Chapter 20 · Sable's Real Plan

The city channel did not go silent when the Northern Compact finished speaking.

It breathed.

Static crawled through every speaker in the refinery command room, followed by the low, synchronized hum of six hundred thousand emergency receivers waking across Seventh City. Kellan heard it in the cracked wall panels, in the dying monitors, in the metal bones of the floor beneath his boots.

Then the voice returned.

“Commander Vey. You have been identified. Surrender your neural core and submit to judgment, or the Northern Compact will complete the evacuation purge you began nine years ago.”

A woman’s voice this time. Calm. Educated. Almost gentle.

Kellan stared at his own face frozen on the largest screen—a younger man in black command armor, jaw clean-shaven, eyes cold enough to belong to someone else. Beneath the image, red letters named him in three languages.

REBEL MARSHAL VEY.

The Crown stirred along his spine.

Not with pain. Not with resistance.

With pleasure.

A warm pulse climbed from the base of his skull and spread behind his eyes.