Walking through the myriad hallways and corridors, Leon's mind remained confused the entire ti. No matter what his mind ca up with, nothing seed to work in his ntal scenario of how to get out of this situation.
But he had still yet to hear the reason he was being charged in the first place, so hope wasn't lost yet — it was still rapidly dwindling though.
Soon, he arrived at a room with a single door, but no windows in sight. The bright overhead lights of the interrogation room buzzed faintly, and casted a white illumination over the tallic walls. Instead of a calm, relaxing yellow tone, these lights were an intrusive, almost abrasive white tone.
It was almost like whoever was in charge of installing them wanted to intentionally make everyone in the room uncomfortable.
Leon sat in the uncomfortable chair, wrists shackled to the cold hard table before him with his mind racing, desperately trying to piece together the events that could have led him to this mont.
His arrest still didn't make sense in his mind, yet why had they been so prepared to detain him? And why wasn't anyone listening?
The door soon hissed open despite his protests to be let out, breaking his train of thought.
Leon glanced up and his frustrations all seed to lt away in that single mont, as Commander Althea Mistborn stepped into the room. Her presence was commanding, much like her title, and her sharp tailored uniform only further extenuated this point.
"C-Commander…" Leon stamred out, caught between disbelief and sudden hope.
Althea didn't sit, and she leaned against the edge of the table with her arms crossed, keeping her expression as still as it did on any other day.
"You're in very big trouble, Private Rask." she spoke, breaking the ice with her cold and demanding tone.
Leon's heart sank, thinking what he could have possibly done to warrant the attention of this S tier powerhouse herself. His last bits of fleeting hope were quickly replaced by a sense of impending dread.
"But," Althea continued. "I'm willing to lighten your punishnt if you cooperate. Start talking. Now."
Leon blinked repeatedly before reacting to her statent. His confusion was evident, but Althea wasn't buying it. "Cooperate? With what, Commander? What am I even being accused of!?"
Althea's eyes narrowed. "Don't play dumb with . You're lucky you're still breathing after that stunt you pulled."
Her words sent a jolt through Leon, but they only worked to make him even more confused, if that was possible by this point. "What… are you talking about, Commander? I don't understand, I—"
She raised a hand to silence him, then tapped on the table.
A holographic display soon flickered to life, showing streams of corrupted code and ominous red alerts and lights.
"This," she spoke, gesturing to the hologram. "This is what your ship's systems tried to upload to the Jewel the mont you docked. Our advanced firewalls — and let tell you they are VERY enhanced — detected this intrusion barely in ti to stop it. If it had succeeded, it could have compromised the core systems of the Jewel. Now, tell my why I shouldn't just end you myself here and now?"
Leon stared at the data and his stomach began to churn. "No… no… that's not possible. Commander, I didn't do this — I didn't tamper with the Jewel!"
Althea's gaze remained fixed on him the whole ti, and she was impressed at his ability to still keep this up even though there was an entire mountain of evidence piled up against him.
"Then how do you explain it? The source of the corrupted data was traced directly to your ship. Either you're lying, or soone else tampered with it before you docked. Which is it? And don't tell my you're suddenly unaware of anyone tampering with your ship, as you would have needed to give them admin permissions to access such core levels of your ship. Only you can do this."
Leon exhaled slowly, trying to calm down his mind in overdrive. "Commander, I swear on my life, I didn't know. I think… I think this is connected to what I ca here specifically to report! There was an anomaly at the expedition site — a spatial tear. And sothing… massive was coming out on the other end. I even received an ergency distress call from your daughter, Mira, but sothing was blocking the transmission… I only managed to catch a few words of it. My comms were jamd before I even left the planet's orbit. I think whatever jamd them might have…"
He trailed off with a distant look, realisation dawning upon him. "... infected my ship."
Althea's expression scrunched slightly, but her skepticism remained. "An anomaly you say? And do you have evidence of all these claims?"
"Yes!" Leon said quickly. "It's all in my communicator on my wrist! The recordings, the coordinates, everything. I compiled it right before the warp sequence. Please, Commander, I was only trying to warn the fleet. I didn't know my ship itself had been compromised too…"
She studied him for a long mont, with her silence a heavy reminder of her contemplation.
"Here's how this is going to work," she suddenly spoke up, turning to face him directly. "We'll extract the data from your communicator and cross reference it with your story. If your story checks out, I'll consider your actions justified. If not…"
Her voice dropped. "You'll never see the outside of a jail cell for the rest of your life."
Leon nodded, swallowing hard. He was unwilling to protest any further, especially in front of Commander Althea. Besides, he knew he was telling the truth anyway. The only thing he hoped for was that his communicator wasn't compromised either…
If it was… then he could only pray that his punishnt was light. Find your next adventure on empire
'I was only doing my job… *sob*'
The stress of the whole situation finally started to get to him emotionally, and he started to break down. But all of this didn't matter to Althea.
What she found on his communicator made even her face grimace…
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