## **Chapter 17: Tangled Broadcasts**
The stolen data had changed everything. For days, the rebel network had been unraveling it—thousands of files encoded in tight loops of Empire encryption. Not just troop deployments or shipment manifests. Not just administrative chatter. These were the hidden truths: classified disappearances, records of terminated anomalies, surveillance tapes of citizens deemed "unstable." A map of fear stretching years back. And for Kian, Serena, Lina, and the others in the Ruined Haven, that fear had become fuel.
The Haven was no longer quiet. In every corner, rebels cross-referenced name lists, archived audio, decoded fragments of old directives. They pieced together connections that the Empire had gone to great lengths to hide. And among those names—Erin Drayden and Velra Maren—Kian and Lina's parents. They hadn't been erased by accident. They'd been leaders in a failed uprising nearly fifteen years ago. Now, the truth sat glowing on a cracked tablet in Kian's hands.
"They were organizers," Lina said quietly, kneeling beside him. Her voice was tight, unsure if it should break or harden. "Not just hiding us. Planning resistance cells. Helping people like us disappear before the Empire could get to them."
Kian didn't look up. His throat ached with the weight of it. "All this time I thought they were trying to stay alive." He swallowed. "They were trying to fight."
The walls around them buzzed with quiet movement—Serena calling out a map coordinate, someone reporting a sighting in the western slums, Maren splicing together a data packet. Everyone was preparing for something.
Because they all knew: the truth wasn't enough.
It had to be seen.
Serena approached them with urgency flashing in her eyes. "We found it," she said, waving her wrist module. "There's a still-operating relay tower in Sector Six. Old broadcast tech, left over from the early propaganda circuits. The signal range is huge. If we take it, we don't have to trickle this out on encrypted channels anymore. We flood them."
Kian stood slowly. "Unfiltered?"
"Unfiltered. Screens in plazas, terminals in transit pods, overhead feeds in the factories." She glanced between the two siblings. "One message. Everyone hears it."
Rex, listening nearby, frowned. "That's not escalation—it's provocation."
"It's war," Serena said. "And we need to be loud before they erase us again."
No one disagreed.
That night, under thick clouds and light rain, they moved. The broadcast tower loomed above the tangled roofs of Sector Six, a skeletal spire tucked behind a forgotten civic hall. It had once flooded the district with patriotic anthems and sanitized news. Now it waited in silence, dark and overgrown with vines.
Maren and Lina led the tech crew, hauling stripped signal boosters and repurposed drives. Kian and Serena provided cover, scouting ahead and disabling two defunct drones still tethered to the tower's outdated defense grid. It took them under forty minutes to reach the control room, housed behind rusting steel doors three levels up. Inside, the console panels were surprisingly intact.
"This'll work," Maren confirmed, blowing dust from a transceiver.
Lina was already unpacking their encrypted drive, hands moving with practiced focus. "The patch will override most of the city's passive channels. I'll need twelve minutes to decrypt and thread it through."
"Ten," Serena corrected. "We have a window until Empire signal scramblers notice the spike. After that, they'll send a squad."
"Then we make it fast," Kian said. He stood near the window, watching the district below. Traffic was thin. Lights flickered through smoke. Silent buildings. A city half-asleep, unaware it was about to wake.
The moment came quickly.
Lina hit a switch. The relay core lit up, casting gold light across the console. The air crackled. Screens in the control room blinked, aligning signal paths across vast regions of the city. Serena keyed in the final coordinates. "Ready."
Kian inserted the drive.
The transmission began.
Across Auric City, screens flickered mid-loop. Storefront displays turned static, then shifted. Factory announcement boards froze, then displayed new footage. Transit terminals, info kiosks, even residential monitors—all hijacked. And from them: a voice.
"This is not their truth. It is ours."
Then came the images.
Not propaganda. Reality.
Grainy footage of enforcement raids. Audio logs of ordered eliminations. Names—dozens, hundreds—scrolled across public view. Workers paused mid-task. Officers halted mid-step. Pedestrians froze as the machinery of Empire deception shattered before their eyes. Some stared in silence. Some cried. Some ran.
Inside the broadcast tower, alarms flared.
"Five minutes," Maren warned. "They're tracing our signal. Grid's starting to blink red."
"Let it run," Kian replied.
Serena turned to him. "You know what this means."
He nodded. "No more shadows. We're in the light now."
Down below, a hovercraft cut across the skyline. Patrol boots hit the streets. The Empire was coming.
Lina's voice was tight. "Another ninety seconds and the full data dump completes."
They waited.
Sirens screamed.
Then the console chimed: "Transmission Complete."
Serena grabbed the drive. "Go."
They split through the emergency exit tunnel, running hard down tight stairwells as the upper levels filled with footsteps. Kian helped Lina vault over a fallen pipe. Maren disabled a proximity sensor just as a drone glided overhead. They vanished through an alley, ducked into service hatches, and fled into the skeletal remains of the district.
They made it out.
Barely.
Back in the Ruined Haven, the mood was electric. People crowded around old monitors, rewatching segments of the broadcast. Word spread fast. Allies confirmed. Resistance symbols painted in bold red began appearing across public plazas. For the first time, the lie had been broken not in secret—but for everyone to see.
Kian stood beside the central table, still catching his breath.
Rex approached. "They'll retaliate."
"I know," Kian said.
"They'll come hard. Publicly."
"I want them to." Kian looked up. His voice didn't shake. "Let them show their hand. The city's watching now. They won't be able to erase that."
Serena joined them, flipping through reaction logs. "Then we don't slow down. Next broadcast is direct instruction. Recruitment. We show people how to fight."
Kian met her eyes. "We will."
Because now, the rebellion wasn't theory.
It was reality.
And the whole city had seen it.
---