The air in the brig was cold and tasted of recycled oxygen and sterile metal. It was a small, featureless room, a grey box carved from the Vagrant's limited space. Lucian Crell, the Censor Primus of the Collegium, awoke not with a start, but with a slow, deliberate opening of his eyes. He showed no surprise at his surroundings, no fear. He simply took in the grey walls, the single bench, and the shimmering containment field that served as a door, his expression as placid and unreadable as a sheet of flawless glass. His composure was a weapon in itself, a declaration that this, too, was merely a variable to be processed.
Corian Severus watched him on a small monitor from the corridor. For three days since the fight in the dying world of ‘Glorious Sacrifice’, Crell had been unconscious. Now, he was awake. The hunter was aware of his cage. Corian took a steadying breath, the weight of Zadoc Khan’s sacrifice a cold stone in his gut. He had the man who embodied the Canon’s iron will. Now he had to find a way to break it, or bend it.
He keyed open the containment field and stepped inside. The air grew colder as he crossed the threshold, the two of them now sharing the same small pocket of reality. Crell’s light grey eyes, which seemed to absorb surrounding light, tracked Corian’s movement without emotion. He remained seated on the bench, his posture perfect, his hands resting on his knees. He was a statue of conviction.
Corian did not speak. Words were useless here, for now. He raised his hand and activated a small holographic projector. In the space between them, an image bloomed into existence. It was the data from the Glass Abyss, the ‘black box’ recording of a world’s death. It was a storm of fractured light and screaming data, but within it, Corian had isolated the signal. The clean, surgical signature of the weapon. The engineered paradox. And nestled inside that, the alien signature, the ghost in the machine that proved his innocence.
He let the data stream run, a silent testament to the crime. He offered the truth to his enemy, not as an argument, but as a fact of the universe, as undeniable as gravity.
Lucian Crell leaned forward slightly, his gaze fixed on the swirling data. His analysis was not that of a zealot dismissing heresy, but of a scholar dissecting a problem. He watched the energy decay rates, the impossible geometry of the collapse, the layered complexity of the weaponized concept. His focus was absolute, his detachment unnerving. For four full minutes, the only sound in the brig was the low hum of the ship’s life support and the faint, almost subliminal whisper of the holographic data.
Finally, Crell leaned back, his expression unchanged.
— Fabricated, — he said. His voice was a flat monotone, a sound with no texture. — A heretic’s lie to justify his crimes.
The words were expected, but they landed like physical blows. Corian felt a surge of frustration, hot and sharp. He had shown the man the wound in the universe, and Crell had called it a painting.
— Look at the logic! — Corian’s voice was tight, strained. He was appealing to the scientist he knew Crell had once been, the man who had co-authored papers on conceptual integrity before dedicating his life to purging all that was new. — The math is perfect. The causality is undeniable.
Crell’s gaze shifted from the hologram to Corian’s face. For the first time, a flicker of something registered in those flat grey eyes. It was not agreement. It was something far more dangerous.
— It’s flawless, — Crell admitted, and the admission was a razor. — Which makes it the most dangerous lie of all.
The statement hung in the air, a perfect paradox in itself. Crell was acknowledging the data’s integrity, the very thing that made it true, and using that integrity as proof of its falsehood. A truth so perfect, so elegant, could only be a deception designed to seduce minds away from the simple, rigid safety of the Canon. He had taken Corian’s proof and turned it into a more profound accusation.
In that moment, Corian understood. He could not convince this man. Crell’s mind was not a space to be filled with new information. It was a fortress, built from the bricks of absolute certainty. Every argument Corian presented, every piece of flawless data, would not breach the walls. It would only provide Crell with more material to reinforce them. The Censor’s belief system was designed to metabolize truth and excrete dogma.
The faint hope that had propelled Corian to the brig dissolved, leaving a cold, hard certainty in its place. This was not a debate. It was a siege, and he had been trying to knock down the gate with a battering ram made of keys.
Crell sat back, his hands returning to his knees. He had made his point. He had taken Corian’s best weapon and shown him it was useless. The debate was over. He fell silent, his composure absolute, his presence a quiet, crushing weight. A stalemate.
Corian held his gaze for another moment, the silence stretching between them. He saw the impassable wall of Crell’s conviction. But he also saw the faintest crack in its foundation. The admission of the data’s flawless logic. It was a seed. A particle of sand in the perfect machine. It was not enough to break it, but it might be enough to grind it down, over time.
He turned without another word and walked out of the brig. He did not deactivate the holographic display. He left it there, a silent, luminous ghost in the grey cell, its perfect, dangerous logic spinning endlessly in the dark. He would not argue anymore. He would let the paradox do its own work.
The containment field hissed shut behind him, sealing Crell away with the truth he refused to see. The seed was planted. Now, Corian could only wait and see if it would grow, or if it would be crushed by the immense, sterile weight of a lifetime of order.
The ship was quiet, a wounded animal drifting through the void. He had a prisoner he could not convert, a map of allies he could not trust, and a truth that no one would believe.
He had to find a new path, and he was running out of maps.
