The broadcast was Himari's job.
She sat in the command center. The comms unit was a cold, indifferent machine. Her hands were sweating. A loose thread on her cuff caught her eye, and she had a sudden, absurd urge to pull it. She folded her hands in her lap.
She pushed her script aside. Useless.
Just talk.
She keyed the mic. A soft click. "This is Starlight," she began. Her voice was thin. She cleared her throat. Tried again. "This is Starlight. I… I know many of you are listening in secret. You're afraid. I am too."
The admission hung there.
"The Duke wants you to be afraid. He feeds on it. But I have seen something he has not. I have seen the courage of ordinary people. I saw merchants and weavers take up arms. I saw them die for it."
Her voice cracked. She let it. "He calls them traitors. I call them heroes. Their sacrifice will not be in vain. The Duke's time is ending. A new day is coming. Hold on. Starlight is with you."
She cut the feed. Her body shook.
Sakura was on a roof.
Her stealth suit bent the light around her. She was mapping new patrol routes. Identifying the Duke's elite guard.
She saw a patrol drag a man from his home. She heard screams. She logged the patrol's size. Ignored the rest. It was data.
Then she heard it. Himari's voice, tinny and faint, from a hidden receiver. "I am afraid too."
A logical fallacy. A leader should not express fear. A tactical error. She should have moved on. The smell of baking bread drifted up from a shop down the street. It was a completely irrelevant sensory input. Distracting.
She stayed, crouched on the rain-slick tiles, listening.
A memory surfaced. A training sim. Her and Akane, back-to-back. "Probability of success is 4.7%," Akane had stated. "Good," Sakura had replied.
Was that feeling then the same as the one in Himari's voice? The memory was a ghost. A bug. She was a weapon. Weapons didn't have ghosts. She dismissed the thought and moved on, melting back into the shadows. But the smell of the bread, for some reason, followed her for another block.