Page 568 of Lodestar

Star,

We’ve never had the opportunity to meet but I know you’ve been fighting the Sparrows for longer than I have, and seeing as I know my time is near, I figure I should pass the baton onto you.

We’re both fighters in this hidden war and I salute you for your sacrifices. That’s how the Sparrows get you—by those sacrifices—and I can’t imagine what you’vehad to endure because what they did to me was hell.Living hell.

I truly wish you well in your fight and I hope you won’t stop until they’re no more. Until we’re free from their taint. Because wherever they establish a nest, they poison paradise.

To help, Rex, my boy, should have shown you the motel room I’ve been working out of. Everything I know about the Sparrows is in there, and I hope it can be of some use to you.

But there’s info that isn’t safe to be left in that room.

I first came across a second secret society called the ‘United Brotherhood’ via a woman who went by the name Temperance Black. She approached me and offered me intel.

My case against the Sparrows had stalled. I’d bought this docket of information from a dark website nine or so months before, managed to get hacked in the process, and lost the docket as well as everything I’d uncovered about the NWS over the years.

(After that, I took printouts of everything. That’s what you’ll find in my motel room.)

So, by that point, I was depressed as well as desperate for anything that’d help me move forward with my investigation, and I dove in too deep.

Looking back, she promised me the earth, and, in some instances, she gave it to me.

But everything comes with a price.

I trusted her.

I was a fool to do so.

If you ever meet her, back the fuck away.

She’s one of them.

The United Brotherhood is as corrupt as the New World Sparrows. When I uncovered details about the leaders—a bunch of amoral motherfuckers I’ve yet to have the misfortune of researching, by the way—it was purely by chance.

I didn’t know who they were, and when I approached Temper about them, she was quick to reassure me that they’re the ‘good guys.’

They’re not.

I realized where I’d heard one of the names from—Kuznetsov. Whispers abound of this asshole close to the border with Mexico—the shit he deals in makes me wish the Sparrows weremorepowerful than the Brotherhood.

Organ harvesting, fentanyl-running, child exploitation, arms-dealing (and we’re not talking AKs here, but uranium, for God’s sake,) you name it, he’s got his hands in that pie.

The more I investigated Kuznetsov, the more I uncovered the links between the Sparrows and the Brotherhood.

They might be separate entities, just like two siblings are, but they’re from the same family.

That was when I knew I didn’t have long left.

Temper was supportive when I was working to take down the Sparrows, but after what would become our final meeting, I knew I’d pushed things too far.

There’s a Sinner who’s like a son to me. Name’s Maverick. I know you know him. He served in a battle in Kembesh. I believe you were also deployed there at the time.

I happened to uncover intel from a veteran who was living on the streets in Houston who claimed‘someone’ had paid him to help them ambush a fleet of Chinooks that would have been pivotal in the battle.

At first, I thought it was bullshit. Then, I asked him who that ‘someone’ was. The name Black is a common one, but fuck if it didn’t make me look at her differently.

I asked her if she was behind the lack of medical support in that battle which had taken too many of our men, and I knew itwasher no matter if she denied it.

Because I didn’t feel like dying, I pretended to accept her bullshit story.

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