Rin watched Tal sleep on the sofa and tried to decide who she was about to betray.
He'd passed out in the middle of an argument with exhaustion, half‑curled, one arm flung over his eyes like he was blocking out the arch's light all over again. Jesen's mother had thrown a threadbare blanket over him and then gone to bed herself, leaving Rin alone with a blinking cursor and a decision.
The checkpoint footage waited on her slate.
She tapped it open.
The clip began with harmless noise: Haro's sister complaining about curfew, Nia's muttered jokes, the officers at the Blanked Gate looking bored enough to fall over. Then the second patrol arrived, and the scene tilted.
"Everyone, present IDs and step under the arch."
Rin scrubbed forward.
There.
The moment the dead scanner coughed itself back to life, lights stuttering, old fallback code clawing up from forgotten corners.
CLEAR / HOLD / CLEAR / HOLD.
Tal's shoulders under the ring, tense but steady.
