The detention center on Capital Prime was a place of absolute silence. It was a void designed to strip away rank, identity, and hope, leaving only the sterile hum of life support and the weight of one’s crimes. I stood before the transparent plasteel wall of Interrogation Cell 7, watching the man who had been my universe reduced to a prisoner in a grey jumpsuit.
Arthur sat on a narrow metal bench, his head in his hands. He looked smaller now, stripped of the immaculate black and gold uniform that had amplified his presence. Without the authority, he was just a man. A broken, pathetic man. When he heard the hiss of the mag-sealed door behind me, he looked up, and his eyes, bloodshot and raw, filled with a desperate, terrifying flicker of hope.
He scrambled to his feet, pressing himself ag
