The execution platform rose out of the Imperial Plaza like a black tooth, and the whole galaxy was watching.
I stood on it with my arms locked behind me, my legs barely holding me up. The medical restraints had been replaced with mag-cuffs sized for a soldier, and my wrists had gone numb an hour ago. Around the platform, a million faces packed the plaza, and above them, the sky was littered with holodrones, every one of them feeding my face to a billion screens.
The charge was treason. The evidence was nothing.
I knew how it would end, because I had designed the machine they were rolling toward me. The memory extractor was my own work, built for the Empire, refined over years in a lab that bore Kaelen Valerius's name. I had never imagined it aimed at my skull.
Kaelen stood at the edge
