They were held in cells beneath the plaza, in the depths of the station where the oldest tunnels had been converted to dungeons. It was fitting, Kael thought. The basement of the hierarchy, the foundation that all the injustice was built upon.
Sera was in the cell next to his. They could see each other through a small window cut in the wall between their cells.
"Do you regret it?" she asked him.
Kael thought about this carefully. Did he regret opening the barrier? Did he regret the deaths that had resulted? Did he regret the fact that he was going to die tomorrow?
"No," he said finally. "I don't regret any of it. I regret that it was necessary. I regret that the Council was too entrenched in their power to listen to reason. I regret that people had to die for change to happen. But I don't regret the action itself."
"My mother came to see me," Sera said. "She brought Maren. She wanted to tell me that she's going to continue what we started. She's going to work from within the system to implement the reforms my father proposed."
"Will it be enough?" Kael asked.
"I don't know," Sera admitted. "But she said something important. She said that my father's execution didn't kill the idea. It planted it. And now, with tomorrow, with our sacrifice, the idea will grow. It might take years. It might take generations. But the Council won't be able to stop it."
Kael moved to the window so he could see her face more clearly. "I want you to know something," he said. "Before tomorrow. I love you. Not as someone from the Lower District loves someone from the Middle District. Not as a fellow rebel loves a fellow rebel. Just as a person who's been fundamentally changed by knowing you. You made me believe that things could be better. And even though I'm not going to live to see it, I'm grateful for that."
Sera's eyes filled with tears. "I love you too, Kael. And I'm sorry. I brought you into this danger."
"You didn't force me," Kael said. "I made my choice. I'm making it again right now, choosing to stand with you, choosing to believe that this matters."
That night, none of them slept. They sat in their cells, thinking about the people they loved, about the lives they wouldn't get to live, about the future they might be giving to others.
Thrace sat quietly, his old hands folded in his lap. Kira whispered prayers to gods that probably didn't exist in the station. Maren stared at the ceiling, his young face hard and resolved. Savas paced back and forth, his soldier's mind trying to find tactical solutions to an impossible situation.
In the cells around them, the others faced their own nights of reckoning. Some wept. Some meditated. Some seemed almost peaceful, having made their peace with what was to come.
In the Upper District, the Council met to discuss what came after. There were concerns about the Lower District remaining stable. There were questions about whether executing the instigators would actually prevent further unrest or fuel it. There were debates about resource allocation and how to prevent another breach.
But Hector remained unmoved. He believed that the execution would serve as a deterrent, that people would be too frightened to challenge the system again. He believed that order could be maintained through fear and force.
He was wrong, though he wouldn't realize it until it was too late.