Page 291 of Scars of Fate

“I don’t take orders from Kane.”

“Everyone takes orders from someone.”

“Not me.”

“Then why are your operatives trapped three stories beneath Geneva while Kane hides inside a secure command center?”

Minser stopped.

There.

He hadn’t considered it.

“General Kane is protected,” I continued. “Your people are underground with a biological weapon. You think you’re partners? You’re disposable.”

“I built Fate.”

“And Kane controls Meridian.”

“No one controls Meridian.”

“Then why is your name marked for termination inside the encrypted data?”

That was a lie.

I had never opened the Fate directory.

Minser didn’t know that.

His face changed.

Only slightly.

But enough.

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?”

“You never decrypted the drive.”

“You think Ghost trusted the entire encryption sequence to one piece of metal?”

Behind me, Ghost went still.

Lucas glanced toward him.

Minser’s confidence faltered.

The false colonel might have taken the tag, but Minser didn’t know whether we had already copied what it contained.

“What did you see?” he demanded.

Hawk raised two fingers.

Two alarm systems accessed.

Almost there.