The detention level smelled like machine oil and regret. Vera counted the steps from the elevator—four hundred and twelve—because counting was what she did when the world threatened to become untethered. Four hundred and twelve steps from the spin section's simulated gravity down through the transitional corridors where her inner ear screamed betrayal, into the fixed core of Pallas Station where the asteroid's negligible pull was all that kept her from floating.
She'd dry-swallowed two analgesics before leaving her berth and chased them with a mouthful of recycled water that tasted of copper and failure. Her hands were steady enough. The tremor wouldn't start until afternoon, if it started at all. She told herself this was progress.
The guard at the checkpoint had the doughy complexion of someone who'd never worked a low-g shift in his life. He glanced at her consultant chip, glanced at her face, and waved her through with the particular boredom of a man who processed human misery by the hour.
"Container Nine," he said without looking up. "Thirty minutes."
"He's entitled to sixty."
"New scheduling. Take it up with Administrative Services."
Vera almost smiled. Administrative Services was where regulations went to die in a filing cabinet. She'd once submitted a fourteen-page grievance about ventilation quotas in the C-shaft mines and received a form letter thanking her for her interest in Helios Corporation's Community Wellness Initiative. The letter had arrived six months later, addressed to a Vera Okafar.
The detention containers lined the asteroid's core like metal tumors. Each one had been a standard shipping module in a previous life—marked with faded corporate logos, dented from decades of cargo transfers, then welded permanently to the rock when Helios realized that prisoners required less infrastructure than ore. The genius of it: the containers had already been paid for. Detention was pure profit under the bonding statutes, since every hour a worker spent incarcerated was added to their debt at the standard facility maintenance rate of forty-two credits per day.
Dima Solenko had been here for nineteen days. Vera had done the math before she'd finished her coffee substitute that morning. Seven hundred and ninety-eight credits added to a debt that was almost certainly already insurmountable. The arithmetic of mercy, she thought. The calculus of keeping people just desperate enough to comply.
Container Nine's door was a pressure hatch with a viewing port the size of her fist. She pressed her eye to the cold glass.
Dima sat on a bench bolted to the far wall, his wrists resting on his knees, his head hanging forward as if he'd been ordered to contemplate the floor and had taken the instruction literally. He was twenty-six—she'd checked his file—but he looked ageless in the way that belt workers sometimes did, their bodies compressed by labor and recycled air into something both younger and older than their years. His dark hair had been shaved close on the sides, grown out on top in a style that had probably been fashionable before his arrest. The orange jumpsuit hung on him. He'd lost weight since the surveillance footage she'd reviewed.
She knocked twice on the hatch. The sound was flat and final in the corridor.
When the door cycled open, Dima didn't look up. Vera stepped inside, and the hatch sealed behind her with a sound like a verdict.
"Dima."
Nothing. She tried again.
"Dima, I'm Vera Okafor. I'm your contracted legal consultant. We spoke by comm last week."
He raised his head slowly, and she saw what nineteen days in a box had done to him. His eyes were red-rimmed and unfocused, darting between her face and some middle distance that probably held more truth than either of them could stand. A bruise yellowed along his jaw—old, probably from the initial arrest. His fingers twitched against his knees in a pattern she recognized. He was counting something. Steps, maybe. Breaths. Whatever arithmetic was keeping him upright.
"You're real," he said. His voice was cracked gypsum. "They said you'd come but I thought—you're real."
"I'm real. And I need you to focus for me. Can you do that?"
"I didn't—" He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "The explosion. Sector Seven. They're saying I—that I did it. But I was there, I was there when it happened, but I didn't—" His hands came up to his head, pressing against his temples. "I can't. The memory's got holes in it. Like someone took a cutter to film and pulled out frames."
Vera sat across from him on the only other surface: a supply crate that had been chained to the wall. She kept her voice level, precise, the way she'd learned to speak with clients who were one wrong word from shattering. "That's consistent with trauma. The mind protects itself. It doesn't necessarily mean anything was tampered with."
"But it could mean that."
It could. She let the silence hold for three seconds—long enough to acknowledge, short enough to redirect.
"Dima. I need to walk you through where we are. The prosecution's case rests on three elements: motive, means, and opportunity. You were identified by two witnesses at the scene. Forensic analysis found explosive residue on your clothing. And you had access—through your work rotation—to the maintenance corridor where the device was planted." She paused. "That's their case. What I need from you is your recorded memory of that day. The full sequence. It's the strongest evidence we have, and under belt arbitration rules, it's admissible as direct testimony."
For the first time, something like hope moved behind his eyes. A small, desperate thing.
"Then you can see. You can see I didn't do this."
"That's the plan."
She stood, and her knee popped in the low gravity—a sound like a knuckle crack amplified. She'd been in the spin section too long. Her body was forgetting how to be a belt body. Another cost she couldn't afford.
"I'll file the discovery motion today. We should have your memory recording authenticated and entered into evidence within the week."
Dima's hands had stopped trembling. "Okay. Okay. Thank you."
She didn't answer. Gratitude was a currency she couldn't accept, because she hadn't done anything yet to earn it, and because accepting it meant she might start believing she deserved it.
The corridor outside was empty when she emerged, which was why she noticed Tomás Herrera immediately.
He stood at the junction where the detention corridor met the supply shaft, leaning against the rock wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a miner's jumpsuit with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, and the burn scar on his left forearm caught the fluorescent light like a brand. His dark curls were crushed under a regulation cap, and his brown eyes tracked her with the particular steadiness of a man who'd learned to read people in the dark.
"Okafor."
"Herrera."
She'd known him for six years. He'd been a witness in a contract dispute she'd handled—one of the few she'd won. After the ruling, he'd found her at The Locus and bought her a drink with money he couldn't spare. They'd sat in silence for twenty minutes before he'd said, simply, "She would've liked you." Referring to his wife. Elena, who'd died in a pressure failure in Shaft C-12. Officially an equipment malfunction. Unofficially, an open wound that Tomás carried the way he carried everything: close to the chest, with both hands.
"You're representing Solenko," he said. Not a question.
"I'm his consultant."
"Same thing, in your world." He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside her as she headed for the elevator. His gait was the low-g shuffle of a lifelong miner—economical, balanced, each step calculated for maximum efficiency. She'd always found it oddly graceful.
"I need to ask you something," she said.
"Already know what." He was quiet for a beat. "Explosives. They're saying they came through my supply line."
"Did they?"
His jaw worked. She watched the muscles tighten and release, tighten and release, a man chewing on words he wasn't ready to spit out. They walked in silence past Containers Twelve and Fifteen, past a maintenance drone that whirred against the wall, scrubbing grime that would return within the hour.
The elevator doors opened. They stepped in. Vera pressed the button for the spin section, and the hum of the mechanism filled the small space as gravity began its slow return.
"Not here," Tomás said.
They got off two levels early, in a maintenance corridor that ran parallel to the water reclamation plant. The hum of the recyclers was a constant, low drone—the station's heartbeat, if the station had one. Tomás checked both directions, then leaned close enough that she could smell the metal and soap that always clung to him.
"Yeah." His voice was barely above a breath. "They came through my network. Three crates. Manifest listed them as hydraulic seals."
Vera felt something cold settle in her chest. Not surprise—she'd suspected as much—but the cold was the shape of confirmation. The difference between a theory and a fact was the difference between a knife you could see and one you couldn't.
"You knew."
"I knew they weren't seals." His eyes held hers, and in them she saw the thing she'd always liked about Tomás Herrera: he didn't flinch. Not from the truth, not from the weight of it. "I was told they were for a demonstration. Nonviolent. A show of force outside the corporate habitat level during the quarterly review. Banners, noise, maybe a little property damage to the landscaping. That was the plan. That was what I agreed to."
"And instead?"
"Instead, somebody planted charges in a maintenance corridor and killed four people." His voice cracked on the number. Four. He said it like he'd counted each one. "I didn't sign up for that, Vera. Neither did Dima."
"How do you know what Dima signed up for?"
"Because I recruited him."
The cold in her chest deepened. She looked at him—really looked—and saw the guilt sitting behind his eyes like a squatter that had moved in and refused to leave.
"He was supposed to carry banners," Tomás continued. "That's it. Stand in the rotation gap during shift change, hold a sign, make noise. He's a good kid. Believes in things." A pause. "Believed in them because I told him to."
Vera pressed her back against the corridor wall. The metal was cool through her jacket. She needed the anchor.
"If the prosecution discovers your connection to the supply chain—"
"I know."
"—and your connection to Dima—"
"I know, Vera."
She closed her eyes. The numbers were rearranging themselves. If Tomás was telling the truth—and she believed he was, because Tomás Herrera was many things but not a liar—then someone had hijacked a peaceful operation and turned it into a massacre. And Dima was the convenient face to put on it.
"Who else knew about the shipment? The real contents?"
"The cell leader. Two others. And whoever the cell leader was reporting to, which I never—" He stopped. Ran a hand over his face. "I never asked. That was the protocol. Compartmentalization. You don't ask questions you don't need answers to."
"That's a convenient philosophy for someone who transported explosives."
It was a cruel thing to say. She watched it land. Tomás absorbed it the way the wall absorbed the recyclers' hum—completely, without visible reaction, except that his hands curled into fists at his sides and then deliberately uncurled.
"Yeah," he said. "It is."
She exhaled. "I'm sorry. That was—"
"Accurate." He shifted his weight. "There's something else. Someone you should talk to."
"I'm listening."
"The only way Dima walks is if we can prove his memory's been tampered with. Or if we can get a clean recording and authenticate it beyond challenge. Standard forensic review won't cut it—not against Helios's legal team, not with the new statutes they're pushing."
Vera's stomach tightened. "What new statutes?"
Tomas looked at her with something between pity and warning. "You haven't heard. Check the administrative bulletin from three days ago. Classification 7-C. Memory recordings are now classified as corporate intellectual property if the recording technology was manufactured under a Helios patent. Which—" he gestured vaguely at the walls around them, at the station, at everything, "—all of them were."
The cold in her chest became ice. She could feel it spreading—through her ribs, down her arms, into her fingers. Classification 7-C. She'd missed it. Three days ago she'd been in The Locus, nursing her fourth drink, losing count of the numbers that had once kept her sharp. While she'd been drowning, the rules had changed.
"They can't do that," she said, but even as the words left her mouth, she knew they could. They had. They would.
"They did." Tomás reached into his jumpsuit and pulled out a data chip—small, scratched, the kind you'd find in a salvage bin. He pressed it into her palm. "Everything I know about the supply chain. Dates, manifests, contacts. It's not much, but it's enough to show you where to look."
"This could implicate you."
"I know what it could do."
She met his eyes. He held her gaze without wavering.
"There's a woman," he said. "Dr. Lian Chen. She designed the memory recording tech—the original architecture, the whole system. If anyone can tell you how to authenticate a recording, or how to prove one's been falsified, it's her."
"Where do I find her?"
"Research division. Level Fourteen, spin section. She runs an independent lab under a Helios maintenance contract." He paused. "She's skittish. Smart. Doesn't trust anyone. I've never met her directly, but her name came up in the supply chain correspondence—someone in the cell had contacted her about verifying a recording. Before."
Before. Before the explosion. Before four people died and Dima Solenko became the face of corporate martyrdom.
"Tomás." Vera weighed the data chip in her hand. It was almost weightless in the transitional gravity—heavier than air, lighter than conscience. "Why are you doing this? You know what it could cost you."
He was quiet for a long moment. The recyclers hummed their idiot song. Somewhere in the station's walls, a pipe clanged twice and went silent.
"Elena believed in things," he said finally. "She believed that people could be more than what the company made them. She believed that justice wasn't just a word they put in contracts to make the chains look prettier." His voice softened in a way she'd only heard once before, across a table in The Locus, with an empty glass between them. "She died for those beliefs. Officially an accident. Unofficially—" He stopped himself. Shook his head. "I owe Dima the same chance someone should've given her."
Vera closed her fingers around the chip.
"Dr. Lian Chen," she repeated.
"Dr. Lian Chen," he confirmed.
She turned toward the elevator, and the weight of the station—its rationed air, its calculated cruelty, its meticulous arithmetic of despair—pressed against her shoulders like a physical thing. Behind her, Tomás Herrera stood in the maintenance corridor with his scarred arm and his guilt and his quiet, furious love for a dead woman, and said nothing more.
She didn't look back. If she looked back, she'd see the shape of her own reflection in his eyes, and she wasn't ready for what that shape might be.
The elevator doors closed. The hum began. Gravity returned in increments.
Vera Okafor held a data chip in one hand and a name in the other, and for the first time in months, the numbers in her head were not counting backward.