Read Chapter 36: The White Lie

The courtroom smelled of ozone and cheap perfume—the recycled air struggling against three hundred bodies packed into the public gallery. Luca kept his hands flat on the wooden rail in front of him, willing them not to shake.

Elodie stood in the glass defendant's box at the center of the room, her face pale but her jaw set. She wore a plain grey prison tunic, and the bruise on her cheekbone had faded to a sickly yellow. When her eyes found Luca in the crowd, something in her posture softened—just for a moment, before she looked away.

The presiding judge, a thin woman with severe grey hair and a voice like a door hinge, peered down at Luca from her elevated bench.

"Mr. Vidal. You understand that perjury carries a sentence of ten years in the Memory Recycling Facility?"

"I understand." Luca's voice came out steadier than he felt.

The prosecution stood—a young man in an ill-fitting suit, clearly a leftover from the old regime, desperate to prove his worth to the new provisional government. He adjusted his collar and gestured toward Elodie.

"Then please explain to this court how a known data thief, a woman arrested in possession of classified memory architecture, is not a fugitive from justice but a—what did your testimony claim? A patriot?"

Luca turned to face the gallery. He saw faces he recognized—journalists, activists, a few faces from the old network. Near the back, half-hidden behind a column, he caught a flash of dark hair and a familiar scar along a jawline.

Adrian.

Of course Adrian would be watching. The man had built his entire career on watching.

"Elodie Marchand was working for me," Luca said, loud enough for the back rows to hear. "I hired her. I paid her. And when Adrian Roux—" he paused, letting the name land, "—when he was still playing double agent for Catherine Moreau, she was the one who kept our communications alive. She's the reason the murder memory ever reached the broadcast tower."

The prosecution frowned. "That memory—"

"That memory exposed a presidential candidate who ordered the deaths of civilians during the Memory War." Luca's voice hardened. "You can call her a fugitive for running from the people who wanted her dead. Or you can call her what she is: the reason we're not all still living under Moreau's thumb."

The gallery erupted. The judge hammered her gavel until the noise subsided, then fixed Luca with a long, unreadable stare.

"Mr. Vidal. You are aware that this court has access to your own records. Yours is not a spotless history."

"No, it isn't." Luca met her gaze. "I've stolen memories. I've fenced them. I've sold people pieces of their own pasts and charged them for the privilege. But I never once stole a memory to bury the truth. I never once used the system to make an innocent woman disappear."

He looked at Elodie again. She was watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read—something between exhaustion and guarded hope.

"I'm not asking this court to forget who I am," he said. "I'm asking it to look at who Elodie is. Not what the previous administration labeled her. What she actually did."

The judge leaned back. Papers shuffled. The prosecution whispered to his assistant, who slipped out a side door.

For a long, agonizing moment, the courtroom held its breath.

Then the judge removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"The court will recess for one hour to review the evidence submitted by the witness."

The gavel came down. Luca exhaled.

---

They let him see her in a small antechamber off the holding cells. No glass between them this time—just a metal table and two chairs bolted to the floor.

Elodie sat across from him, her hands folded in front of her. Close enough to touch. He didn't.

"Your speech was dramatic," she said. A ghost of a smile. "You've been practicing in the mirror?"

"Something like that." He leaned forward. "Are you okay? What did they—"

"They didn't do anything to me." Her voice was steady, but her fingers curled against the table's surface. "Just held me in a cell for nine days waiting for someone to decide what to do with me. The provisional government doesn't know who to trust yet. I was convenient to keep locked up."

"I'm getting you out."

"You can't promise that."

Luca almost smiled. "Since when have you known me to make promises I can't keep?"

She studied him for a long moment. Then, quieter: "They told me about your mother. That she was alive."

"Yeah." The word came out heavier than he intended. "She's been alive this whole time. She—" He stopped, unsure how to explain the last few weeks. The locket. The vault. The engineering of his entire life.

Elodie read the hesitation in his face. "She used you."

"Used me to save the country." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Doesn't make it easier to swallow."

"And you? Do you forgive her?"

Luca opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. A question he'd been avoiding for weeks. He'd hidden from it in the chaos of proceedings and arrests and testimonies. But here, in this bare room with the woman who'd shed blood for him, he couldn't dodge it.

"I don't know," he admitted. "She gave me a map. Names of Moreau's surviving allies. People who want me dead right now because of what I did. She gave me a war to fight, and I don't know if I want to fight it or run from her entirely."

Elodie reached across the table. Her fingers brushed his.

"You don't have to decide today."

"You did," he said. "At the cathedral. You decided to hold them off so I could get away. You decided before I could even ask you to."

"That's different."

"How?"

She pulled her hand back. "Because I knew what I was choosing."

The door opened before he could respond. A guard gestured toward the corridor.

"Court's reconvened. The judge wants both of you."

---

The verdict came faster than Luca expected. The judge re-entered, everyone rose, and the prosecution looked grey-faced and defeated.

"After review of the evidence submitted by the witness," the judge said, "this court finds insufficient basis to continue the charges against Elodie Marchand. Charges are dismissed. The defendant is released."

The gallery exploded in noise. Luca didn't hear any of it. He was already moving toward the glass box, but the guards were opening the door, and Elodie was stepping through, and then she was in his arms.

She smelled like prison soap and sweat. She felt thinner than she had a month ago. But she was warm, and real, and alive.

"I thought you were dead," he said into her hair. "I couldn't find you. I didn't know—"

"I know." Her voice cracked. "I know, Luca."

They held each other while the cameras flashed and the journalists shouted questions and the new world rearranged itself around them. When she finally pulled back, her eyes were wet but her smile was steady.

"Don't you ever do that again," she said.

"What, testify? Save your life?"

"Lie to me." She gripped his shoulders. "Whatever else happens. Whatever secrets your mother still has buried in that vault. Whatever Adrian gets up to now that he's got power. Don't lie to me about it. Promise me."

Luca thought about the map in his apartment floor. The names of men and women who'd survived the Memory War, who'd prospered under Moreau's shadow, who now had every reason to come for him—for his mother—for anyone connected to her fall.

He thought about how easy it would be to protect her by keeping her in the dark.

He thought about his mother's face when she'd told him the truth. How it felt to know his whole life had been a carefully constructed stage.

"I promise," he said.

A hand landed on his shoulder. He turned. Adrian stood there, pale eyes unreadable, a thin smile on his lips.

"Congratulations," Adrian said. "Both of you. You've earned the rest." He paused. "However long it lasts."

Luca's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing." Adrian's smile widened. "Just that the new government is still settling. Not all of Moreau's allies accepted her arrest gracefully. Some of them are making noise about revenge." He glanced at Elodie, then back at Luca. "You might want to lie low for a while. Both of you."

Adrian turned and walked away before Luca could press him further.

Elodie watched him go. "I don't trust him."

"Neither do I."

"Then we figure out why." She took his hand. "But first—I haven't eaten real food in nine days. Take me somewhere that isn't a prison cafeteria."

Luca smiled despite himself. "I know a bakery."