“The Quiet Confession”
Ames hadn’t planned on seeing Dr. Moore that day—certainly not in the hallway outside the astronomy lab. Moore was carrying a leather portfolio under one arm and looked as though he was rushing somewhere important, but when their eyes met, he slowed.
“Ames,” he said warmly, “I owe you a reply. Your notes from the other night were… something.”
They stepped outside together into the crisp afternoon air. Students drifted between buildings, unaware of the conversation forming just beyond their peripheral world.
After a few minutes of casual talk, Ames felt the weight in his pocket—the folded note card where he’d jotted the newest discovery. He hesitated, then spoke.
“Dr. Moore, I found more. About Nedy.”
Moore stopped walking. The lines around his eyes tightened almost imperceptibly.
“Go on.”
Ames took a breath. “You remember how Nedy pushed back against Sra? Turns out he was preparing to send inspectors there. Another nation had warned him Sra was developing nuclear weapons. Nedy took it seriously. Too seriously, apparently.”
Moore said nothing.
“And the Alestians—they were being pushed out of their land. Nedy refused to support Sra’s plan to strike them. Instead, he offered the Alestians defensive training on a missile system. The training site was only a couple of hours from where Nedy was assassinated.”
Moore’s face remained still, but his eyes had sharpened.
“The day he was killed,” Ames continued, “Sra sent some of their top military officers to New Yew City. One was supposed to be at the training site. Years later, his wife wrote in her memoir that he wasn’t there at all. He was in New Yew City—and he left on a plane back to Sra right before the assassination.”
Moore slowly exhaled. “That was never in the official investigation.”
“I know,” Ames said. “Nothing about it ever made it into the reports. It’s like it was erased.”
Students laughed in the distance; a car door slammed. The normal world didn’t match the unease tightening Ames’s chest.
“And after Nedy was gone,” he said, “his VP let Sra resume everything—nuclear development, the attack on the Alestians. No inspections. No resistance.”
Moore looked at him for a long moment. “Ames… you’re getting close to the part people aren’t supposed to uncover.”
Ames swallowed. “There’s more. Nedy wanted Sra’s political organization to be formally designated as a lobby. Because that’s what they were. But if that happened, they’d face restrictions. Limits on money. Limits on influence.”
He paused. “Sra didn’t like that.”
“No,” Moore said quietly. “They didn’t.”
“So they had motive. Multiple motives.”
Moore put his hand on the back of a bench, gripping it as though bracing against a memory. “You’re asking the right questions. And you’re finding things most people never look for.”
Ames waited, hoping Moore would continue.
But instead he said only, “Be careful what else you choose to look for next.”
The warning hung between them longer than the conversation itself.
