Page 16 of Echo: Spark
The passenger door rips open. A man rolls inside—controlled chaos of tactical gear and focused violence. Blood streams from a graze on his temple, painting half his face crimson. His eyes lock onto mine, clear and commanding despite the wound.
"Drive, now!" His voice cuts through Odin's barking. "They're Committee—same people hunting you and that dog."
The words hit like ice water. I spin the wheel hard left, tires fighting for purchase as more muzzle flashes light up my mirrors. Odin presses against the center console, teeth bared at the stranger bleeding in his seat.
"How do you...”
"Later. Take the next right. Kill your lights."
I obey without calculating, conditioned by a childhood spent following military commands. The truck plunges into the night, the faint glow of the instrument panels my only light as I navigate by instinct and prayer.
The words crash through me, more frightening than the gunfire—he’s been tracking me for days, not minutes. This wasn’t coincidence, it was surveillance stitched into my life before I noticed.
“We lost your phone at the pass when the signal died,” he adds, eyes never leaving the road. “I’ve been on your bumper since mile marker twelve. We geofenced your clinic and truck yesterday after two county calls about ‘chemical odor.’ When your route pinged the scanner and Odin alerted at the culvert, their tac-coms spiked. This was a killbox. You did the only right thing—kept moving.”
"Odin knows something," the stranger continues, pressing his sleeve against the head wound. "That compound where he alerted on chemical residue—it was a Committee storage facility. They can't risk what he might have detected."
My hands shake on the wheel. Three days ago, I was treating routine vaccines and broken legs. Then Odin arrived, abandoned at my clinic with burns and chemical exposure. His nose had gone crazy at the old industrial site during our morning walk. I'd called it in to the sheriff, thinking maybe it was a meth lab.
"Left here. Follow the drainage cut."
The truck drops into what might be a road or might be a frozen creek bed. I can't tell anymore. The man beside me moves with economy despite his injury, checking weapons, scanning our six through the rear window.
"What's your name?" I ask, needing something human to hold onto.
"Kane. Rhett Kane." He studies Odin with tactical assessment. "Belgian Malinois. Military working dog by the training."
"Someone dumped him at my clinic. Chemical burns, malnutrition. I couldn't just...”
"You couldn't euthanize him like they hoped." It's not a question. "Dr. Willa Hart. Former medical student, switched to veterinary medicine six years ago. Daughter of Gunnery Sergeant Michael Hart, Second Battalion, Sixth Marines. Crack shot with anything under thirty caliber."
The casual recitation of my life freezes my blood. "How...”
"Because they know too. That's why you're marked for termination." He points ahead. "Through those trees. There's a rock formation."
The passage he indicates doesn't look wide enough for a person, much less my truck. But I thread the needle, branches scraping paint as we squeeze between granite walls that suddenly open into a hidden space. A metal door appears in my headlights, built directly into the mountain.
Kane exits before I've fully stopped, moving to a concealed keypad. The door rolls up, revealing inky night beyond. He waves me forward.
The tunnel swallows us whole. Emergency lighting kicks on, illuminating carved rock walls that curve deeper into the mountain. The door seals behind us with finality that makes my chest tight.
"End of the line, Doc." Kane opens my door. "Welcome to the last safe place in Montana."
Odin leaps down, immediately going into working mode—nose down, quartering the space for threats. I follow on unsteady legs, my veterinary bag clutched like armor against whatever waits in the void of light.
The tunnel opens into a massive chamber carved from living rock. Military precision meets survivalist paranoia—weapons racks, communication gear, supplies stacked with obsessive organization. But it's the men who stop me cold.
For a second all the clinical training in my bones trades places with the small-town vet who fixed rabbits and spayed dogs. My scalp prickles. I am not ready to be remarkable, only ready to survive—and these men make survival look like a religion.
They materialize from shadows like violence given form. Each one radiates the same lethal competence as Kane, but with individual flavors of danger.
The closest studies me with eyes that have weighed too many people and found them wanting. Dark hair, scarred hands, the kind of stillness that precedes explosive movement. He doesn't introduce himself, just radiates assessments and calculation.
Another emerges from behind supply crates—wild around the edges, beard and hair gone feral, movements too quick and sharp like something caged too long. He watches me the way Odin watches unknown dogs, ready to attack or retreat based on invisible signals.
The third makes my skin crawl before I understand why. Handsome in a cold way, like a statue carved from winter. He stands protective near a teenager who shouldn't exist in this place—a boy with hollow eyes and careful hands.
"She saved my ass," Kane announces. "Drove through a Committee strike team."
