The statue opened its eyes, and every chair in the room moved.
Only a scrape on wet concrete, a cheap metal leg catching, then settling. Eight folding chairs shifted half an inch toward the desk as if the room itself had remembered where the soldiers belonged.
Rina made a small sound.
"No hum," she said, tracker shaking once in her hand. "Still empty. Caleb, there's nobody in there."
"I know," Caleb said.
The statue of Sergeant Emeka Okonye lowered its silver hands from the stack of appeal papers.
It did not look at Caleb first. It looked at the chairs.
That was worse.
Halden had woken like a machine with no driver, all motion and no target. Okonye woke with the shape of a duty still bolted into the metal. The person was gone, but the last instruction had teeth around it.
Guard the room, the chairs, and the papers no office answered.
Then its head turned to Caleb, and the silver inside Caleb answered with a quiet pulse that felt too much like being recognized by a lock.
