Joric's gaze locked onto Elara's, the question- your sister, or the truth- hanging in the contaminated air between them. He thought of Elena, frail but fighting in her sterile room, tethered to the Kaelen lifeline. If the dynasty fell, Elena would die.
He also thought of Arthur Vane, silenced and erased, and the monstrous price Elara had paid for her lonely justice. He realized that saving Elias Kaelen was merely preserving the architecture of the lie. The system itself was toxic.
"I choose the truth," Joric finally said, his voice a low, brutal commitment. "But my sister lives. That is the condition of the architecture's collapse."
Elara stared at him, stunned. She had expected capture, not alliance.
Joric moved quickly, grabbing the cowering technician and securing him with a polymer restraint. "Lydia, the console is poisoned. The neutralizer was only a surface treatment. Can you prove the contamination is systemic?"
Lydia Thorne, still shaking from the shock, nodded, her eyes fixed on Elara. "The entire internal nutrient reservoir is compromised. I can run an analysis that will confirm it's unusable, but I will only report the chemical residue as industrial waste, not biological warfare."
"Good," Joric said. He turned to Elara, his eyes hard. "You are now my ghost. You will not be the hero of this story, Elara Vane. You will be the architect of chaos. You will give me the evidence needed to expose Valen Kaelen- the final, irrefutable proof of your father's murder and the financial corruption hidden behind the A-V-LOCK."
Elara understood. Joric wasn't saving her; he was leveraging her. He would use her vengeance to destroy the Kaelens, but he would control the narrative, ensuring the resulting power vacuum could be filled cleanly, providing the stability needed to protect Elena.
"The A-V-LOCK," Elara said, her voice regaining its chilling composure. "It's secured by a quantum cipher. You can't break it."
"You can," Joric countered. "You will give me the key. I will expose the truth about your father's execution, and I will ensure the public knows the Kaelen name is a toxic contaminant. In return, you disappear. You become the silence you seek. Permanently."
Elara looked from Joric, the betrayer of his oath, to Lydia, the betrayed daughter of the scientist, and saw a reflection of her own moral decay. They were all compromised.
"I have a failsafe," Elara admitted. "If I don't return to my base by morning, Sio Rey executes a total data purge and incinerates the lab. We have three hours."
"We don't need the lab," Joric said, already dragging the technician toward a side door. "We need the truth, right now."
He pulled a small, secure datapad from his uniform pocket, forcing it into her hand. "The Kaelen security response is minutes away. Get out of here. Upload the A-V-LOCK key and the Vane execution files to this encrypted drive by sunrise. Then, disappear, or I will hunt you down."
Joric pushed her toward the facility's secondary exit—a pipe maintenance tunnel that led to the city's under-sewer systems.
Elara paused at the dark entrance, looking back at Joric Tahl, standing in the ruined, humming laboratory, the uniformed shield now preparing to turn his formidable resources against the dynasty he served.
"The system protects its own," Elara whispered, the final lesson of her father's book echoing in her mind.
"Then I will poison the well and dismantle the architecture myself," Joric vowed. He turned his back on her, focusing on Lydia Thorne and the contaminated nutrient console, already composing the official report that would start the Kaelen house's irreversible, public downfall.
Elara slipped into the darkness, carrying Joric's final demand for the truth, leaving the shield to manage the chaos she had created. The vengeance was now his to execute.