[indent][center][i]Why her?[/i][/center] 

The workshop was quiet, save for the soft hum of ventilation. He occupied his habitual niche: a corner booth in the east sector’s sub-office, its surfaces buried under schematics and the acrid tang of overbrewed coffee. He’d disabled the overhead interface display earlier, far too talkative for his taste, and activated only the analog terminal he trusted. No voice control, no predictive modelling. Just keystrokes and code. His fingers had begun to ache years ago, but they still moved as they always did, the pain in them long since catalogued, then shelved. 

There were always forms for him to audit and prototypes to deny. Schematics submitted for clearance that violated the ethics clause of the very MIP standard he wrote. He rejected them in silence, offering no footnotes. They’d resubmit, watered down or encrypted under prettier branding. That was the game he was in, and had been in, for years now. It wasn't work anymore. It was a ritual. A way to keep the tremors in his joints from worsening.

He didn’t miss the council chambers. Not really. They still sent him policy drafts and technical advisories— “pending input,” they always said. But no one truly waited for it.

No one read his notes. No one needed to anymore. Dominion’s gears turned with or without his grease.

And honestly? That was fine. The solitude was…familiar. Predictable in the way he was used to and enjoyed. 

Which was why the knock, when it came, startled him so. 

It was soft first, as if the person on the other side wasn’t completely sure they were at the right place. To see the right person. Someone who wanted to be seen. But, no, it came again, this time firmer. 

So, he reached for his cane.

 
[center][i]Why him?[/i][/center]

Her options had never been scarce. Countless back-alley proprietors peddling neural augmentations thrived in the Grey Market, each discreet enough to help her without too many questions given. Yet she’d bypassed them all, a choice that she wished she could say she did not understand. The truth, however, coiled cold in her chest: she craved more than the usual click of a subroutine fix. She needed the [i]why[/i], the reason safety unit agents had hauled Roach into what might as well be oblivion and left her scrambling to fix whatever was wrong with her. Time had bled into a numb void, her mind latching onto words she hadn’t fully processed before, but now….?

[i] “We understand they are not allowed and, by certain contractual licensing, they can be killed on sight while in the walls of Dominion, but we do not believe that was what was happening here.”[/i]

Roach had been working off the record and sent by someone possibly in an official position. How else could she explain why Klay believed this case was different from Roach’s previous ones, where he’d be protected with the clearance he usually possessed? He’d been set up, plain and simple, and it was not likely that a nobody was responsible. It had to be someone who understood how to manipulate a gray area. Someone in an official capacity. Someone like the person behind this door. 

She was here, and it was too late to turn back even if she’d wanted to. So when the footsteps approached, Selene straightened, still leaning on her better leg, arms crossed like armour across her chest with more bravery than she felt. 

When the door opened with a hydraulic sigh, she didn’t speak right away, her gaze raking over him and the frost of authority in his posture.  Age had etched deeper grooves into his face, but his eyes remained the same amber mirrors of her right one.

“[color=fff79a]Hello,[/color]” Selene finally said, her throat burning as the next syllable clawed its way free, venom and vulnerability braided into a single exhale. 

“[color=fff79a]Father.[/color]”

[hr] 
The table’s surface leached cold into her palms as Selene perched on the exam slab. One boot lay discarded on the floor, the hem of her pants shoved above her knee to expose the border where flesh met augmentation. Beneath the glare of Lysander’s workshop lights, the seams gleamed deceptively smooth, as if the alloy embedded in her femur had always belonged there. Once, she’d traced those edges with pride, marvelling at how the ports transformed her into something kinetic. Something unstoppable. At sixteen, she’d out-sprinted every classmate in her academy, her strides a blur of hydraulic precision. Speed had been her thing, and her augments were a manifesto: [i]I cannot be caught. I will not be contained.[/i]

Now, they were liabilities.
The ports ached more often. The feedback core hissed in cold weather. The relays misfired during stress spikes. The very thing that had made her feel untouchable now betrayed her at the worst moments, like a corrupted instinct twitching out of time. Even the sound of the diagnostics connecting set her teeth on edge. She used to think the augments made her her own.
Now she wasn’t sure they hadn’t just made her easier to claim. Made her…subject to situations such as the one she was in at this very moment. 

Lysander worked with efficiency. He hadn’t asked permission before retrieving his tools, nor had he said anything since she’d entered and sat down, like this was something normal for them when the last time she’d been here, she couldn’t have been older than 16.  She didn’t look at him as he examined the exposed interface, though when his fingers grazed a neural node, Selene flinched, the sensation akin to a scalpel dragging through scar tissue. Data scrolled across the holoscreen in his periphery, its cyan glow etching shadows beneath his eyes. She still recognized his aloofness after all this time, the same detachment he’d had during the majority of her childhood. 

“[color=fff79a]Did you design this part, too?[/color]” she asked suddenly. “[color=fff79a]The feedback core. It doesn’t feel like the standard Dominion make.[/color]”

“[color=c0a984]It was a joint prototype,[/color]” Lysander replied, his eyes not leaving the screen. “[color=c0a984]Modified post-approval by a military vendor. I didn’t approve the override protocol you're running, but it’s… similar enough.[/color]”

Of course it was. It shouldn’t have surprised her.  Her entire existence was a nested doll of his influence: education curricula, security protocols, medical standards. That her legs were now running on a prototype derived from one of his cores was just... par for the course. What unsettled her wasn’t the connection itself; it was the fact that she hadn’t known for sure. That Roach, of all people, had handed it off like it was nothing. Never once had he mentioned that the override had Syn fingerprints buried in its firmware. Had he known? Probably. Everyone who mattered did, apparently. Except for her.

“[color=fff79a]They have him, you know?[/color]” she said then. “[color=fff79a]Ro—Mr. Vexler.[/color]” Her fingers curled slightly against the table, as if the correction cost her something. It was a futile attempt at best, truly. To distance herself from the man who’d been more of a father to her than the one standing before her now. Helping her, yes, but for what purpose, what gain, she could not say. 

“[color=fff79a] Safety unit’s holding him. I’m guessing you know why, or at least have some kind of idea.[/color]” 

“[color=c0a984] Irrelevant[/color]” was her father’s reply, not even bothering to meet her face as her biometrics spiked on the screen in response. “[color=c0a984] You’re here for maintenance. Not an interrogation to support whatever conspiracy theory you’ve got this time.[/color]” 

[i]Maintenance[/i]. Was that all she remained? A system of glitches and patches covered by tattooed skin? 

Selene yanked her leg back. “[color=fff79a] Tell me why they’re holding him,[/color] she snapped. “[color=fff79a] Who hired him this time? Was it you? Was it [i]her[/i]?[/color]” She couldn’t hold back the accusation, even if it made less and less sense the more she thought about it. The words came out hot, unfiltered. She didn’t even know if she meant them. Her mother had never acknowledged Roach by name. Her father barely acknowledged him as anything more than a relic in a trench coat. If her parents had ever had a hand in his assignments, they’d kept it buried so deep not even Roach had breathed it aloud. And now he was gone, and she was left looking for a truth that was beyond her grasp. 

But she had to ask. She had to know if one of the people who made her, who literally built her, had also been the one to pull the rug out from under the only figure who'd ever made her feel chosen rather than manufactured.

Lysander’s hands paused, the soft click of his diagnostic tool being set aside soon accompanying it. He finally looked up, his gaze as clinical as the instruments around them, but there was something behind it that the girl couldn’t decipher. He’d always been difficult to figure out, though. The only thing Selene felt she ever really knew about him was his preference for data over dialogue. Even when she’d fractured her wrist at twelve, he’d lectured her about bone density algorithms while the med-drone had reset the break.

“[color=c0a984]No,[/color]” he said, the word crisp on his tongue. “[color=c0a984]Not me. And certainly not your mother. If she wanted him gone, there wouldn’t even be a detention record to reference.[/color]” He stood then, cane tapping against the floor as he crossed to a cabinet, its contents shielded behind polarized glass. His movements were methodical but slower than she remembered, each step betraying something his pride hadn’t yet admitted.

“[color=c0a984]He operated outside sanctioned parameters. That makes him a liability.[/color]” He pulled a slim data chip from a slot and turned it in his fingers before setting it aside. “[color=c0a984]But that isn’t what you want to hear, I bet.[/color]”

Selene said nothing, jaw set, posture bristling.

“[color=c0a984]You want a name. A culprit. A clean narrative that makes the system the villain and him the exception. But I’m afraid I don’t have one for you.[/color]”

He didn’t sound cruel. Just… tired. Like a man explaining gravity to his little girl despite her wishes to be able to fly one day, much like the suralites painted on her skin. 

“[color=c0a984]Roach was too close to you for too long. That’s what made him vulnerable.[/color]” His voice lowered a degree. “[color=c0a984]You think they didn’t notice? That no one flagged a Syn heir consorting with an unsanctioned enforcer running black ops under borrowed clearance?[/color]”

He turned to face her again, one brow lifting with restrained finality.

“[color=c0a984]This was inevitable, as far as I’m concerned. He hasn’t been on our payroll in over a year. Which means no contract,  no clearance, and no leverage.[/color]” His gaze held hers now, steady and inescapable. “[color=c0a984]Yet, as far as your mother and I know, he kept showing up. For you.[/color]”

Selene’s throat tightened because out of all the unbelievable things she’d experienced in the past few weeks, from the run in with Scotti, the creature in the tunnels, and then the ordeal with the burrower, this reveal made the least sense to her. Roach never did anything for free. He didn’t even like favours, often calling them liabilities wrapped in politeness. He always acted like he was just doing a job, a well-compensated one, even when she caught him slipping a small protein bar into her gear pouch before she’d head out or would stop by her place with takeout containers filled with her favourite greasy noodles every once in a while. She’d always assumed he’d done these things because there was something in it for him. Always with a smirk, too. Always a [i] “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. This was an extra order”[/i] or some other similar reasoning. 

They were lies. All of it. 

“[color=fff79a]That doesn’t explain why someone set him up.[/color]” Her voice was quieter now, less accusation than grasping.

Lysander didn’t answer immediately. He just returned to his console and resumed typing, each keystroke a reminder that her turmoil registered only as aberrant data to him, like spikes in cortisol and an elevated pulse. Finally, without looking up, he murmured, “[color=c0a984]Sometimes, association is enough.[/color]”

And that was it. No grand revelation. Just the brutal suggestion that she, by existing, by being cared for, had made Roach a target. All this time, she’d thought of herself as his shadow, when in reality she was potentially his noose. 

[sub]“[color=fff79a]He didn’t have to keep coming back,[/color]”[/sub] she whispered to herself, her head dipping while strands of her hair grazed her neck.  Then, as if it had been loaded in her throat the entire time, it came out quieter than she'd intended.

“[color=fff79a]I have to testify tomorrow.[/color]” Selene let out a short, humourless exhale. “[color=fff79a]They want my perspective on him. On the burrower. This whole…mess.[/color]” Her jaw worked. “[color=fff79a]Except I don’t think I know what the truth is anymore.[/color]” How could she, when she hadn’t even known what was going on right under her nose? 

She looked up finally, her eyes catching the side of her father’s face. “[color=fff79a]If I say too much, they’ll bury him. If I say too little, they’ll do it anyway. And if I lie….[/color]” She stopped herself. The thought didn’t need finishing. And for a moment, Selene wasn’t the untouchable daughter of a Council family. She was a girl on a slab, wrapped in old wounds and metal, trying not to drown in a system she thought she’d already walked away from.

“[color=fff79a]What would [i]you[/i] do?[/color]” she asked then. Just a question. A desperate one and, for the first time in years, one she meant. 

Lysander didn’t look up from the panel. He adjusted a voltage range with a faint [i]click[/i] of the tool, as though her question were just another variable to tune.

“[color=c0a984]You testify.[/color]”
Another calibration. Another click.

“[color=c0a984]You present the facts. Filtered through reason, not feeling. Leave the speculation to the officers paid to interpret it.[/color]”

He finally glanced at her then. 

“[color=c0a984]You don’t owe them your guilt. And you don’t owe him a martyrdom he didn’t ask for.[/color]”

Selene blinked. Whatever she'd expected, it wasn’t that.

“[color=c0a984]If Vexler is what you believe he is, then say what you saw. Not what you feel. Systems don’t reward sentiment, as I’ve always said to you. They record it and use it. So survive the process, Selene. That’s all you have to do. The rest? Static.[/color]” 

Selene didn’t have an answer for any of that. Instead, her fingers drifted toward her exposed port, no longer marvelling. Just… checking. Making sure it still responded to her, and not someone else. All the while, the screen near her still pulsed, like it knew the answer, even if she didn’t.[/indent]