Page 6 of Claimed By the Condemned Alien

“Because it’s a lie.”

A custody officer twisted her arms behind her. Iven stood beside the fallen tray, white-faced. Senn followed Kesta’s gaze. “Orderly Lio. Complete the certifications.” Iven’s mouth opened. Kesta saw the decision happen inside him—the instinct to refuse, the memory of whatever family depended on his wage, the terror of the officers surrounding them.

“Don’t,” she said.

Senn smiled faintly. “A touching concern.” Kesta held Iven’s gaze. “You didn’t see their condition. You cannot legally certify what you did not examine.” It was a thin shield, but it gave him one. Iven swallowed. “She is correct, Major. Protocol requires direct assessment.” Senn’s attention sharpened.

Kesta drove her heel down on the officer’s boot and tore one hand free. She struck the ward’s mass emergency release. Thermal sheets snapped back from twenty-three living bodies. Alarms erupted. Vital monitors that had been suppressed by the disposition software flooded the wall with pulses, respiration curves, and neurological activity.

Alive. Alive. Alive. For three seconds the display gave the entire ward the truth in a form no one could reinterpret. Then Senn shut it down. The officer behind Kesta slammed her into the medicine cabinet. Glass cracked beside her cheek. Her closed fist struck the cabinet edge, driving the memory sliver deeper into her palm.

Pain flashed white, but the blood would hide the cut beneath the confusion. Kesta held still as Senn leaned close enough that only she could hear him.

“The empire does not require your belief, Medic Frank. Only your signature.”

She spat in his face. His expression did not change, but he ordered Iven taken with her.

“No,” Kesta said.

Iven made a frightened sound as an officer seized him.

“He followed protocol,” she said. “I activated the display. I copied the file. He did nothing.”

Senn wiped his cheek with a sterile cloth. “Then he will have no difficulty explaining that.” They dragged Kesta through the sealed corridor while behind her, orderlies replaced the thermal sheets.

The last thing she saw was the blue-scaled prisoner turning his head toward her and lifting two restrained fingers from the gurney. It was not a wave. Kesta recognized it as a soldier’s acknowledgment. They held Kesta in a lightless interview room first.

The restraint chair adjusted itself to her body, tightening whenever she moved. A wall display replayed the ward emergency without sound. In the edited recording, the prisoners beneath the thermal sheets never appeared. The feed began with Kesta striking the release panel and ended with an officer restraining her. A legal investigator entered carrying no tablet, no notes, and no expression.

“You experienced a dissociative episode,” he said.

“No.”

“You believed deceased subjects were alive.”

“They were alive.”

“You assaulted military personnel.”

“I exposed a falsified record.”

The investigator placed a confession on the display. Her name appeared beneath it, followed by a biometric seal generated from blood, retinal pattern, and voiceprint. Kesta read the statement. It claimed grief over battlefield losses had caused a break with reality. It apologized for compromising classified remains. It named Iven as the person who encouraged her.

“Remove his name.”

“You recognize the statement?”

“I recognize a forgery.”

“Sign voluntarily and Orderly Lio returns to duty.”

“And if I don’t?”

“He becomes a co-conspirator.”

Kesta looked at the smooth black camera in the ceiling. Somewhere, perhaps, Iven sat in another room receiving the same offer. The empire did not merely manufacture truth. It distributed guilt until someone became willing to carry it.

“Let him go,” she said. “I acted alone.”