The main courtroom of the Ashwick Federal Courthouse was a cathedral of justice, or at least it had been designed to feel that way. The ceiling soared to a dome painted with scenes of blindfolded goddesses and scales of justice held aloft by marble angels. The walls were lined with mahogany paneling, dark and gleaming, and the benches where spectators had once sat to watch the proceedings of the highest court in the land were empty now, their velvet cushions still bearing the faint indentations of the people who had fled the evacuation order.
The room was not entirely empty.
Justice Aldric Morgan sat in the center of the bench, the same bench where he had presided over hundreds of cases during his thirty-two years on the Court. He was wearing his judicial robes, the black fabric pooling around him like a shadow made solid. His silver hair was immaculately combed, his posture erect, his hands folded on the polished wood before him. He looked, Jasper thought, like a king awaiting the arrival of his executioners, determined to meet his fate with dignity even if he could not meet it with innocence.
The doors at the back of the courtroom swung shut behind Jasper and Cassian, the sound echoing through the empty chamber like a gavel striking wood. Morgan looked up, and his pale blue eyes settled on them with an expression that was almost welcoming.
"Chief Inspector Hale," Morgan said. "And Mr. Morrell. I've been expecting you."
Jasper's hand rested on his holstered pistol, but he did not draw it. "The building is surrounded, Justice Morgan. Tactical teams are positioned at every exit. There's no way out."
"I have no interest in leaving." Morgan gestured toward the benches in front of him. "Please, sit. Both of you. If we are to have this conversation, let us have it properly. This is a courtroom, after all. A place for truth."
Cassian did not sit. He stood in the center aisle, his injured arm still in its sling, his eyes fixed on Morgan with an intensity that bordered on violence. "The truth was buried twenty-five years ago. By you."
"The truth was never buried. It was managed. There's a difference." Morgan leaned back in his chair, his robes rustling against the leather. "I've spent my entire career managing truths that the public was not ready to hear. The lending industry was on the verge of collapse. Millions of people would have lost their savings, their homes, their futures. The Prescott ruling prevented a catastrophe."
"It sentenced my sister to death," Cassian said. "It murdered Chief Inspector Hale's father. It lined the pockets of every corrupt justice and senator and executive who took bribes from Crown American Lending."
"Collateral damage. Unfortunate, but unavoidable." Morgan's voice was calm, almost serene, the voice of a man who had long ago convinced himself that his actions were justified. "Your father understood that, Mr. Morrell. Elias understood that the greater good sometimes requires sacrifices. He simply disagreed about which sacrifices were acceptable."
Cassian took a step forward, his good hand clenching into a fist. "Don't speak my father's name."
"Why not? He was my colleague. My friend, once. Before Nathaniel Hale filled his head with ideas about justice and accountability and other fantasies." Morgan's eyes moved to Jasper. "Your father was the most brilliant legal mind I ever encountered. And also the most naive. He genuinely believed that the truth would set him free. It killed him instead."
Jasper felt the rage rising in his chest, hot and blinding, the same rage that had driven Cassian to kill. He understood it now, the way it could consume a person, the way it could make violence seem like the only possible response to an unbearable truth.
But he did not draw his weapon. He did not lunge across the bench and wrap his hands around Morgan's throat, though every fiber of his being wanted to. He forced himself to breathe, to think, to remember what his father had written in the journal: Use it wisely. Use it justly.
"My father believed in the law," Jasper said. "He believed that the system could be fixed from within. You believed the system existed to be exploited."
"I believed the system existed to be preserved. The law is not a temple; it's a machine. And machines require maintenance. The bribes, the blackmail, the occasional elimination of a problem—these were not crimes. They were maintenance."
"You murdered an Attorney General. You murdered a law professor. You murdered my father and Mr. Morrell's father and God knows how many others. That's not maintenance. That's evil."
Morgan smiled. It was a thin, cold expression, utterly without warmth. "Evil is a word children use to describe things they don't understand. I understand exactly what I've done. I understand the lives that were lost and the lives that were saved. And I've made my peace with both."
He rose from the bench and stepped down into the well of the courtroom, his robes sweeping the marble floor. "You've brought the evidence to light. The investigation will proceed. The bribes will be exposed, the justices will be impeached, the lending executives will be prosecuted. The system will absorb the damage and eventually recover. Systems always do."
"Then why are you here?" Jasper asked. "Why didn't you run?"
"Because running would imply that I was wrong. And I am not wrong." Morgan stopped a few feet away from them, his hands clasped behind his back. "I came here to make a final statement. A gesture that will outlive the investigations and the trials and the headlines. A gesture that will make people understand why I did what I did."
Cassian stiffened. "What kind of gesture?"
Morgan reached into his robes and withdrew a small device, no larger than a mobile phone. It had a single button, red and glowing. "The kind that brings down the house."
Jasper's blood ran cold. "You've rigged the building."
"I've rigged the bench. The charges are placed directly beneath the seats where my colleagues sat when they signed the Prescott majority. When I press this button, the symbol of the corrupted court will be destroyed. And I will be destroyed with it."
"You'll kill yourself."
"I'll make a statement. The same way you made a statement when you carved words into Marcus Thorne's chest, Mr. Morrell. Theater is necessary when no one is watching the trial." Morgan's thumb hovered over the red button. "The difference is that my theater will be witnessed by the entire world. The news cameras are already broadcasting from outside. The moment this building explodes, the footage will be seen by millions."
Jasper's mind raced. The tactical teams outside. The news cameras broadcasting live. If Morgan detonated the charges, the explosion would kill not just him but anyone in the blast radius—including the first responders and journalists gathered outside.
"Think about what you're doing," Jasper said. "If you detonate those charges, innocent people will die. People who had nothing to do with the Prescott ruling. People who are just doing their jobs."
"Collateral damage," Morgan said. "Unfortunate, but unavoidable."
He pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
Morgan pressed it again. His expression, which had been serene and almost beatific, began to crack. He pressed the button a third time, a fourth, his thumb jabbing at the device with increasing desperation.
"The charges have been disabled," Cassian said. His voice was quiet, almost gentle. "I found them six weeks ago, when I was planning my own entry into the courthouse. I didn't know who had planted them, but I knew they were too dangerous to leave active. I disarmed the detonators and left the charges in place. I was going to use them as evidence if I ever needed to prove the extent of the conspiracy."
Morgan stared at him. The color was draining from his face, leaving it the gray of old parchment. "You—"
"I've been three steps ahead of you for three years," Cassian said. "You thought you were the god of this rotten machine. But you were just another gear. And gears can be broken."
The device slipped from Morgan's fingers and clattered to the marble floor. The sound echoed through the empty courtroom like a death knell. The Justice sagged, his robes suddenly seeming too large for his frame, his silver hair disheveled, his pale eyes empty.
"It's over," Jasper said. "The evidence is with the Commissioner. The investigation is already underway. The people you bribed and blackmailed are going to prison. And you're going to spend the rest of your life in a cell, knowing that everything you built was torn down by the son of the man you murdered."
Morgan looked up at him, and for the first time, Jasper saw something human in those cold eyes. Something frightened and fragile and desperately alone. "Your father was a good man," he said. "I didn't want to kill him. I tried to reason with him. I tried to make him understand."
"He understood. That's why you killed him."
"Yes." Morgan's voice was barely a whisper. "That's why I killed him."
The doors at the back of the courtroom burst open, and tactical agents flooded into the room. They surrounded Morgan, their weapons raised, their voices shouting commands. Morgan did not resist. He raised his hands above his head and let them take him, his robes trailing on the marble floor like the discarded skin of a snake.
Jasper watched them lead him away. He felt Cassian's hand find his, their fingers interlacing in a grip that was warm and steady and full of everything they had not yet said.
"It's over," Cassian said. "It's really over."
Jasper shook his head. "It's not over. The trials, the investigations, the reforms—those are just beginning. And we still have to answer for what we've done."
"I know." Cassian turned to face him, and his pale eyes were bright with tears. "But we'll do it together. Like we said we would."
"Together," Jasper agreed.
They walked out of the courtroom and into the gray light of the afternoon, and the news cameras captured their exit and broadcast it to millions of screens across the Federated States of Auroria. The story was already spreading—the corrupt justice, the murdered fathers, the evidence that had been buried for twenty-five years. By the time the sun set, everyone in the country would know the truth.
But Jasper was not thinking about the news cameras or the investigations or the trials that lay ahead. He was thinking about his father's journal, the words written in a shaking hand on the day before his death. Use it wisely. Use it justly. Use it to finish what I could not.
He had finished it. Not alone—never alone, not anymore—but finished it nonetheless. And as he walked down the courthouse steps with Cassian's hand in his, he felt his father's presence beside him, warm and steady and finally at peace.
The truth had found its moment. And it had set them all free.
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