Page 54 of Pocket Wife

Each one dressed as procedure. Each one aimed at a person who has just agreed to speak.

I begin reading them aloud the moment they arrive.

At first, people flinch.

Then they listen.

Then they laugh bitterly when Helix threatens to inspect a water pump that has been broken for six years.

Fear sounds different when everyone hears it together.

Near sunset, Ivera from Tamsin Ford requests full relay priority. Her image fills the main screen. “We have twenty-three families willing to submit harvest and transport records. We also have a message for Helix.”

I wait.

Ivera lifts a document where everyone can see it. “If they review one of our contracts for telling the truth, they review all of them. We stand as a group.”

The hall erupts—not cheering exactly, but sound enough to shake dust from the rafters.

I press one hand to the table, suddenly unsteady.

Rethan is beside me before anyone else notices. He does not touch me in public. He only stands close enough that I can borrow the fact of him.

“You are becoming difficult to isolate,” he says.

“Good.”

“Yes.” His gaze travels to the screens, the witnesses, the wall of numbers. “Very.”

Then the outer doors open.

A young runner from the south watch stumbles in, breathing hard, face gray beneath windburn.

“Lucy,” he says. “Helix security just landed at Celia’s bakery.”

Celia’s face goes empty before the fear reaches it.

The bread basket slips from her hands.

My gaze runs over the wall of numbers, the witness screens, the names still waiting to be spoken.

Then I face the door.

“Keep recording,” I say.

CHAPTER 22

RETHAN

Celia’s bakery is already smoking when I reach the square.

Not burning.

Smoking.

A difference large enough for survival and small enough for terror.

The bakery stands between the clinic lane and the school road, its front windows thrown open, pale flour dust drifting through them like ash. Two Helix security transports block the street. Four armored officers stand at the entrance. A fifth holds Celia by one arm while she tries to twist toward the open doorway.