Page 374 of Broken Oath

Something in his tone sharpened every instinct I possessed.

“Go ahead.”

“I have a problem.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough that you need to hear it before you land.”

Fathom stopped working.

Everyone in the helicopter turned toward the radio.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Someone started scrubbing Black Site Theta from every government database we accessed.”

The cabin went silent.

“Explain.”

“Personnel files are gone. Mission records. Financial authorizations. Transfer orders. Flight logs. Every official reference to the site is being erased.”

Fathom began checking his remote connections.

“When did it start?”

“Seventeen minutes ago,” Sam answered. “Right after the prison wing fell.”

Exactly when Madow lost control.

Exactly when someone realized Project Nightfall had been exposed.

Fathom’s fingers raced across the keyboard.

“He’s right. The original files are disappearing.”

“Can you stop it?” I asked.

“No.”

The answer came too quickly.

Fathom hated saying it.

“I can preserve our copies, but whoever is doing this has access above the intelligence directorate. They’re deleting records from multiple systems simultaneously.”

Above Madow.

That was the part that mattered.

Sarah turned toward the other helicopter.

“Madow knew.”

“So did Reeves,” Wade said.

Reeves stared at the floor.