re verifying
A Different Truth
The silence in the room lingered.Lucien’s last words still hung in the air, calm and certain, as if they had already settled into place long before anyone else could react.Ronan stood where he was, his gaze fixed on Lucien.He did not respond immediately.Then he spoke.“I don’t believe you.”The words were flat. Direct. Without hesitation.Lucien didn’t react.Ronan took one step closer, just enough to make the distance between them feel intentional.“You didn’t come here to surrender,” he continued. “And you didn’t come here to help us.”Lucien’s eyes remained steady.Ronan’s voice did not change.“But that doesn’t matter.”A brief pause.“Because if you’re going to lie,” he said, “you should at least make it useful.”That was the shift.Not acceptance.Not rejection.A direction.Lucien’s gaze sharpened slightly, the faintest sign of interest appearing.Ronan held his gaze.“You want to be treated as one of us,” he said. “Then start talking like one.”Another pause.“Give us some
Inside the Cage
The corridor leading to the containment sector was silent, but not empty. Armed personnel stood along both sides, their posture rigid, their attention fixed on the reinforced door at the end.Lucien was inside.Ronan stopped a few steps before the entrance. Selene stood to his right, Tristan to his left. A senior officer remained slightly behind them, reviewing data from a handheld interface.“He’s stable,” the officer said. “No resistance.”Tristan let out a quiet breath. “Of course he’s not resisting. This is exactly what he wants.”Selene didn’t look away from the door. “That’s what makes it dangerous.”A brief pause followed before the general’s voice came through the comm, clear and controlled.“This is not a standard interrogation.”All of them straightened slightly.“He is not an external prisoner. He is trained in Thalara. He knows our structures, our methods.”The implication was immediate. Any standard approach would fail.“If we send an interrogator, he will control the con
A Useful Enemy
The shift in the room was immediate.Tristan frowned. “Calista, this isn’t—”She shook her head, cutting him off. “You don’t understand.”Her gaze locked onto Lucien’s image, as if nothing else in the room existed.“He’s not—he’s not doing this for no reason,” she said, her voice breaking. “He wouldn’t just come here like this unless—”She couldn’t finish.Selene’s expression hardened slightly, but she didn’t interrupt.Because this—was real.Calista turned.To Ronan.Her steps faltered for a moment, then she moved closer, desperation clear in every movement.“Ronan… please,” she said, her voice softer now but more fragile. “You can say something. They’ll listen to you.”Her hands clenched slightly. “You’re the one who destroyed the core. You’re the reason we won. If you say we shouldn’t kill him… they’ll consider it.”There was hope in her eyes.Fragile.Misplaced.“Please,” she whispered. “Help him.”The room went still.Not just silent—tense, as if every movement had been paused m
Surrender
The projection updated again, and the room fell into a quieter kind of tension.Lucien’s trajectory remained unchanged. A straight line, clean and direct, cutting through the outer sector toward Arken’s position. There were no deviations, no sudden shifts in speed, no attempt to avoid detection. Every new data point confirmed the same thing.He was not trying to escape.Selene watched the line for a few seconds longer than anyone else. Her eyes moved across the data, then returned to the path itself.“…That’s not evasion,” she said.Tristan frowned, his arms crossing tighter. “He’s not even trying to shake us.”“Confirmed,” an officer added. “Vector constant. No irregular movement.”The general did not hesitate. “Intercept course.”The command moved through the deck immediately. Formation lines shifted across the projection as Arken vessels adjusted positions, closing in with precise coordination. There was no delay, no second-guessing.Lucien had slipped once. That would not happen a
Turning the Tide
The command deck was already active when they arrived.Unlike the battlefield, the chaos here was controlled. Officers moved with precision between stations, streams of data shifting rapidly across large projection screens that dominated the center of the room. The atmosphere wasn’t calm, but it wasn’t panic either.It was momentum.Selene stepped in first, followed by Ronan, Tristan, and the remaining elite operative. None of them had fully recovered. Their movements were steady, but the fatigue was there, carried beneath the surface.No one commented on it.They didn’t have the time.“Unit confirmed,” one officer said as they entered. “They’re here.”The central display shifted immediately.A projection of the Astra Divide Relay filled the space.It was no longer symmetrical.One side—the Velmora sector—flickered with instability, entire sections dark, others pulsing irregularly as residual energy collapsed inward. The structures were still there, but the system that had once contro
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