The walk from the holding cell to the Grand Tribunal chamber was a carefully orchestrated performance of shame. Two Praetorian Guards, their chrome armor polished to a mirror shine, marched on either side of me. They didn’t touch me, but their proximity was a cage of its own. Every camera drone in the corridor tracked my movements, their red recording lights like the eyes of predatory insects. They wanted me to look broken. Defeated. I gave them nothing but the ramrod straight posture of a Commander on her way to an inspection. My neck was a column of fire, each step jarring the raw wound, but my face remained a mask of ice.
The chamber itself was a cathedral of judgment. Vast, circular, and tiered, it was designed to make the accused feel small, a single sinner at the bottom of a well of
