Cold air hits me through the hood, thin and sharp and carrying the smell of pine and altitude and distance. My boots find packed earth, then gravel, then the step of a vehicle. Roman's hand on my elbow guides me into the back seat of what feels like an SUV by the height of the chassis and the leather under my palms.
Doors close. The engine starts. Victoria is beside me. Roman is driving. I can hear the difference in his breathing fromthe front seat, the controlled cadence of a man navigating a route he's driven many times, with a hooded passenger who represents either an asset or a threat and whose classification is still pending.
My fingers tap against my thigh. The hood smells like clean fabric. The SUV moves, and the road beneath us changes from smooth to rough to something that sounds like forest, gravel popping under the tires, branches scraping the vehicle's flanks.
I am inside the darkness, heading toward the mountain, and the only proof that I chose to be here is the word I sent into a channel that shouldn't exist, aimed at a mind I've never met, carrying a warning that cost me everything I built.
Compromised.
The word was meant for them. Turns out it applies to me too. Has since the moment I found that door and chose to knock instead of walking away, because walking away would have meant watching elegant code get destroyed by people who corrupt everything they touch, and some things are worth more than safety.
I don't know yet if this is one of them. But my fingers are tapping against my thigh, working through the problem, and that means some part of me has already decided the answer while the rest catches up.
3
TOMMY
Iwatch the vehicle appear on the outer perimeter camera and my pulse does something complicated that I'm not willing to examine with the same rigor I apply to incoming data.
Victoria's trace took less than two days. Former GCHQ, Cyber Operations Division. Recruited out of university, pushed out a few years later after a joint operation with MI6 went sideways and the agency decided blaming the analyst was cheaper than fixing the vulnerability she'd flagged in writing. Twice. Through official channels. With supporting documentation that, according to Victoria's contacts, was quietly buried under classification stamps and interdepartmental politics.
Dar Atterly. Mid-twenties. Independent cyber operations specialist, freelance penetration tester, intelligence broker dealing exclusively in data. No weapons. No violence. No known affiliations with any organization, government, or criminal enterprise currently operating in the spaces where Echo Ridge does business.
Working off the grid. Solo. Building an operation aimed at dismantling the Committee's digital infrastructure with nothingbut her own capability and the kind of focused, obsessive determination that I recognize because I see it in the mirror every morning while I'm brushing my teeth.
The vehicle is one of ours, a nondescript SUV that Stryker rotates through civilian registration every quarter. On the outer camera, it navigates the unmarked forest road with the unhurried confidence of a driver who knows exactly where the concealed turnoff is and doesn't need to search for it. Victoria is in the passenger seat. Roman is behind the wheel.
Then my secondary monitor triggers an alert I've never seen in a live environment.
A second vehicle sits on a fire road that intersects the main route, miles from the airstrip and close enough to the mountain approach to raise every alarm in my nervous system. The engine is cold, which means the vehicle has been sitting there for hours, possibly longer. The thermal signature on the satellite overlay shows two occupants in the front seats and a heat bloom in the trunk that's consistent with electronic equipment, a mobile signals package or a tracking rig or both. The vehicle wasn't there during yesterday's perimeter sweep. It appeared sometime overnight, positioned on a road that offers a clear sight line to the route Roman is currently driving.
The Committee has been hunting for Echo Base's location since Vendetta. Victoria's extraction from Prague was partially tracked. The charter flight's tail number was flagged by a compromised aviation contact, and the flight plan's westward trajectory confirmed a connection to the American northwest. Webb tasked surveillance teams to systematically search the region.
Someone found this stretch of road. Or someone simply sat on every fire road and forest access point in the region and waited with the patience of people whose employer pays well for results and doesn't penalize time spent.
The cold vehicle fires its engine the moment the SUV passes the intersection and falls into position behind Roman at a distance that's too consistent to be coincidental and too precise to be civilian.
"Kane." My voice comes out sharp. Clipped. The humor evaporates the way it does when something on my screens crosses from anomaly to threat. "We have a tail on the inbound vehicle. Second car, fire road intersection on the mountain approach. Was static, just went mobile. Two occupants, possible mobile surveillance rig in the trunk."
Kane is beside me before the sentence finishes, his eyes on the feed with the focused intensity of a man whose operational instincts never fully disengage.
"Victoria, you have company." Kane's voice on the comm is steady. Level. The voice he uses when the situation requires precision rather than volume. "Second vehicle, your six, half mile, no lights. Confirm you're aware."
Victoria's voice comes back with the unflustered composure of a woman who has been followed by professionals on four continents. "Aware. Roman spotted them when they pulled out. Committee mobile unit. They've been staking out the road network in the region, watching for activity on the mountain approaches."
"Status?"
"Manageable. I need your approach corridor clear in ninety seconds and the barriers open on my signal rather than the scheduled code. We're going to come in fast."
My fingers are already moving, reprogramming the barrier sequence from scheduled to manual, overriding the timed approach protocol I designed for exactly this kind of contingency. The barriers are hydraulic, embedded in the road behind natural rock formations, and they can open in under three seconds when I bypass the standard verification cycle.
On the feed, the SUV accelerates. Roman knows these roads, and the acceleration is smooth and controlled, the vehicle cornering through the forest curves with the practiced confidence of someone who has run this route at speed before. The pursuing vehicle matches, and on the thermal overlay I watch both sets of heat signatures push through the switchbacks that guard the last mile of approach.
"Dylan, Stryker, physical positions on the approach corridor. We may have unwanted visitors." Kane's orders are calm. Each word landing with the weight of a man who has given these orders before and expects them followed.
"Copy." Dylan's voice. Flat. The sound of a man picking up his rifle.
"Copy." Stryker.
