11. The Boardroom

Three days after the hearing, Commander Voss came to Eira with a plan that was either brilliant or suicidal, and Eira was no longer certain she knew the difference.

They met in the back room of the bookshop near the university, the same dusty space where Matias Falk had shown her the photograph of Aldric Venn and Soren Falk standing together on a dock six years ago. The shop was closed now, its windows shuttered, its owner having fled the city after a warning from someone in the Interior Ministry. The Remembrance Collective had taken it over as a temporary base of operations, filling the shelves with files instead of books.

"Nordic Protein is holding its annual shareholder meeting in three days," Commander Voss said, spreading a blueprint across the table. "The company's headquarters in Lundgren has a private auditorium on the top floor. Every major investor will be there. Every board member. Every executive who hasn't already fled the country."

"And you want to raid it?"

"I want you to attend it." Commander Voss pointed to a small door marked on the blueprint. "This is a service entrance used by catering staff. The company hires from an agency that the Consortium has a relationship with. I can get you on the catering roster."

Eira stared at her. "You want me to infiltrate a shareholder meeting in a building full of people who want me dead, in a wheelchair, and do what exactly?"

"Not just you. You and a camera. A live broadcast camera, linked to Matias Falk's newsroom. He's been working with a technician from the Remembrance Collective who can bypass the building's security systems. If we can get you inside, you can broadcast the meeting to the entire world."

"To what end?"

"To name them. All of them." Commander Voss's scarred face was utterly serious. "The shareholder meeting is the one time every year when every guilty party is in the same room. The executives who ran the trafficking operation. The board members who approved the insurance fraud. The investors who collected profits from slave labor. They'll all be there, and they'll all be on camera."

"And when I name them?"

"The evidence we've gathered will be released simultaneously. Matias Falk has prepared a series of articles. Ingrid Dalgaard has prepared legal briefs for the Trade Commission. Chairman Lysne has agreed to convene an emergency session to consider criminal referrals. If we time it right, the entire system will collapse within hours."

Eira looked at the blueprint, at the small service door and the larger auditorium beyond. It was a crazy plan. It was an impossible plan. And it was exactly the kind of plan that Commander Voss, the woman who had boarded the *Nordvarg* with a pistol in one hand and a radio in the other, would devise.

"What happens after?" Eira asked. "After the broadcast. After the arrests. What happens to me?"

"The Consortium will be furious. Director Venn will try to have you arrested. But by then, you'll be too public to touch. The whole world will be watching. If they try to silence you, they'll prove everything you've said."

"That's not an answer."

Commander Voss was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was quieter than Eira had ever heard it. "After this is over, I'm leaving the Consortium. I've been gathering evidence against them too—not just Venn, but the entire organization. The intelligence connections, the arms shipments, the bribes to Meridian officials. When I release it, the Consortium will collapse alongside Nordic Protein."

"You're going to destroy your own organization."

"I'm going to finish what my daughter started. It's taken me three years to get close enough to do it. You were the final piece, Miss Voss. You gave me something I didn't have before."

"What?"

"Someone who wasn't afraid to burn everything down."

Eira looked at the scarred woman across the table. Anya Voss, who had been a law professor before her daughter was murdered. Anya Voss, who had spent three years remaking herself into the sharpest blade in the Consortium's arsenal. Anya Voss, who was about to turn that blade against the hand that held it.

"You were never really one of them," Eira said. "You were undercover from the beginning."

"I was surviving. The same way you were. The same way all of us are." Commander Voss stood up. "The difference is that I stopped believing survival was enough. You reminded me of that."

That evening, Eira met with Matias Falk in the newsroom he had established in a basement near the harbor. It was a cramped space filled with computers and monitors and the constant hum of equipment, but it was secure, shielded from the surveillance systems that the Consortium used to monitor journalists.

"The broadcast will go out on a dozen channels simultaneously," Matias said, showing her the setup. "We've been working with independent media outlets in the Meridian States and the Freyian Archipelago. Even if the Consortium tries to shut us down, they won't be able to stop all of them."

"And the camera?"

He held up a small device, no larger than a button. "This is the best we could get on short notice. It transmits to a receiver in a van outside the building, which relays the signal to our servers. The quality won't be perfect, but it'll be enough."

Eira took the device and turned it over in her palm. It was tiny, almost weightless, and yet it felt heavier than the data drive she had carried across the sea. This was the weapon she had been waiting for. Not a gun or a knife or a bomb. A camera. A truth-telling machine.

"The board members will have security," she said. "They won't let me just wheel in and start naming names."

"That's the other part of the plan." Matias Falk pulled up a schematic on one of the monitors. "Commander Voss has arranged a distraction. At exactly two o'clock, when the shareholder meeting is scheduled to begin, a fire alarm will go off in the building's lower floors. The security team will be focused on evacuation. In the chaos, you'll have a window—maybe five minutes, maybe ten—to get into the auditorium and start broadcasting."

"And after the broadcast?"

"We'll have a team waiting outside to extract you. Ingrid has arranged safe passage to the northern province, to the same farmhouse where the survivors are staying. You'll be gone before anyone can arrest you."

"You've thought of everything."

"I've been planning this for five years." Matias Falk's voice was grim. "Ever since Lena disappeared. I've been waiting for the moment when I could make them pay. And you're giving me that moment."

Eira looked at the monitors, at the maps and schematics and timelines. It was all there, every detail, every contingency. Matias Falk had been building this operation for half a decade, waiting for the right pieces to fall into place. And now the pieces were here: the evidence, the witnesses, the broadcast, the moment.

"There's something I need to tell you," she said. "About Lena Dalgaard. Ingrid's daughter."

Matias Falk's expression flickered. "What about her?"

"She's not on the casualty list. I've been through Soren Falk's records a dozen times. Every name on the *Nordvarg*, every name on the other ships. She's not there."

"Then where is she?"

"I don't know. But if she's not on the list, she might still be alive. Somewhere."

Matias Falk was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. "I've spent three years mourning her. Three years building this operation to avenge her. And now you're telling me she might not be dead?"

"I'm telling you that there's still hope. And that hope changes things."

"Does it? Or does it just make everything more complicated?"

Eira thought about this. She thought about the cold fire in her chest, the fire that had been burning since the day Danil died. She thought about what she would do if she learned that Danil was still alive, somewhere, after all these months. Would it extinguish the fire? Or would it just change its shape?

"I don't know," she said. "But if she's alive, she deserves to be found. And if she's dead, she deserves to be remembered. Either way, the broadcast goes forward."

"Yes," Matias Falk agreed. "The broadcast goes forward."

The day of the shareholder meeting dawned gray and cold, the sky over Lundgren heavy with clouds that promised snow. Eira woke before dawn and went through her preparations with the same methodical care she had once used to prepare for surgeries in the hospice in Halvorsund. She checked the camera, tested the transmission link, reviewed the names she would speak. She dressed in the black uniform of the catering agency, a stark contrast to the pale colors she had worn since arriving in Lundgren.

Commander Voss arrived to escort her to the building. The scarred woman was wearing her tactical gear, her pistol holstered at her hip, her radio crackling with updates from the team that was positioning itself around the city.

"The fire alarm is set," she said. "The extraction team is in place. Matias Falk is in the broadcast van. Ingrid Dalgaard is at the Trade Commission with Chairman Lysne, waiting for the signal. Everything is ready."

"And Venn?"

"Venn is already inside the building. He arrived an hour ago with his security detail. He doesn't know what's coming."

Eira nodded. She wheeled herself toward the door, then paused. "Commander Voss. Anya. When this is over, what will you do?"

The scarred woman was silent for a moment. "I don't know. I've been doing this for so long that I've forgotten what else there is. Maybe I'll go north. See the lights that Katya wrote about."

"Maybe I'll see you there."

"Maybe you will."

The drive to the Nordic Protein headquarters was short and silent. The building was a glass tower on the eastern edge of the financial district, its facade reflecting the gray sky like a mirror. Eira was dropped off at the service entrance, where a nervous young woman from the catering agency handed her a badge and a tray of canapés.

"You're the substitute," the woman said. "The one they sent from the agency."

"Yes."

"You're in a wheelchair."

"I'm aware."

The woman looked uncertain, but she did not argue. She had been paid, Eira knew, by one of Commander Voss's intermediaries, and the money had been enough to buy her discretion if not her confidence.

Eira took the tray and wheeled herself through the service corridor. The building was quiet, the lower floors mostly empty. Most of the employees had been sent home for the day, a security measure designed to keep the shareholder meeting private. It also meant there were fewer witnesses, fewer people who might try to stop her.

The service elevator took her to the top floor. The doors opened onto a wide corridor lined with abstract art and potted plants. At the end of the corridor was the entrance to the auditorium, guarded by two men in dark suits who looked at her wheelchair with surprise.

"Catering," Eira said, holding up her badge.

"You're late. The meeting's already started."

"I know. The elevator was slow."

One of the guards looked at his partner, shrugged, and opened the door.

The auditorium was a semicircular room with tiered seating and a stage at the front. It was filled with perhaps two hundred people, most of them in dark suits and expensive dresses, the uniform of wealth and power. On the stage, a man Eira recognized from the Commission's files was giving a presentation about quarterly earnings. The CEO of Nordic Protein Solutions. The man at the top of the machine.

Eira wheeled herself into the room and positioned herself near the back, behind the last row of seats. No one noticed her. They were all watching the stage, listening to the CEO talk about restructuring and recovery and the bright future ahead.

She reached into her sleeve and activated the camera.

"Testing," she whispered. "Are you receiving?"

Matias Falk's voice came through the earpiece she had hidden beneath her collar. "Receiving. The signal is strong. We're ready when you are."

Eira looked at the stage, at the CEO, at the rows of shareholders who had grown rich on the labor of the trafficked and the dead. She thought about Danil, whose hand had gone slack in hers. She thought about Tomas, who had died of an infection in a Meridian hostel. She thought about the six hundred and forty-three names on the data drive, and the unknown number who had been erased entirely.

The fire alarm went off.

The sound was deafening, a shriek that cut through the auditorium like a blade. The CEO stopped mid-sentence. The shareholders looked around in confusion. The guards near the door began to move toward the exits.

And Eira Voss, the nurse from Halvorsund, wheeled herself down the center aisle toward the stage.

"My name is Eira Voss," she said, and her voice carried through the auditorium with the clarity of a bell. "Eight months ago, I was trafficked onto a ship called the *Nordvarg* along with sixty-two other human beings. We were chained in the dark and beaten and starved. Four of us died. Three more have died since. And the people who did this to us are sitting in this room."

She pointed at a man in the front row. "Viktor Strand. Councilor in the Interior Ministry. You took bribes from Nordic Protein for eight years. You authorized the repatriation orders that sent survivors back to a war zone. You ordered the death of a Coast Guard captain named Elara Voss."

She pointed at another man, seated near the stage. "Aldric Venn. Director of the Trade Commission. You helped build the trafficking operation. You designed the logistics network that moved human beings like cargo. You are a criminal, and everyone in this room knows it."

She wheeled herself closer to the stage, naming every face she recognized, every name on the list Commander Voss had given her. The shareholders were frozen, unsure whether to flee or to listen. The guards were moving toward her now, but they were slow, uncertain, held back by the presence of the camera and the knowledge that the whole world was watching.

"Six hundred and forty-three people died on the ships you profited from," Eira said, her voice rising. "Six hundred and forty-three names. And I am going to speak every single one of them."

She began to read the list. The names of the dead. The names that had been logged as attrition, as pre-existing conditions, as acceptable losses. She read them slowly and clearly, giving each one its own space, its own moment of recognition. Danil Orlov. Mira Sorvino. Piotr Vansen. Tomas. The names went on and on, a litany of the lost, a monument built of words.

By the time she reached the hundredth name, the guards had backed away. By the five hundredth, the shareholders were weeping or shouting or staring at their hands in silence. By the six hundred and forty-third, the CEO had sat down on the stage, his face gray, his presentation forgotten.

"There are more," Eira said into the silence that followed. "There are more names that were never recorded. More bodies that were thrown into the sea without a word. More people who were erased as thoroughly as if they had never existed. But we remember them. The Remembrance Collective remembers them. And we will not stop until every guilty party in this room is brought to justice."

She turned her wheelchair to face the camera, and for a moment, she was speaking directly to Matias Falk in the van outside, to Ingrid Dalgaard at the Trade Commission, to Katya in the farmhouse in the north, to everyone who had ever been crushed by the machine and told they did not exist.

"My name is Eira Voss. I was a nurse in Halvorsund. I was trafficked. I survived. And I am not going away."

The transmission ended. The guards finally reached her, their hands rough on her shoulders, their voices shouting orders she did not listen to. But it did not matter. The broadcast had gone out. The names had been spoken. The world had seen.

And outside the glass tower, in the gray streets of Lundgren, the fire was spreading.