Page 90 of Storm of Stars

Veritas’s expression cracked like glass beneath a hammer. Her posture faltered, her eyes snapping wide, throat tightening around the panic that suddenly rushed in.

“No,” she breathed, stepping back, her voice shrill. “What are you doing? Stop! I am your Archon!”

One of the guards behind me moved. Slow and deliberate. His hand rose to his helmet and unlatched it with a hiss. He lifted it from his head and revealed a face beneath the armor. Not cold or mechanical, but human. A young man with dark, sweat-matted hair, blood on his cheek, dirt in every line of his face. His gaze flicked to Veritas. Then to me.

He looked just like us.

“For the will of the people,” he said, steady and clear.

A single breath escaped me, sharp and staggering. The air rushed in behind it, filled with more than oxygen. I met his eyes.

“We survive,” I replied softly.

Veritas stumbled backward, her polished façade fracturing with every step.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she spat. “There are Praxis loyalists in every corridor, in every district, in every Collective. You cannot reach them all. You may have rallied a few lost souls, but you’ll never touch the system. We destroyed your precious little hard drive.”

Her desperation was a storm now, unraveling every part of her once-untouchable composure.

“Yes, you did,” said Zaffir, his voice raspy from pain.

Everyone turned. He was still on the floor, blood seeping through his shirt. Slowly, he pushed himself up, hands still wrapped around the camera he’d shielded with his body like it was the most sacred thing he’d ever held.

“You destroyed the drive,” he repeated. “But we didn’t need it.”

His fingers shifted on the camera.

And there it was.

The blinking red light.

The same one that had haunted me. That had captured our every breath, every tear, every moment of suffering during the Run. The one that made me feel like I was being hunted. Dehumanized. Watched.

But now, now it meant something else entirely.

It meantwitnesses.It meanttruth.

Zaffir stood, shaking but unshaken. His face was pale, lips split, but his voice was certain.

“All I have to do is load this footage,” he said, raising the camera ever so slightly. “And all of Nexum will see. See Praxis and you for exactly who you are and what you’ve done.”

A breath rippled through the room. Even the air seemed to pause, listening.

Then Zaffir took his first step toward the terminal.

Veritas lunged forward like a predator cornered, voice shrill with panic.

“NO!I order you to stop!” She shoved past the last of her illusion of control, stumbling toward Zaffir. But the guard behind me moved faster, stepping cleanly into her path, blocking her with calm finality.

“You will not do this!” she shrieked, her voice cracking, hysteria breaking through her regal mask.

Zaffir didn’t flinch. He kept walking.

Her eyes darted around the room, desperately searching for a loyalist, an ally to take back the power slipping through her fingers. “One of you! Do something! Stop him!”

But no one moved.

Not for her.