The capital’s largest assembly hall had been stripped of its command desk. A long witness table stood where the Registry seal had once rested. The first rows held former experimental subjects, border workers, island families, and provincial officials. The public could see the table, but each family’s papers remained with its own clerk until the chair called them.
Deng Shu sat with a folded roster in both hands. It listed the crew that operated the station where his brother had died. He kept the full name inside a sealed appendix. Sato and Meili sat together with their household papers closed. The guard left the family row open when Sato asked Meili to sit beside her.
A clerk checked each witness against the seating list and asked about privacy requests. The chair explained that survivors could withhold names, correct the record, or decline questions about private matters. Sato asked if descendants named in old contracts could do the same.
“Yes,” the chair said. “The public record can identify the contract and station without exposing your household.”
Sato nodded and kept her papers sealed until she was called.
Gu He took the first witness place. He laid out the furnace designs he had helped create. The old system linked local barriers to a central command line. Safer revisions existed, but Gu had not published them when he first found the faults.
