Chapter 7 - The Frequency in the Static
"They torched the server banks," Hayes muttered, lowering his tablet as the data feed flickered out into a sea of dead pixels. "Controlled detonation inside the primary cargo hold. Someone on that ship had remote-access override."
"Not someone," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper as the chilling reality of Elena’s signature washed over me. "Elena. She always carried a thermal-charge trigger in her transit pack. If she couldn't protect the data, she vaporized it."
Director Vance turned to me, his eyes burning with an intense, complicated mix of suspicion and old grief. "If your sister is still alive, Miller, that means the entire operation we’ve been running for the last thirty-six months has been a controlled burn. She didn't defect. She didn't get compromised. She built a rival network right underneath our noses."
"She wouldn't do that without a reason," I fired back, stepping directly into his personal space, ignoring the shocked gasps of the junior officers standing nearby. "Elena didn't give a damn about corporate syndicates or Pentagon politics unless something much bigger was pointed at her head. What else is in that manifest, Vance? What didn't you read out loud?"
Vance hesitated. For a fraction of a second, the iron-clad facade of the Joint Oversight Director cracked, revealing the tired, haunted man beneath the tailored charcoal suit.
He didn't answer with words. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small, heavily encrypted thumb drive encased in titanium housing, and pressed it firmly into my palm.
"That was recovered from the physical safe inside Blackwood’s private quarters three minutes before we landed," Vance said quietly. "It contains an audio log recorded less than six hours ago. Listen to it in the chopper on the way back to Washington."
Before I could plug the drive into my tactical interface, the secure radio clipped to Hayes’s shoulder erupted in a frantic burst of static and encrypted chatter.
“Reaper Actual, this is Overwatch One. We have an intercept on an unsecured microwave frequency originating from the ruins of the scuttled vessel. It’s a targeted broadcast. Encrypted with a private military-grade handshake used only by... boss, you need to hear this.”
Hayes brought the radio closer to his ear. "Put it on speaker."
The static hissed, cleared for a split second, and then a voice drifted across the parade ground.
It was a woman’s voice. Cool, calm, and carrying an unmistakable, razor-sharp cadence that I hadn't heard in three agonizing years.
May you like
"Hello, little sister," Elena’s voice whispered through the comms. "If you're hearing this, it means Marcus Blackwood was too stupid to keep his mouth shut, and Alan Vance brought his little show to Camp Pendleton. Drop your weapons, turn around, and walk away from the base. Because if you follow me into the deep water... you won't like what you find at the bottom."
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