The leash woke Arden with the taste of metal in his mouth.
No alarm chime; just a slow constriction at the base of his skull, like the tower had reached down and pinched his spine.
[UNIT Ø7 // INTERNAL SECURITY PROTOCOL.]
[MANDATORY PRESENCE: JUDICIARY INTERROGATION THEATRE FOUR.]
[HANDLER: SILEX.]
[COMPLIANCE WINDOW: 180 SECONDS.]
"They're getting lazy," Arden muttered.
He swung off the bunk, dragged on gear: undersuit, boots, no plates. This wasn't a field op; this was theater. The collar settled snug and smug against his throat.
The corridor lights bled white as he walked. Other Dogs watched him pass—brief glances at the Ø7 sigil, at the scuffed face they'd seen on leaked halo snippets if they knew where to look. Half curiosity, half relief it wasn't their name glowing.
Judiciary Interrogation Theatre Four sat deep in the tower, below the level where windows still pretended the world was open. Door of heavy composite; scanner like an unblinking eye.
It swallowed him.
Inside: tiered observation, dim. One-way glass looking down into the interrogation pit.
Silex waited near the rail. Black suit, black collar key at his wrist, expression like a closed book. Kai stood at a console, plugs trailing from his wrists, hair a mess. Lyra perched cross-legged on a long metal bench, bare toes making no sound. Seraphine lounged against a pillar, in blacks that fit indecently well for an internal proceeding, as if daring someone to call it out. Darius was by the glass.
Darius looked wrong.
He was in soft armor, shoulders filling half the viewport, heavy hands braced on the rail. His jaw was clenched hard enough that the tendon stood out, and the faint flicker in his right eye—the bad one—chased ghosts only he saw.
Arden moved to stand beside him.
"What'd they drag us out for?" he asked.
"A show," Darius said. His voice came low, like gravel pushed through cloth. "And maybe a warning."
Silex didn't turn.
"Good of you to join us, Reik," he said. "We've identified one of the Echo Tithe endpoints."
Kai threw data up on the side-screens: strings of numbers, hashes, nodes lighting up like infected nerves.
"Judiciary internal," Kai said. "Vault technician, clearance delta-three. Captain Harrow Vale. He signs off on exit-checks of execution feeds, Chain Dog telemetry, all the fun stuff."
On the other side of the glass, the man sat cuffed to a bolted chair.
No halo, no robes. Judiciary greys. Badge still pinned to his chest like it might save him.
"He's been selling copies," Silex said. "Our deaths, your leash-flare, Reik. Halo Market. Saintglass. The House of Recall. Efficient vertical integration."
"Of course he has," Arden said. "Why invite a parasite when your own organs can do the job."
Seraphine smiled faint. "Kinkier when it's in-house," she said. "Less paperwork."
Lyra tilted her head. "He smells afraid," she murmured.
"You can't smell through glass," Arden said.
"Not with a nose," she said.
Silex finally faced them.
"This is a controlled proceeding," he said. "No external record. Ø7 attends as both aggrieved assets and instruments."
"Translation," Kai said. "We're props and tools."
"Yes," Silex said. "Darius will conduct the interrogation."
Arden blinked. "Why him?"
Darius's mouth twitched. Not a smile.
"I used to wear that badge," he said. "Might help."
Arden stared at Silex. "You're putting our barely-leashed war veteran with the murder-implant in a room with the guy who turns us into merch."
"Yes," Silex said again. "Because I want him afraid."
"You're not worried about a mess?" Seraphine asked.
"I'm counting on it," Silex said. "Up to a point."
The leash along Arden's vertebrae ran a cold finger. Shared risk.
He felt the others feel it too—the link tightening like a wire between teeth.
"Rules," Silex said. "Captain Vale is property of Judiciary. I want names. Routes. Confirmation of internal sanction. Kell, you may bruise him. You may frighten him. You may not kill him unless I say so. In return, if you succeed, I log Ø7 as essential to internal security."
"And if he slips?" Seraphine asked lightly.
Silex's eyes didn't move from Darius as he said, "Then everyone pays a calibration fee."
The collar warmed in sympathetic threat: Good audience.
"Cute," Arden said. "Love that for us."
He watched Darius's burned cheek jump once.
"Call it out," Arden said quietly, only for him. "If you feel it coming up."
Darius's gaze stayed on the man below.
"You'll know," he said.
He walked out, down to the pit.
⸻
The interrogation room mic picked up everything: the buzz of the vents, the rattle of Harrow Vale's shallow breaths, the clink of Darius's boots.
No mirrored table, no soft light. Just concrete, a bolted chair, a drain in the floor that nobody talked about.
"Captain," Darius said.
Vale flinched at his own name. Close up, the badge looked scraped; the man behind it was mid-forties, pale beneath tower tan, eyes ringed by nights watching feeds he shouldn't.
"This is irregular," Vale said. "I requested an advocate."
"You got me," Darius said.
Vale stared. "You're… Kell. Chain Dog."
"Still good with names," Darius said. He dragged a second chair into the circle of light and sat, big frame folding slow. "You know why you're here?"
Vale's tongue wetted his lips.
"I handled the feeds," he said. "I followed protocol. If there's an error—"
"We're past error," Darius said. "We traced Echo Tithe through Saintglass. Through Alesis Korr. Through your login. We have you on record sending mirrored packets out of judiciary vaults to ghost nodes."
Vale shook his head too fast.
"Those logs can be spoofed," he said. "You people run dark ops all the time. There's side-bands no one talks about. For all I know, this is cover for—"
Darius cut him off without raising his voice.
"You sold the death of a seventeen-year-old girl executed in Sector C for 'terrorist sentiment,'" he said. "You clipped her last ninety seconds into a package called 'FALLEN ANGEL / SCHOOLSHOOTS BACK.' You know how I know? Because I watched it this morning."
Above, Seraphine muttered, "Jesus."
Kai's jaw went tight.
"Confirmed," Kai said softly. "File tag matches his signature."
Vale swallowed.
"That was an internal training reel," he said. "It wasn't—"
"You sold Chain Dog feeds too," Darius said. "Dogs you drank with at the canteen. Ø3-β-09. Ø5-γ-02. You watched them die on duty, then watched them die again for sport you paid yourself for."
"I—" Vale started.
"You sold my leash," Darius said.
Quiet. His right eye flickered once.
Arden felt the hairs on his arms rise.
Silex's face was unreadable.
Lyra whispered, "His signal—"
"Don't," Silex said to her, soft. "Let it show."
Darius leaned in, forearms on his knees, hands hanging empty.
"You know what they call it up there?" he asked. "Rust."
Vale blinked. "What?"
"When the badge rots from the back," Darius said. "Looks clean to the crowd, flakes in the rain. That's you. They polish you for the Veil. Meanwhile you're in the basement nicking pieces off bodies for side cash."
"You can't talk to me like that," Vale snapped. "You're an asset. I signed your renewals."
Darius's mouth twitched.
"You think paper means you're above the pit?" he asked.
Vale's gaze slid, looking for cameras. "Handler Silex, I protest—"
"Protest noted," Silex said over the speaker, bored. "Answer the questions."
Arden watched the way Darius's shoulders had gone too still.
He knew the file; they all did now. Shadow Host. Residual Combat Personality B. The thing that woke when Darius's stress curves hit the wrong shape. The Division had helpfully briefed Ø7: in case he turns on you, here's the warning signs.
Primary among them: the humor goes first.
"Who else is in Echo Tithe," Darius asked. "Names."
"No one," Vale said quickly. "It's automated. Old directive. I just maintain the pipeline. It's sanctioned. You think I'd risk my clearance if it wasn't signed?"
"Signed by who," Darius said.
Vale clamped his mouth.
Up in the gallery, Seraphine said, "He's holding. Wants a deal."
Kai: "Also he believes part of what he's saying. He thinks he's following orders."
Lyra's fingers dug into her own knees.
"The line inside him is scared," she said. "The part that signed it isn't."
Arden lowered his voice.
"Silex," he said. "If this was sanctioned, then he's not your leak, he's your mirror. How far you want Darius to crack it?"
Silex's eyes didn't leave the room.
"Until I see what's underneath," he said.
Arden didn't like the wording.
Below, Darius stood.
He circled behind Vale's chair, slow, one hand brushing the man's shoulder with almost paternal weight.
"You know what happens when rust spreads?" Darius asked. "Structure fails. Bridges fall. People die under things they trusted."
"Nobody died from this," Vale snapped. "They were already— they were—"
"Already dead?" Darius said.
He clamped fingers around the man's jaw, not rough yet, just unignorable.
"You ever watch your kids on your own security feed?" he asked quietly. "See them move, hear them laugh, and know it's a recording of the night you killed them?"
The words didn't belong to the neat script. Arden jolted.
Lyra's head whipped toward the glass. "It's waking," she whispered.
Silex said nothing.
Vale tried to pull away. Darius held him in place with insulting ease.
"I didn't— I just moved files," Vale stammered. "It's clean. It's just data."
"Say that slower," Darius said. "See if it sounds like a prayer."
His right eye steadied. The flicker stilled.
Arden had never seen him this way. The warmth stripped out, leaving something cold and careful.
Shadow Host.
"Darius," Arden said over the unit-link. "Check your barometer."
"Watching," Darius answered. But the voice that answered had a smoother edge.
He forced Vale's face toward the ceiling cam.
"Tell the room," Darius said. "Echo Tithe is sanctioned. You said that. Tell us by who."
Vale squeezed his eyes shut.
"I have non-disclosure clearance," he said. "You can't—"
Darius's hand slid from jaw to throat.
"Captain," Silex's voice came down, mild. "If you don't provide names, I will log you as unsanctioned. That means everything you did is only you. Echo Tithe, Saintglass routing, Halo Market packages. No doctrine to hide in. And I will let Kell document what he has to do to get them. Those files might circulate. Poetic symmetry."
Vale froze. Sweat bloomed on his forehead.
"You wouldn't," he said.
"You sold my Dogs," Silex said. "Let's explore my sense of proportion."
Darius's fingers tightened just enough to produce a choking sound.
Arden felt it in his own throat, phantom. The collar pulsed, tuned to autonomic sympathetic response.
"Darius," Arden said quietly. "Ease up."
Darius didn't move.
"Name," he said to Vale. "Start with the one who told you nothing you do is murder as long as the paperwork calls it maintenance."
Silence stretched.
Then: "Magistrate Rowan," Vale choked. "Oversight Committee. We were told to route copies to Echo Tithe for 'algorithmic refinement.' Hate modeling. Faith metrics. It's signed, all of it. I just— I just ran the line."
"And took a cut," Kai murmured.
Arden exhaled. There it was. Rot way above.
"Who else," Darius asked. "You have a roster. Say it or we test how many bones it takes to make you precise."
Arden swallowed.
Something in Darius's tone made the back of his neck prickle. No anger there. Just curiosity.
Lyra whispered, "There's a song in him."
Vale spat names now. People farther up the tower. Protocol codes. Committees. The Echo Tithe wasn't a hack—it was a budget line.
Kai recorded everything, eyes blown wide.
"Holy shit," he said softly. "It's structural."
Silex watched like a man enjoying a very good play.
"There," he said. "That's the rust."
Vale sobbed once.
"I did what I was told," he said. "Like you. Like your Dogs."
Darius bent, lips near his ear.
"No," he said. "We kill where they point us. You sold what was left."
Arden felt it then: a surge on the link like a switch thrown. Lyra sucked in a breath.
"Darius—" she started.
Shadow Host arrived.
It was subtle.
He straightened; his hands fell away from Vale's throat, then came back in a different rhythm. His shoulders rolled like something unfolding under the skin. The hum of his subdermal plates rose half a register; the biolum veins along his neck brightened faintly.
When he spoke, the cadence was wrong.
"Captain Vale," he said calmly. "Did you enjoy the Ø3-β-09 feed?"
Vale blinked, bewildered by the shift.
"I— I don't—"
"Plate carrier took three shots," Darius went on, voice slow and clean. "He fell to his knees, choking on his own teeth. You clipped that, didn't you? Trimmed the boring parts. Left the part where he calls for his handler like a child. Played it on loop. How many times?"
Vale started shaking.
"I had quotas," he whispered. "Engagement metrics."
"Answer the question," Darius said.
"One," Vale said. "Once."
"Lie," Darius said.
His left hand snapped down, crushing Vale's right index finger against the arm of the chair. Bone cracked. Vale screamed.
Arden slammed his palms against the glass.
"Enough," he said.
Silex held up a hand without looking away. "Still inside the line."
Lyra's nails carved crescents in her own skin.
"It's not him," she said. "It is, but it isn't."
"Shadow Host," Kai said quietly. "Loop's live."
Seraphine watched, eyes narrowed, all her lazy charm gone.
"Call him off," she said to Silex. "Or I go in."
"Nobody moves," Silex said.
Darius picked up Vale's broken hand, examined it like a mechanic inspecting a bent part.
"Try again," he said. "How many times."
Vale sobbed. "Twenty-three. It tested well. People liked— they liked seeing you fail."
Darius nodded once.
"There we are," he said. "Truth."
He dropped the hand. Blood dripped down the chair leg, neat lines converging toward the drain.
"Darius," Arden said on the unit-link, hard now. "Look at the glass."
In the pit, the big man turned his head.
For a heartbeat, his eyes found Arden's through the mirroring. Flat. Unblinking.
Arden felt his stomach turn. There was nothing of fatherly there. No tired humor. Just assessment: threat vectors, leverage.
"Handler," Arden snapped. "He's over. Pull him."
Silex's thumb hovered above his wrist-slate, amused.
"Interesting, isn't it?" he said. "To see what they made from him."
Then, to Darius: "Kell. Stand down. We have enough."
Darius didn't move.
Vale whimpered, "Please."
"You'll get processed," Darius said. "Magistrate Rowan will cut you loose or cut you open. Not my call. But understand something."
He leaned in close again.
"You think selling ghosts keeps you above dying," he murmured. "But the tower eats all of us. The only choice is whether you scream alone."
Arden saw the tension, felt it on the link—a taut frequency. The Shadow Host wanted to finish. To erase this rust physically. To quiet the noise.
Shared punishment hung there, a blade.
"Darius," Lyra whispered, barely audible even on the neural band. "You promised no more kitchens."
He froze.
The words hung like ice.
"Say their names," Lyra added, voice shaking. "So you remember which side of the glass you're on."
Silence.
Then Darius exhaled, a sound like a deflating lung.
"Elias," he said. "Lara."
The glow in his veins dimmed. His right eye flickered back into its human misalignment.
He stepped away from Vale.
"Interrogation complete," he said, now Darius again. "You've got your rust map."
Up above, Arden's shoulders dropped a fraction.
Silex finally tapped his slate.
"Captain Vale," he said over the intercom. "You will be remanded to internal custody under suspicion of unsanctioned profit from Echo Tithe and associated abuses. Your cooperation will be noted in sentencing."
Vale sobbed in relief. Blood still dripped.
"You said it was sanctioned," Arden said to Silex. "His orders came from higher."
"Yes," Silex said. "Which is why he must be unsanctioned now. Perception is policy."
Seraphine let out a dark little laugh.
"So the badge rusts," she said, "and you throw one flake into the furnace to prove the rest is 'pure.'"
"That's one way to phrase it," Silex said. "Another is: we excise a tumor and study its tissue for origin."
Kai snorted. "You're not a doctor. You're a butcher pretending you have a degree."
Silex ignored him. His attention was on Darius, who'd stopped under the ceiling cam as if waiting.
"Good work, Kell," Silex said into the speaker. "Next time, stop one bone earlier."
Darius's jaw worked.
"Yes, Handler," he said.
On the link, his presence felt frayed. Arden could feel the residue of the other thing pacing in his head.
Lyra spoke, gentle.
"You came back," she told him.
"Not all the way," he answered.
Arden stepped back from the glass, pulse still high.
"So that's the trick," he said. "You poke his monster with our lives on the hook, watch which way he snaps."
Silex glanced at him.
"Rust on the badge," Silex said. "Rust in the Dog. I need to know where the structural weaknesses are."
"We're not beams," Arden said. "We're people."
"People are infrastructure," Silex said calmly. "You, more than most."
Arden wanted to hit him. The collar thrummed, sniffing the impulse.
Seraphine moved closer, shoulder brushing Arden's.
"Easy," she murmured. "Don't give him a second show in the same hour."
Her perfume was smoke and rain and faint machine oil. Comforting, in a fucked way.
He didn't step away.
Below, security came in to drag Vale out. His badge was still pinned to his chest, blood spattering the metal.
Rust on the badge.
Arden watched him go and felt no satisfaction.
"We're not going after Rowan," he said. "Or the rest of the committee."
"Not yet," Silex said. "They're higher rungs. You don't pull those without something better to hold onto."
"We have proof," Kai said. "We have names, codes, recorded confession—"
"And all of it lives inside the machine that employs them," Silex said. "You think it will indict itself?"
Lyra's voice was small.
"So what was the point?" she asked.
Silex smiled, faint.
"Now we know," he said. "The Halo Market, Saintglass, Echo Tithe—they're not aberrations. They're features. And we know Captain Vale is expendable. That tells us what kind of god we serve."
Arden looked down into the pit, where a smear of blood marked the floor near the drain.
"Looks more like a god that rusts," he said.
Silex's eyes warmed, predator-pleased.
"Then don't become a statue," he said. "Dismissed."
⸻
They walked out together.
In the corridor, the tower hummed, clean and bright and full of ghosts.
Darius waited by a support pillar, hands empty, shoulders slumped like the weight had come back all at once.
"Hey," Arden said.
Darius lifted his head. The human was back: tired, guilty.
"You alright?" Arden asked.
"Define," Darius said.
"You didn't kill him," Arden said. "That's something."
"That's the bare minimum," Darius said. "They dropped me in there to scare him. Part of me wanted to… tidy up."
"Shadow Host," Kai said, catching up. "Fully clocked. You owe Lyra a drink."
Lyra stood a pace behind Arden, watching Darius with too-large eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have used their names. But it worked."
Darius's laugh was short and raw.
"No," he said. "You should have. Someone's got to remember them as more than warning labels."
Seraphine leaned in close to Darius, easy, too intimate for most, but this was them.
"If you'd snapped his neck," she said, low, "I'd have helped hide the body. But I also don't feel like screaming on the floor for Silex's calibration kink. So thanks for stopping."
Darius looked at her, then Arden.
"I felt it," he said. "The switch. Like the lights going off in all the soft rooms. I don't want that near you."
"Then keep tuning it back," Arden said. "You're not the only monster in this building, old man."
Darius's gaze softened a fraction.
"Kid," he said.
Arden scowled. "Don't."
"I'll stop when you stop needing it," Darius said.
Arden almost smiled. "Then you're stuck with it."
Seraphine's hand brushed Arden's collar briefly as she moved past him, knuckles grazing the metal.
"Come on," she said. "Let's go watch Kai try to encrypt a conscience."
Kai sniffed. "Joke's on you, I sold that subcontract."
Lyra shook her head.
"You're all lying," she said. "But at least it's in the right direction."
They walked.
Behind them, in Interrogation Theatre Four, cleaners came with solvents that never quite erased the stains. The badge they pried off Harrow Vale's chest would be catalogued, tagged, filed.
Evidence. Or trophy.
Rust, either way.
The Obedience Machine purred louder.
It had tested its Dogs against its own corruption, and for now, they'd come away bloody but breathing.
For now.