The Witness Speaks

Eli's voice cracks as the words spill out — three years of terror compressed into a single breathless confession. He tells you he was a maintenance tech at Colvin Station that night, hidden inside a crawlspace when Harlan Voss arrived with his crew. He recorded everything on a salvaged chip: Harlan's voice, calm and precise, ordering twelve people killed and your name designated as the story they'd leave behind.

The data chip trembles in his open palm. "I've been running since the moment it happened," he says, eyes red-rimmed and hollow. "Every bounty hunter who came for me — I thought they were his. I thought you were his."

The ruins creak around you both in the dry desert wind. You stare at the chip — at three years of your life, your reputation, your guilt — sitting in a stranger's shaking hand. Eli watches you with the exhausted wariness of a man who has already survived too much to be careful anymore. Whatever you decide next, there's no walking it back.