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The recording hung in the air like a smoking gun.
Leia stared at the woman on the screen. Narrow jaw. Silver scar under her left eye. Hand pressed flat against a glowing authorization pad.
Her hand.
Three years younger, maybe. But same dark hair. Same crooked pinky from that stupid break. Same pale burn scar running up her wrist.
No mistake.
Behind the projection, the train screamed through the surveillance district. Blue light strobed across the windows. Outside, drones chattered like insects made of razors.
Onscreen, young Leia leaned forward.
"Transfer subject Nolan Morn to Halcyon Experimental Division." Her voice was flat. Bored, even. "Authorization is voluntary. I understand the risks, the restrictions, and the permanence of this agreement."
The image flickered.
Nolan appeared in the corner—sixteen, furious, wrists locked in restraint cuffs. Thinner than she remembered. But those eyes. Bright, sharp, wounded.
Same eyes.
"Leia, don't." His voice cracked through the static. "You promised Mom. You promised me. You said we'd never let them separate us."
Young Leia didn't look at him.
She pressed her palm down.
A red line flared beneath her hand.
TRANSFER ACCEPTED.
The projection froze.
Leia's breath stopped. The Covenant Engine pulsed cold behind her eyes. Text crawled across her vision in thin, pale lines.
ORIGINAL VOW DETECTED.
STATUS: BROKEN.
PENALTY: MEMORY FRACTURE.
"Turn it off," Leia whispered.
Kane crouched by the emergency hatch, one hand wrapped around the stolen pistol. Blood ran from a cut at his hairline, disappearing into his coat collar. He glanced at the projection. Then at her.
"I can't. The engine's running the archive through your implant."
"Then shut the implant down."
"If I do that, you might not wake up."
Leia turned on him. "You seem real comfortable with people not waking up."
His jaw tightened. "Not tonight."
The carriage lights died.
Something slammed into the roof.
The train lurched sideways. Leia hit the wall shoulder-first. The projection shattered into blue fragments—but Nolan's frozen face stayed, suspended at the center.
A voice crackled through the speakers.
"Medical-debt enforcement. All passengers remain still. Subject Leia Morn is under seizure authority. Surrender your body, your implant, and all registered assets. Noncompliance will be billed as aggravated resistance."
Kane rose, smooth and economical. "They're not militia."
"The guns say otherwise."
"Militia kills for orders. Debt squads kill for revenue."
The roof buckled.
Three armored figures dropped through the ceiling in a rain of sparks. White helmets, featureless. Each one marked with a red split coin. One carried a pulse rifle. Another held a debt-lance, violet electricity snapping at the pronged tip. The third raised a compact medical scanner.
The beam swept over Leia.
The machine chimed.
"Unresolved medical obligation confirmed. Estimated repayment: one hundred ninety-four thousand credits. Collateral value: restricted neural hardware. Extraction approved."
The debt-lance fired.
Kane shoved Leia down. Electricity cracked overhead, vaporizing the seat behind them. Foam stuffing exploded into the air, stinking of burnt plastic.
He fired twice. First round punched through the scanner's lens. Second hit the trooper's knee joint. The armored figure collapsed. The debt-lance skidded across the floor, still sparking.
The pulse rifle opened up.
Kane dragged Leia behind a support pillar. Blue rounds shredded the carriage. Each impact punched molten holes through the walls. Outside, the city blurred into neon towers and black rain.
"How many?" Leia asked.
"Three inside. More on the roof."
"Can you get us out?"
"I already promised I would."
The words hit harder than the gunfire.
The Covenant Engine answered.
A thin silver ring formed around Kane's wrist. Then sank beneath his skin. He grunted as the mark tightened. New text flashed across Leia's vision.
PROTECTED OBJECTIVE: KANE ROE.
THREAT RESPONSE ENABLED.
Kane stared at his wrist. For the first time since she'd met him, fear crossed his face without a mask.
"What did it do?" he asked.
"It heard you."
"That's becoming a problem."
The trooper with the pulse rifle advanced. Boots crunched broken glass. "Leia Morn. Kneel. Your debt will be transferred to Halcyon custody. Compliance reduces extraction trauma by twelve percent."
Leia peered around the pillar. The train's emergency controls were six feet away, exposed beneath a flickering panel. Beyond them, the forward door led to the engine compartment.
Her fingers flexed.
The old recording still hovered in the air. Nolan's frozen face watched her from the center of the wreckage.
Don't come here.
Not because he didn't want her.
Because they were waiting for her memory.
The pulse rifle fired. Kane leaned out, returned fire, forced the trooper back. The protected mark around his wrist flared. His movements sharpened. He crossed the open space in a blur, slammed one armored soldier against the wall, drove his elbow into the helmet's throat seal.
The trooper folded.
Kane grabbed the debt-lance before it could discharge and hurled it through the emergency window. Violet current exploded outside, caught a drone midair, dragged it into the side of the train.
"Leia! Controls!"
She ran.
A round tore through her coat, grazed her ribs. Heat spread across her side. She hit the emergency panel, found the manual brake lever under a locked cover.
The Covenant Engine projected symbols over the metal.
ACCESS RESTRICTED.
LEGACY ADMINISTRATOR REQUIRED.
Her hand hovered.
Something moved in the back of her mind. Not a full memory. Just a sensation. A glass room. White gloves. A man's voice: *The city listens because you gave it permission.*
Then her own voice, younger and furious: *I never gave you permission to take my brother.*
The memory vanished so hard her knees almost buckled.
The armored trooper lunged.
Leia caught the panel edge and twisted. The cover snapped open under her fingers like the train itself recognized her. She pulled the brake.
The train screamed.
Metal shrieked against metal. Everyone in the carriage flew forward. The remaining trooper smashed into the ceiling. Kane caught a handhold with one arm, grabbed Leia with the other.
For three breathless seconds they swung above the floor while the train ground to a halt inside a tunnel of red maintenance lights.
Then the roof exploded.
A militia drone punched through, six rotors whining. A mounted cannon rotated toward Leia.
Kane shoved her behind him.
The cannon charged.
Leia saw the muzzle glow. Saw Kane turn, too late. Saw the silver mark around his wrist ignite.
The Engine spoke inside her skull.
PROTECTED OBJECTIVE UNDER LETHAL THREAT.
FULFILLMENT PATH AVAILABLE.
PROMISE: I WILL GET YOU AND NOLAN OUT.
REQUIRED ACTION: PRESERVE PROTECTED OBJECTIVE.
Her body moved before her fear could stop it.
Leia grabbed the drone's underside and slammed her palm against the armored chassis.
The world slowed.
Not completely. The cannon's charge still crawled toward detonation. But every detail sharpened—the trembling rotor blades, the smell of hot circuitry, Kane's pupils contracting as he watched her.
A current surged from the implant down her arm.
The drone's systems unfolded in her mind like a blueprint.
Target lock. Firing sequence. Emergency relay. Power core.
She found the core.
Squeezed.
The drone screamed.
Its cannon fired into the ceiling. Concrete and sparks rained down. Leia twisted her wrist, ripped the power cell free, threw it through the open window.
The explosion outside shook the tunnel.
Silence fell. Just the hiss of damaged armor and Leia's ragged breathing.
Text appeared.
PROMISE PARTIALLY FULFILLED.
TEMPORARY ABILITY UNLOCKED: PREDICTIVE SIGHT.
COST: MEMORY FRAGMENTATION INCREASED.
Leia staggered. A name vanished from the edge of her thoughts. She knew it had been important. She could feel the empty space where it belonged, cold and smooth as a missing tooth.
Kane caught her by the shoulders.
"Stay with me."
"Did I do that?"
"You saved my life."
"That's not what I asked."
He looked at her for a long second. The tunnel lights painted his face in alternating red and shadow.
"Yes," he said. "You did."
The honesty scared her more than a lie would have.
A hatch at the front of the carriage opened with a hydraulic cough. Beyond it, the train's maintenance spine—a narrow passage lined with cables and coolant pipes. Warning sirens began to pulse.
Kane pulled her toward it. "We've got maybe two minutes before the rest of the squad cuts through the rear cars."
Leia resisted. "The recording."
"We take it with us."
"It showed me signing Nolan away."
"It showed you signing something."
"You saw his face. You heard him beg."
"I saw it."
"Then say it." Her voice cracked. "Say I sold him."
Kane's jaw flexed. "I don't know what happened in that room."
"But you know more than you're telling me."
His silence was answer enough.
Leia stepped closer. Close enough to see the blood drying at his temple. Close enough to feel the heat coming off him in the cold train air. "Who sent you to Halcyon?"
The mark beneath his skin pulsed once.
Kane's eyes dropped to it. "Not here."
"You promised to get me out. You didn't promise to tell me the truth."
"I promised to get you and Nolan out alive."
"And if the truth makes that impossible?"
A distant impact shook the rear of the train.
Kane's gaze returned to hers. "Then we survive it anyway."
The carriage behind them filled with white smoke. Voices shouted through the haze. The enforcement squad had breached the next door.
Leia grabbed the damaged projector from the floor. The recording compressed into a crystal shard, slid into her palm. The moment her fingers closed around it, the Covenant Engine flared.
The frozen image of young Leia reappeared—not in the carriage, but inside her vision.
The authorization room returned.
This time, the memory moved past the signature.
Nolan was crying now. Furious tears cutting through the dirt on his face. "You promised! You promised you wouldn't sign!"
Young Leia finally looked at him.
Her expression wasn't cold.
It was terrified.
She leaned toward the recording lens, so close the camera caught the tremor in her lips.
"Nolan," she whispered, "if I don't sign, they take both of us."
A man in a gray Halcyon coat stepped into frame. His face was deliberately blurred. But his voice slipped through the distortion.
"The city requires an heir. The boy is leverage. You are the key."
Young Leia's hand stayed on the pad.
"And if I sign?"
"Your brother lives. You forget."
Nolan slammed his cuffed hands against the table. "Don't believe him! Leia, please! Don't sign!"
Young Leia closed her eyes.
For one instant, Leia felt the pressure of that decision as if it were happening now—the weight of Nolan's voice, the sterile smell of antiseptic, the cold pad under her palm.
Then her younger self opened her eyes and looked directly into the camera.
"I'm not giving you my brother," she said. "I'm buying him time."
She pressed her hand down.
The screen burned white.
Leia returned to the train with a cry, collapsing against Kane's chest. His arms came around her automatically. She could feel his heartbeat through the coat, fast and hard.
"What did you see?" he asked.
She couldn't answer.
Because the truth was worse than selling Nolan.
She'd traded herself.
And she couldn't remember why.