Walking through the myriad hallways and corridors, Leon''s mind remained confused the entire time. No matter what his mind came up with, nothing seemed to work in his mental 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 ce, 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 metallic walls. Instead of a calm, rxing 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 ufortable.


    Leon sat in the ufortable 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 moment.


    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 nced up and his frustrations all seemed to melt away in that single moment, as Commander Althea Mistborn stepped into the room. Her presence wasmanding, much like her title, and her sharp tailored uniform only further extenuated this point.


    "C-Commander…" Leon stammered 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. Hisst bits of fleeting hope were quickly reced by a sense of impending dread.


    "But," Althea continued. "I''m willing to lighten your punishment if you cooperate. Start talking. Now."


    Leon blinked repeatedly before reacting to her statement. His confusion was evident, but Althea wasn''t buying it. "Cooperate? With what, Commander? What am I even being used of!?"


    Althea''s eyes narrowed. "Don''t y dumb with me. 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 disy 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 moment you docked. Our advanced firewalls — and let me tell you they are VERY enhanced — detected this intrusion barely in time to stop it. If it had seeded, it could havepromised 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 time, 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 exin it? The source of the corrupted data was traced directly to your ship. Either you''re lying, or someone 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 ess 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 came here specifically to report! There was an anomaly at the expedition site — a spatial tear. And something… massive wasing out on the other end. I even received an emergency distress call from your daughter, Mira, but something was blocking the transmission… I only managed to catch a few words of it. Myms were jammed before I even left the''s orbit. I think whatever jammed 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 ims?"


    "Yes!" Leon said quickly. "It''s all in mymunicator on my wrist! The recordings, the coordinates, everything. Ipiled it right before the warp sequence. Please, Commander, I was only trying to warn the fleet. I didn''t know my ship itself had beenpromised too…"


    She studied him for a long moment, with her silence a heavy reminder of her contemtion.


    "Here''s how this is going to work," she suddenly spoke up, turning to face him directly. "We''ll extract the data from yourmunicator 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 hismunicator wasn''tpromised either…


    If it was… then he could only pray that his punishment was light.


    ''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 hismunicator made even her face grimace…