The soundless press of Phei's footsteps carried him across the moonlit garden toward the stage, his presence moving through the chaos of cables, cameras, folding chairs and low production voices with a calm that looked almost insulting beneath the nervous energy churning around him.
From the way heads turned before he had even reached the platform, it became painfully clear that everyone had simply been waiting on him — the small audience already seated under the softened garden lights, his own people occupying the front rows with expressions ranging from open curiosity to quiet, knife-bright suspicion.
The stage ahead had been arranged with expensive care, raised slightly above the manicured grass, framed by elegant side structures and washed in lighting warm enough to make even an interrogation look like lifestyle television — which was, Phei reflected, probably humanity's most shameless achievement after turning war into economics and calling it policy.
