(Caius)
I kept reading.
The hall had gone beyond quiet now. Quiet still implied the possibility of ordinary sound returning at any moment, a chair shifting, a throat cleared, someone losing control of their breathing for half a second. This was different. The kind of stillness that took hold when a room understood it was standing inside something that couldn't be undone once spoken aloud.
Pryor stood beside the records table with the next section of the file already open.
I knew every line of it. I'd read it enough times that I no longer needed the page in front of me, but I read from it anyway. Formal charges deserved exactness. Men like Rodan survived too long by exploiting anything loose in language. There'd be nothing loose here.
I turned the page.
"Rodan Hale," I said, and his n
