Chapter 9 · Under Procedure

Leia found Kallus in an auxiliary security office that had clearly not been designed to survive a constitutional crisis.

Three wall screens were active, each displaying a different version of the same disaster: transit reconstruction, custody logs, public-access footage from the western entrance. A fourth screen had frozen on a still image of Thrawn stepping through the doors of the Senate complex with his hands visible, his expression composed, the pale fabric at his throat catching the light in a way that made the whole thing look, infuriatingly, less like an arrest than an arrival.

There were datapads spread across the central table in overlapping rows. Arrival times. Medical clearance. Legal notifications. Chain-of-custody reports. Preliminary asset tracing. A half-empty cup of caf sat beside Kallus’s left hand, untouched long enough for the surface to have gone flat and dark.

Kallus stood over the table with both hands braced against its edge, shoulders slightly bowed, head lowered toward a map of Coruscant’s lower transit network. He had taken off his jacket at some point. His sleeves were rolled with military precision, but the collar of his shirt had loosened, and there was a fine, dangerous stillness in him now that Leia disliked more than visible exhaustion. He did not look sleepy. Sleepy would have been better. Sleepy would have meant his body had begun making arguments on its own behalf.

This was something else.

This was discipline pretending it could replace rest indefinitely.

Leia stopped in the doorway.

“How long has it been since you slept?”

Kallus did not look up.

“That depends on how strictly you define sleep.”

“I define it as the thing you have not done.”

His mouth tightened, not quite a smile.

“Then the answer would be inconvenient.”

Leia stepped inside. The door closed behind her with a soft pneumatic hush that did nothing to make the room feel private.

“Inconvenient for whom?”

“For the interrogation schedule.”

“Kallus.”

That made him look up at last.

His eyes were clear, which somehow made it worse. There was no haze in them, no dullness, no obvious failure of attention. Just the sharpened focus of a man who had pushed past ordinary fatigue into that colder territory where thought became narrow, efficient, and unkind to anything that did not serve the immediate objective.

Leia knew that look.

She had seen it in command rooms after evacuation orders. In pilots who had landed three times too many and still reached for their helmets. In herself, more often than she liked to admit.

“You are not interrogating Thrawn like this.”

“I am perfectly capable of conducting an initial interview.”

“That was not what I said.”

“No,” Kallus said, straightening a fraction. “It was not.”

The admission was too controlled to be conciliatory. Leia crossed her arms and looked down at the table, at the neat disaster of notes he had assembled around himself as if sufficient preparation could make a body irrelevant.

“He is going to notice.”

“Of course he is.”

“And use it.”

“Of course he will.”

Leia’s irritation sharpened, not because he was wrong, but because he sounded as if that settled the matter.

“Then why are you giving him the opening?”

Kallus exhaled through his nose and looked back at the transit map. “Because we need the first record established before his legal team files three motions, four public statements, and a petition accusing us of detaining him in administrative silence. Because the longer we wait, the more room he has to define the terms of his surrender for us. Because he has already turned custody into theater, and if we do not put him on record under Republic procedure, then the only account the public has is the one he staged on the Senate steps.”

Leia said nothing for a moment.

The worst part was that he was right. The still worse part was that he knew she knew it.

“This is not the ISB,” she said quietly.

Kallus’s expression did not change, but something in him went very still.

“No,” he said. “It is not.”

“Then do not treat yourself like one of its instruments.”

That landed.

Not visibly, not dramatically. Kallus had survived too many rooms where visible reaction was a liability. But Leia saw it in the minute pause before he answered, in the fraction of silence where the words should have been.

“I will conduct the initial interrogation,” he said at last. “Identity. Jurisdiction. Legal notification. Arrival route. Intent. Scope of cooperation. I will not pursue extended pressure. If he invokes his right to remain silent, I will note it and move on.”

“You make that sound easy.”

“It is procedural.”

“No,” Leia said. “It is Thrawn.”

For the first time, Kallus almost looked amused.

“A meaningful distinction.”

“He will try to make you angry.”

“I assume so.”

“He will try to make you careless.”

“I assume that as well.”

“And if he cannot make you careless, he will try to make you prove that you are not.”

Kallus’s gaze flicked back to her.

Leia held it.

“That is the part I am worried about.”

The hum of the screens filled the room. Somewhere outside, in the corridor, someone was speaking too quickly into a comlink. The words blurred through the wall, indistinct and urgent, the sound of a government attempting to metabolize an event faster than rumor could consume it.

Kallus lowered his eyes first.

“I will rest after the session.”

Leia gave him a flat look.

He added, with visible reluctance, “I give you my word.”

“That had better mean something more useful than ‘I will sit in another room with my eyes closed while reading reports.’”

“It means sleep.”

“How much?”

His jaw shifted.

Leia pointed at him.

“No. Do not negotiate with me. I am not one of your suspects.”

“No,” he said dryly. “You are considerably more difficult.”

“Good. You will go home and will return here tomorrow in the morning.”

For a moment, the edge of the exchange softened into something almost human.

Then one of the screens chimed. Custody transfer authorized.

Kallus looked toward it, and the brief softness was gone.

Leia hated that too.

“Room three is ready,” he said.

“Which room is room three?”

“Secure interrogation annex.”

Leia narrowed her eyes. “That did not answer the question.”

“It is the room nearest the detention corridor.”

“Kallus.”

He paused, then reached for his jacket.

“I have not approved the layout yet.”

That answer did not reassure her. It did, however, make her follow him.

The first room they were shown had no table.

Kallus stopped on the threshold so abruptly that the security officer behind him nearly walked into his back.

The room was clean, white, and efficient in the way certain places became efficient only after someone had removed every object that might give a prisoner the illusion of choice. A single chair stood bolted to the floor beneath a recessed overhead light. Restraint points gleamed at the arms and base. The walls were smooth. The observation strip was darkened. One camera sat visible in the upper corner; Leia did not doubt there were others.

For half a second no one spoke.

The room waited.

It knew what it was.

Leia felt her stomach tighten before Kallus said anything.

“No.”

The security officer blinked. “Sir?”

“No.”

“It is the most secure interview room available on this level.”

“It is an Imperial interrogation room with a new maintenance contract.”

The officer looked uncertainly at Leia, then back at Kallus.

“It meets Republic detention standards.”

“I am sure the form was very comforted by that.”

Leia did not intervene.

Kallus stepped one pace inside, not far enough to enter the light, and looked at the chair with an expression she could not quite read. Recognition, perhaps. Contempt. Something older and more personal than either.

“Thrawn will not be intimidated by being placed in the center of an empty room,” he said. “He has stood before courts-martial, admirals, insurgents, assassins, and Emperor Palpatine. If we put him there, we do not make him smaller. We make ourselves legible.”

The officer’s face stiffened.

“Legible, sir?”

Kallus turned back.

“We tell him which traditions we kept.”

That ended the discussion.

Leia looked at him then, really looked, and wondered how much of the exhaustion in his face came from the last day and how much had simply been waiting years for the right room to call it by name.

“Find one with a table,” she said.

The officer hesitated for only a second.

“Yes, Senator.”

The second room was smaller, less theatrical, and therefore more honest.

A fixed metal table divided the space. Two chairs. Recording equipment built into the wall rather than displayed like a threat. A medical monitor connection point. A recessed restraint anchor beneath the table, discreet but visible if one knew where to look. The lighting was still too bright, but evenly so, without the surgical cruelty of the previous room.

It was not comfortable.

That was fine.

Comfort was not the point.

Procedure was.

Kallus walked around the table once, checking the sightlines, the camera angles, the distance to the door. He moved with the automatic precision of someone who had both used rooms like this and survived the knowledge of what they could become.

“This one,” he said.

Leia watched him.

“You rejected the other room because of him,” she said. “Or because of you?”

Kallus did not look at her.

“Yes.”

That was probably the most honest answer he had given all day.

A few minutes later, the custody team brought Thrawn in.

The white detention clothing should have diminished him. On another man, perhaps it would have. On Thrawn, it merely stripped away ornament and left structure. He entered between two guards with his hands secured in front of him, movement measured but not slow, the faint restraint in his breathing the only visible concession to the injuries recorded in the medical file. His expression remained calm. Not blank. Never blank. His eyes took in the room once: door, cameras, table, Leia, Kallus, restraint point, medical lead, distance between chairs.

Then he looked at Kallus.

“Agent Kallus.”

“Grand Admiral.”

Leia, standing near the wall rather than behind the table, noted the choice of title and the absence of hesitation before it.

Thrawn inclined his head slightly.

“I understand this interview is being recorded.”

“It is.”

“And that a full copy will be provided to my legal representative.”

Kallus pulled out the chair opposite him.

“Yes.”

Thrawn sat when the guard indicated the chair, not before, not after. The timing was exact enough to make obedience look like a decision.

The guard secured the restraint beneath the table. Thrawn did not look down.

“And the transcript?”

Kallus sat across from him.

“The transcript as well.”

“In complete form?”

“Yes.”

“Including all questions asked after invocation of my right to silence?”

Leia’s eyes flicked to Kallus.

There it was.

Not a refusal. Not yet.

A small, precise hand placed on the first crack.

Kallus opened the primary file on his datapad.

“Including all questions and all responses, or lack of responses, relevant to the interview record.”

Thrawn considered that for less than a breath.

“Thank you.”

The words were courteous.

They were also a blade laid flat on the table.

Kallus did not pick it up.

“This is an initial custodial interview conducted under New Republic provisional detention authority. Present are Senator Leia Organa, observing; Captain Brant, security oversight; myself, Alexsandr Kallus, Intelligence liaison; and the detainee, Mitth’raw’nuruodo, also known as Thrawn. Time stamp—”

He gave the hour, date, and location.

Thrawn watched him throughout, perfectly still.

Kallus continued.

“You have been informed of your right to legal representation. You have accepted provisional representation by Caro Antilles of Veyr, Antilles and Sorn, under the limitations recorded in your signed consultation agreement. You have also been informed of your right to decline to answer questions that may incriminate you or compromise ongoing legal review. Do you confirm that you understand these rights?”

“Yes.”

“And do you consent to proceed with this initial interview without your representative physically present?”

Thrawn’s red eyes rested on him.

“For the limited purpose stated.”

“Verbal confirmation.”

“I consent to proceed with this initial interview for the limited purpose stated.”

Kallus nodded once.

Leia could see the fatigue in the movement. Not in its accuracy, but in the control around it. The restraint was costing him more than it should.

“State your full name.”

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”

“Known alias?”

“Thrawn.”

“Former rank?”

“Grand Admiral, Imperial Navy.”

“Current rank?”

Thrawn paused.

It was the first pause that mattered.

“I decline to answer.”

Kallus made a note.

“Do you currently hold command authority over any military, paramilitary, political, or intelligence organization?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Are there any units awaiting orders from you?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Are there any units that will act if they do not receive orders from you?”

Thrawn’s gaze did not move.

“I decline to answer.”

Leia felt Brant shift slightly beside the wall.

Kallus did not.

“Do you consider yourself surrendered to the New Republic?”

“Yes.”

“On whose behalf?”

“My own.”

“Do you surrender any forces, assets, intelligence networks, ships, weapons caches, or territorial claims with you?”

“I decline to answer.”

Kallus looked up from the datapad.

“Grand Admiral, you entered a public government building and announced your surrender to the New Republic. Are you now stating that the scope of that surrender is limited entirely to your person?”

“I am stating that I decline to answer the question as phrased.”

“Because the answer may incriminate you?”

“Because the answer may be legally material.”

“That was not my question.”

“No,” Thrawn said. “It was not.”

The silence that followed was small.

It was also the first sign that Thrawn had found the edge of Kallus’s patience and touched it gently enough not to leave a mark.

Kallus leaned back.

Leia noticed his fingers, still on the datapad, press once against the casing.

Then release.

“Let the record reflect that the detainee has declined to clarify whether his surrender includes any military or intelligence assets beyond his own person.”

Thrawn inclined his head.

“I assume that record will be provided to my legal representative.”

Kallus looked at him.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

The same words.

The same blade.

This time Leia saw Kallus recognize the repetition for what it was.

He moved on anyway.

Kallus let the pause last only as long as procedure allowed.

Not long enough to look uncertain.

Not short enough to look hurried.

But Leia, from her place near the wall, saw the fraction by which the balance had shifted. It was not dramatic. Kallus did not stumble, did not repeat himself, did not lose track of the line of questioning. He was still composed, still precise, still recognizably the man who had walked into the room with a structure built around every possible refusal.

He was simply half a beat late.

Not always. Not enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps. Brant, beside the door, watched the restraints, the guards, Thrawn’s hands. The recording system watched everything without understanding anything. But Leia had spent too many years reading command rooms, negotiations, pilots coming apart by millimeters, officers who could still recite protocol while their judgment began to fray at the edges. Kallus’s exhaustion did not make him weak.

It made him narrower.

And Thrawn had seen it.

Of course he had.

“Let us proceed to your arrival on Coruscant,” Kallus said.

Thrawn’s expression did not change.

“Very well.”

“You arrived in the Senate district via public transit.”

“Yes.”

Kallus drew up the relevant file with a movement that was still precise, but a shade slower than it had been at the beginning of the interview.

“Transit authority provided footage from the western concourse,” he said. “Time stamp fourteen twenty-seven local. You are visible crossing the public access lane toward the Senate approach.”

He turned the datapad so the table display caught the image.

Leia saw Thrawn’s eyes move once over the frame: timestamp, angle, reflection in the transparisteel barrier behind him, the blurred shoulder of a passing commuter, the corner of the security overlay.

It took less than a second.

It was enough to make her dislike the recording on sight.

Kallus glanced down at the datapad.

“Do you dispute the accuracy of that recording?”

“Yes.”

Leia looked at Thrawn more sharply.

Kallus’s eyes lifted.

“In what respect?”

“I decline to answer.”

“You dispute the accuracy of the recording, but decline to identify the inaccuracy.”

“Yes.”

“Do you dispute that you were the individual recorded?”

“No.”

“You confirm that the individual in the Senate district transit footage was you.”

“Yes.”

Kallus was silent for half a beat too long.

Not long enough for procedural damage.

Long enough for Leia to see the calculation he had to perform through the fatigue: Thrawn had admitted presence, preserved objection, and denied them the nature of the flaw. He had seen something, but wouldn't say it. The recording was now both useful and contaminated. If they relied on it too heavily, they might be stepping onto a surface Thrawn had already marked as unstable. If they ignored the dispute, his legal representative would not.

“Let the record reflect,” Kallus said, “that the detainee confirms arriving in the Senate district by public transit and confirms that he is the individual shown in the referenced transit footage, but disputes the accuracy of that footage while declining to specify the disputed element.”

Thrawn inclined his head.

“I assume that notation will be included in the transcript provided to my representative.”

“Yes.”

“In that wording?”

Kallus looked at him.

Leia felt, with immediate dislike, the precision of the strike. Not the transcript this time. The wording. Thrawn was not merely ensuring access to the record; he was reaching across the table, tired hand to tired hand, and asking Kallus to spend another sliver of attention on whether the summary itself had become an argument.

Kallus glanced once at the recording indicator.

“The official transcript will include the questions and answers verbatim. Any summary entered by the interviewer will be marked as such.”

“Thank you.”

The words were courteous.

They were also, Leia thought, beginning to sound like a metronome placed beside a man who had not slept.

Kallus looked up.

There should have been a sharper response there, Leia thought. Not anger; Kallus was too trained for that, and too practiced at surviving men who made irritation useful. But something with pressure behind it. A narrowing. A trap. A reminder that silence could protect a subject from one form of exposure while creating another.

Instead, he took a breath.

Only one.

But Thrawn watched it.

Leia felt her fingers curl once against her own sleeve.

She could stop it.

Not the interrogation, perhaps, not formally, but she could step forward, call a procedural recess, order medical review, invoke detention oversight, use any one of a dozen perfectly defensible reasons to remove Kallus from the room before Thrawn could carve the fatigue deeper.

And if she did, Kallus would obey.

That was the problem.

He would obey because he had given his word to serve this government and because he had learned, painfully and deliberately, to trust its civilian authority more than his own reflexive certainty. He would leave the room if she told him to. He might even understand why.

But Thrawn would understand more.

So would Kallus.

Leia stayed where she was.

Kallus set the datapad down flat on the table and moved to the next file.

Kallus moved to the next file.

“At the time of surrender,” he said, “you were carrying the following items: one civilian-grade datapad, unregistered; one fabric scarf, Lothal manufacture; one transit chit, partial route data recovered; one meal wrapper from a licensed concourse vendor; one tube of lip balm, unscented, commercial issue; currency in mixed denominations consisting of two ten-credit coins, one five-credit coin, two one-credit coins, and four quarter-credit pieces; no weapon; no comlink; no Imperial credentials; no rank plaque; no encrypted military cylinder; no personal seal.”

Thrawn listened without visible reaction.

The list should have diminished him. Leia knew that was part of the point, even if Kallus would not have admitted it aloud: to place the Grand Admiral inside the smallness of the objects found on his person, to turn legend back into inventory, to make him answer not as a figure stepping out of history, but as a detained man with a scarf, a food wrapper, lip balm, false identification, and coins enough to buy very little of consequence in the Senate district.

It did not diminish him.

It made the absence of everything else louder.

Kallus glanced up.

“Do you dispute the accuracy of that inventory?”

“No.”

“Do you assert ownership over all listed items?”

“No.”

Leia’s attention sharpened.

Kallus’s did as well, though a fraction later.

“Which listed items do you not assert ownership over?”

“I decline to answer pending legal review.”

Kallus was silent for half a breath.

Not enough to lose the line.

Enough for Leia to see him adjust to the opening Thrawn had created: not a denial of possession, not a claim of theft, not an assertion of planted evidence. Only a refusal to let the inventory become a map of ownership. Everything found on him remained found on him. Not everything found on him was necessarily his.

“The datapad,” Kallus said.

Thrawn’s eyes remained on him.

“You were carrying a civilian-grade datapad at the time of surrender.”

“Yes.”

“Is the datapad yours?”

“Yes.”

“Did you purchase it?”

“No.”

“Was it provided to you?”

“I decline to answer.”

“By whom?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Did you know its contents at the time you surrendered?”

“Yes.”

Kallus touched the file open. The table display did not show the device itself this time, only the indexed recovery report, clean lines of text arranged beneath a New Republic evidence header.

“Republic technical review identified the following accessible files,” he said. “A publicly available historical monograph on the final campaigns of the Clone Wars. Three archived Senate floor transcripts from the last year of the Republic. A civilian transit schedule for the Senate district and adjacent concourse lines. Cached route data from the western transit hub. A vendor receipt corresponding to the meal wrapper recovered from your possession. Two art catalogues, both publicly available. One incomplete language primer in Old Corellian. One weather archive for Hanna City, Chandrila, dated six standard months ago. No active communications log. No registered holonet account. No military encryption suite detected in the accessible directory.”

Thrawn said nothing.

Kallus looked up.

“Do you dispute that list?”

“No.”

“Were all accessible files placed on the datapad by you?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Were any accessible files placed on the datapad by another party?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Were the files selected for discovery?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Were the files selected to create an impression of your route, intent, or interests?”

“I decline to answer.”

Kallus paused.

Leia saw the pause arrive before he did.

It came not from confusion, but from the effort of holding too many possible intentions in alignment while too little sleep made each one heavier than it should have been. The datapad was simple enough to list, impossible to interpret cleanly, and Thrawn, by confirming knowledge of its contents, had removed one ambiguity while preserving all the useful ones.

Kallus resumed.

“Are there any encrypted partitions on the datapad?”

“I do not know.”

That changed the room more than refusal would have.

Brant’s gaze flicked toward Thrawn’s hands, secured beneath the table. Leia felt her own attention narrow. Kallus did not move for a moment, and this time the delay was not merely fatigue; it was recalculation.

“You do not know,” he repeated.

“That is correct.”

“You knew the accessible contents of the datapad at the time of surrender.”

“Yes.”

“But you do not know whether the device contains encrypted partitions.”

“Yes.”

“Is that because you did not examine the device architecture?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is that because the device was prepared by another party?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is that because you were instructed not to access certain areas of the device?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is that because you lacked the means to detect them?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is that because any such partitions, if present, would be hidden from ordinary review?”

“I decline to answer.”

Kallus’s fingers rested beside the datapad.

Too still.

Leia could see the fatigue in that stillness now, in the controlled economy of his movements, in the fraction of time it took him to choose each next question. Thrawn had not said much. That was the problem. He had given Kallus a yes where a refusal would have closed a door, a no where ownership might have created unity, and now ignorance where ignorance could be either true, strategic, or engineered.

Kallus leaned forward slightly.

“Did you expect Republic security to look for encrypted partitions?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Did you expect Republic security to find any?”

“I do not know.”

“That was not the question.”

“No,” Thrawn said. “It was not.”

Leia watched Kallus’s jaw set.

There.

Too close.

Not anger, not yet, but the edge of it, sharpened by exhaustion and by the particular irritation of being corrected by a prisoner who had answered exactly enough to make correction defensible.

Kallus inhaled once through his nose.

“Did you expect Republic security to find encrypted partitions, if any exist?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Do you possess the means to decrypt any encrypted partition that may exist on the device?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Does your legal representative possess the means to decrypt them?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Does any third party possess the means to decrypt them?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Are any possible encrypted partitions designed to trigger data loss, transmission, or contamination if accessed without authorization?”

Thrawn’s gaze remained on him.

“I do not know.”

Kallus looked at him.

“You do not know whether the datapad you carried at surrender contains counter-intrusion measures.”

“That is correct.”

“But you knew the accessible files.”

“Yes.”

“And you assert ownership over the device.”

“Yes.”

“But not necessarily over all listed items recovered from your person.”

“Correct.”

“And you decline to clarify which items are not yours.”

“Pending legal review, yes.”

Kallus let the silence sit for one second too long.

Leia felt the balance tilt again.

Not because Kallus had asked the wrong questions. He had not. The sequence was sound; the trap was logical; the contradictions were there. But Thrawn was allowing the contradictions to exist without trying to resolve them, and a tired interrogator always wanted resolution more than a rested one. Not consciously. Not foolishly. Simply because the mind, denied sleep, began to resent open doors.

Thrawn did not resent them.

He built houses out of them.

Kallus glanced down at the datapad.

“Did the device contain a message for the New Republic?”

“Does it?”

Kallus lifted his head and held Thrawn's gaze.

"Please, answer"

"I decline to answer."

“Did it contain a message for Senator Organa?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Did it contain a message intended for any current or former Imperial intelligence personnel?”

For the first time, Thrawn’s eyes seemed to sharpen, not in surprise, but in appreciation of the cleaner phrasing.

“I decline to answer.”

Leia hated that she could see Kallus notice the approval.

He moved on before it could matter.

“Did the accessible files contain instructions?”

“No.”

“Coordinates?”

“No.”

“Names of contacts?”

“No.”

“Evidence of the threat you described?”

“No.”

“Disinformation?”

“No.”

The last answer came without delay.

Kallus looked up.

“No?”

“No.”

“None of the accessible files contained disinformation.”

“Correct.”

“Do you define omission as disinformation?”

Thrawn paused.

Leia almost smiled, though there was no humor in it.

There he was, she thought. Still tired. Still too slow in places. But not gone.

“I decline to answer,” Thrawn said.

Kallus nodded once and entered the note.

“Let the record reflect that the detainee confirms ownership of the civilian-grade datapad recovered at surrender, confirms knowledge of the accessible contents, denies that those accessible contents included instructions, coordinates, contact names, evidence of the described threat, or disinformation, and states that he does not know whether encrypted partitions or counter-intrusion measures exist on the device.”

Thrawn’s eyes lowered briefly toward the recording indicator, then returned to Kallus.

“I assume the official transcript will preserve the distinction between accessible contents and any hypothetical encrypted structures.”

“Yes.”

“And that my statement of uncertainty will not be characterized as denial.”

Kallus’s fingers tightened once beside the datapad.

Leia saw it.

Thrawn saw it.

Kallus, perhaps, felt it only after both of them had.

“The transcript will include your words verbatim,” he said.

“And the interviewer’s summary?”

“The interviewer’s summary will be marked as summary.”

“And corrected where inaccurate.”

Kallus lifted his eyes.

“It is not inaccurate.”

“It is incomplete.”

“It is a summary.”

“Then I request that the record reflect my objection to its incompleteness.”

The room went quiet.

Leia felt Brant shift near the door, not quite impatience, not quite alarm. The kind of movement security officers made when procedure began to look like combat and no one had given them a weapon appropriate to the form.

Kallus held Thrawn’s gaze.

For a moment Leia thought he would refuse the request out of sheer, exhausted irritation.

Then he said, “The record will reflect that the detainee objects to the summary as incomplete.”

Thrawn inclined his head.

“Thank you.”

There it was again.

The same courtesy. The same pressure. The same small, exact demand that Kallus spend attention deciding whether to treat the words as manners, provocation, legal positioning, or all three.

This time, Kallus did not answer.

He simply moved to the next item.

Leia saw it this time with unpleasant clarity. He was waiting for the pattern to reveal a useful deviation, but the pattern itself was now being used against him. Every question had been designed to sort intention from accident, preparation from improvisation, threat from theatre. Thrawn did not need to win by answering. He only needed to make the record show that Kallus had asked the right questions and received nothing except the shape of locked doors.

And every repetition of that legal phrase was another handhold.

Another reminder that Thrawn was not trapped in the process.

He was inhabiting it.

Kallus’s thumb moved once along the edge of the datapad, as if scrolling and not scrolling at the same time.

Leia thought, with a sudden flash of anger that had nowhere safe to go, that he needed sleep so badly it had become visible in the spaces between thoughts.

“You carried a scarf manufactured on Lothal.”

Thrawn’s eyes remained on him.

“Corrrect.”

“Was that choice symbolic?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Was it intended for Senator Organa?”

“No.”

“For the public?”

“No.”

“For Ezra Bridger?”

The room changed.

Not much.

The lighting remained the same. The cameras continued recording. The medical monitor at the wall gave no alarm. Brant did not move. But something passed, not over Thrawn’s face, but through the stillness around him, like a current beneath ice.

Leia saw Kallus see it.

There.

That was the first thing Thrawn had not quite hidden.

Kallus leaned forward a fraction, fatigue forgotten or overruled.

“Was the scarf intended as a message regarding Ezra Bridger?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is Ezra Bridger alive?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Was Ezra Bridger alive when you returned to known space?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Did Ezra Bridger return with you?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Did you leave him behind?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Did he leave you?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Kallus,” Leia said.

She had not meant to.

Not like that.

Not as an order, not as interruption, not even as warning. His name had left her because the line between relevant inquiry and old wound had appeared faster than caution could catch it.

Kallus stopped.

So did Thrawn’s gaze.

Leia felt both men turn toward the sound in different ways. Kallus did so with the controlled attention of someone pulled back from the edge of a tactical pursuit. Thrawn did so more slowly, as if noting not the interruption itself but its origin, its timing, its value.

Leia held her position.

She could not unsay it.

She also could not say more without making it worse.

Kallus looked at her for one brief moment.

There was no resentment in his face.

That, somehow, made it harder.

Then he turned back to Thrawn.

“Strike the last sequence from active pursuit,” he said. “Questions remain in the record. The interviewer is moving to another subject.”

Thrawn did not smile.

Leia almost wished he had.

A smile would have been easier to hate.

“I assume,” he said, “the transcript will reflect the senatorial interjection.”

Kallus was too slow.

Only by a heartbeat.

But too slow.

“Yes,” he said.

“And the reason for discontinuing that line of inquiry?”

Kallus’s eyes sharpened, but the recovery came after the damage, not before.

“The interviewer determined that the line was premature for the stated scope of this initial interview.”

“Thank you.”

Again.

Leia wanted, with a sudden violence that startled her, to walk to the table and tell him to stop saying it.

Not because the words were improper.

Because they were working.

Kallus shifted to another section.

“You stated yesterday that the New Republic faces a threat it does not understand.”

“I stated that there is a war you are not seeing.”

“Define war.”

Thrawn’s eyes remained on him, very still.

“Do I have to explain to you what a war is, Director Kallus?”

The title landed half a shade wrong.

Not inaccurate, not entirely; Kallus held enough authority in the present arrangement for the word to pass as courtesy if anyone wanted badly enough to let it. But Leia saw the minute tightening at the corner of his mouth, the brief, almost invisible delay before his eyes lifted from the datapad.

Director.

Not agent. Not captain. Not Alexsandr.

A title with too much institutional weight in it, offered by a man who knew exactly how governments built men into offices and then pretended the office had not cost anything.

Kallus did not correct him.

That was the reaction.

Or rather, Leia thought, watching the controlled stillness of his hands, that was the first victory he clawed back from himself.

“No,” Kallus said. “You have to explain what you mean by it.”

Thrawn held his gaze for a moment longer.

Then, softly:

“I decline to answer.”

“Identify the opposing force.”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is this force connected to the Imperial remnants?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is it connected to the Unknown Regions?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Is it Chiss?”

For the first time, Thrawn’s head tilted slightly.

Not surprise.

Assessment.

“I decline to answer.”

“Is the Chiss Ascendancy currently in conflict with this force?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Are you acting on behalf of the Chiss Ascendancy?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Are you acting against the interests of the Chiss Ascendancy?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Are you attempting to draw the New Republic into a foreign war?”

“I decline to answer.”

“Are you attempting to use the New Republic as a shield?”

“I decline to answer.”

“As a weapon?”

“I decline to answer.”

“As a delay?”

Thrawn was quiet for a moment.

Leia felt the room hold its breath.

Kallus had found something, perhaps not an answer, but a pressure point near enough to one that Thrawn needed to choose silence deliberately rather than automatically.

“I decline to answer,” Thrawn said.

Kallus marked it down.

This time he did not look quite so slow.

“Let the record reflect that the detainee declines to answer whether he is attempting to use the New Republic as a delay against an unidentified hostile force.”

Thrawn’s eyes remained fixed on him.

“I would recommend that the record not paraphrase intent beyond the language of the question.”

Kallus’s mouth tightened.

There. Again.

A correction. Legalistic, mild, reasonable enough to make resistance seem emotional.

Leia saw Kallus begin to answer too quickly, then stop himself.

The stopping cost him.

“Noted,” he said. “The record will reflect the question as asked and the detainee’s refusal to answer.”

“Thank you.”

Kallus looked down.

For the first time, Leia saw the exhaustion reach his hands.

Not shaking. Nothing so crude. But the stillness had become maintained rather than natural. His fingers rested on either side of the datapad with too much intention, as though he had become aware of them and ordered them not to betray him.

Thrawn, across from him, had no such visible strain.

That was not fair, Leia thought, and knew at once how useless the thought was. Thrawn was injured, medicated, detained, stripped of command, surrounded by enemies, legally exposed, and still somehow the room seemed to be spending more of itself on Kallus than on him.

Because Kallus was trying to hold more than the interrogation.

He was holding the line between what he had been and what he had chosen to become.

And Thrawn, damn him, had found that line without needing to name it.

"You have requested medical continuity,” Kallus said, moving again. “Your medication schedule has been verified by Republic physicians. Are any missing medications, treatments, implants, or biological requirements not included in that report?”

“No.”

“Are you withholding medical information that could create an emergency in custody?”

“If such information exists, I am not aware of it.”

Kallus looked up.

Leia saw the answer reach him a fraction before the irritation did.

It was not refusal.

That made it worse.

A refusal could be marked, boxed, and handed to Antilles with all the other locked doors. This was softer. Less useful. Legally safer. It left the Republic responsible for anything it failed to detect while giving Thrawn no obvious admission of concealment.

“That is not a legal abstraction, Grand Admiral,” Kallus said. “If you suffer a preventable medical event while in our detention, it compromises custody, investigation, and your stated purpose in surrendering.”

“I understand.”

“Then answer the question directly.”

“I did.”

“No,” Kallus said, and the word came out quieter than Leia liked. “You answered around it.”

Thrawn’s expression remained calm.

“I cannot disclose what I do not know.”

“And you expect us to accept that the man who engineered a public surrender to the New Republic does not know whether his own medical condition poses custodial risk?”

“I expect you to document the answer I have given.”

There it was again.

Not thank you, this time.

Worse, perhaps, because it did not pretend to be courtesy.

Kallus held his gaze.

Then, with visible care, he entered the note.

“I understand.”

“Then answer the question.”

“I decline.”

Kallus leaned back.

“On medical grounds?”

“On legal grounds.”

“Your health is legal strategy now?”

“My health is evidence.”

The answer settled on the table between them.

Leia saw Brant’s expression harden.

Kallus did not move.

Thrawn continued, voice even.

“Evidence of prior custody, prior injury, prior treatment, prior jurisdictions, prior associations, and potentially prior obligations. I will not provide a fragmented medical history outside the agreed scope of this interview.”

Kallus studied him.

Then, quietly, “That is the most complete answer you have given.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because an inaccurate record would endanger both parties.”

“And because you wanted that in the transcript.”

Thrawn’s gaze sharpened by the smallest degree.

“Yes.”

There it was.

Not cooperation.

Placement.

Kallus held his eyes.

Leia saw him understand, and for one moment, despite the fatigue, despite the slowness, despite the points Thrawn had already taken from him, he looked entirely present.

“You are building a record of Republic responsibility,” Kallus said.

“I am ensuring that responsibility is accurately assigned.”

“You are making custody part of your argument.”

“Custody is already part of the argument. I did not create that condition.”

“No,” Kallus said. “You selected it.”

A pause.

Thrawn did not answer.

Kallus waited.

The waiting was better this time. Cleaner. Less reactive.

“Did you surrender to the New Republic because you trusted its laws,” Kallus asked, “or because you trusted its fear of violating them?”

Leia felt the question land.

So did Thrawn.

For several seconds, the room had no sound but the faint ventilation and the almost inaudible hum of the recording system.

Then Thrawn said, “I decline to answer.”

Kallus nodded once.

But Leia saw something else in the silence after it.

Not victory.

Not even advantage.

A correction in the trajectory.

Kallus was losing ground, yes. He was tired, and Thrawn had been using that exhaustion with the kind of disciplined restraint that made the use more offensive, not less. But Kallus had not fallen into the trap of proving himself. Not yet. He had bled time, conceded rhythm, allowed Thrawn to seed the record with legal reminders and carefully framed responsibility.

Then he had asked the right question.

And Thrawn had chosen silence.

That mattered.

It did not win the interrogation.

It did give them the shape of one locked door.