Page 448 of Scars of Fate

Judges.

Private contractors.

Men and women who had accepted money to bury massacres, authorize illegal operations, manipulate elections, and turn civilians into weapons.

By the following morning, warrants had been issued in four countries.

Arrests followed.

Some members of Meridian ran.

Others attempted to erase their records.

A few denied everything.

It didn’t matter.

The evidence survived.

Payment records.

Operational orders.

Biological inventories.

Recorded conferences.

The original commands that had sent Ghost’s team to silence Dr. Arslan.

The truth survived.

Fate didn’t.

I stood beside the window of a private hospital room outside Geneva and watched snow fall over the mountains.

For the first time in days, no one was shooting at us.

No timer counted down.

No biological unit waited beneath a city.

No voice threatened Lucas through a radio.

Behind me, he slept.

The doctors had removed two pieces of metal from his shoulder and closed a wound along his side that he hadn’t bothered mentioning until he collapsed beside the aircraft.

He had carried me away from a helicopter wreck with shrapnel buried in his body.

Because of course he had.

My thigh had required twelve stitches.

The cut near my hairline needed six.

Compared to everyone else, I had been lucky.

Elena survived.