Chapter 38 - Dawn on the Potomac
We spilled out onto the damp, dew-kissed grass of West Potomac Park just as the first pale rays of sunrise broke over the horizon, painting the marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial in a brilliant, golden light.
A hundred yards away, the storm drain hatch hissed, venting a thick plume of gray smoke and sulfur into the morning air.
Marcus hauled the Director out of the hole, slamming him face-first onto the grass and slapping a pair of heavy steel zip-ties around his wrists with ruthless efficiency. The Director lay there coughing, his expensive Italian suit ruined, his face smeared with soot and dirt.
Sirens wailed in the distance across the Arlington Memorial Bridge as local police and federal emergency response units converged on the National Mall, drawn by the subterranean tremors and automated distress signals.
Chloe slumped against the marble base of a nearby park bench, clutching her terminal to her chest, her breathing heavy and ragged. "We... we did it," she whispered, staring at the flashing green indicator light on her screen. "The global sync is complete. There's no firewall left on Earth big enough to hide this."
I walked over to the Director, looking down at the man who had ordered my father's execution and engineered decades of shadow-state atrocities. He looked up at me, his eyes filled with a bitter, defeated hatred.
"You think you've won something, Commander," the Director rasped, spitting a fleck of blood onto the grass. "All you did was strip the armor off the nation. Without us, the wolves are at the door."
May you like
"Then we'll face the wolves in the sunlight," I said coldly, stepping over him just as the first flashing cruiser of the federal intervention force slid to a halt on Constitution Avenue.
We didn't run. We stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the grass, watching the blue and red emergency lights dance across the stone monuments of Washington, knowing that while the war was finally over, the world we were handing back to the public would never be the same again.
