Lexa refused sedation after the fall.
The corpsman argued. Her ribs were bruised, her shoulder strained, and she had swallowed enough seawater to make her cough every time she tried to speak. She still refused. “If David is talking,” she said, “I need to be awake.”
Olsen did not force her.
Instead, he moved her under guard.
That told her everything.
“Am I in danger?” she asked.
Olsen answered honestly. “Yes.”
“From David?”
“Not only David.”
She looked toward the sealed medical bay door.
That was the answer she feared most.
A personal vendetta she could understand. David hated her. He had hated her for two years. His grief was visible, predictable, almost honest in its brutality. But if David had help, then the fall was not only revenge. It was cleanup.
The grenade became the key.
A weapons specialist confirmed it was active but unaltered. No evidence showed Lexa had handled it before entering the water. The exterior carried traces of a storage compound used in the ship’s controlled locker and a faint smear of adhesive from being fixed inside a pouch. Lexa’s vest showed a cut in the inner seam where something had been inserted without opening the obvious pocket flap.
Someone had planted it.
The question was when.
Deck preparation footage showed Lexa collecting her vest from a staging rack at 08:22. She checked her radio, gloves, and safety line. She did not inspect the inner seam because sailors do not expect grenades in their own gear during carrier operations.
At 08:17, five minutes before she arrived, a Northstar contractor walked past the rack carrying a maintenance case.
He paused for three seconds.
Three seconds was not enough to prove anything.
But his badge recorded access to a restricted storage corridor earlier that morning.
The contractor’s name was Evan Rill.
Olsen knew the name.
Rill had been listed in the Harbor Sable signal review as a temporary systems technician.
The same contractor connected both events.
Lexa sat up when Olsen told her.
“Rill was at Harbor Sable?”
“Yes.”
“He controlled routing?”
“Part of it.”
She closed her eyes.
“That’s why Mara said the north gate was blocked.”
Olsen waited.
Lexa looked at him again.
“Someone forced the convoy east.”
“And blamed your warning delay.”
“My warning wasn’t delayed.”
“I know.”
She swallowed hard.
“Does David?”
Olsen did not answer.
Lexa understood.
A strange sadness moved across her face, almost hidden under pain and anger.
“He thinks I killed them because someone fed him my name for two years.”
Olsen nodded.
“Yes.”
Lexa looked toward the door.
“And today he tried to kill me with it.”
Olsen’s expression hardened.
“Today someone tried to make him finish what their lie started.”
That was the moment Lexa realized David might be guilty and used at the same time.
And that made the truth far more dangerous.