Page 4 of Echo: Spark
Tommy snorts without looking up. “Lucky for you, I only resuscitate code.”
The gallows humor settles the cab, a pressure valve hissing open. Stryker’s eyes clear another shade. We’re alive, moving, and—God help us—together.
I take a turn hard, tires protesting against physics and frozen asphalt. Another road, another mile between us and Brennan’s guns, each second of distance buying us time to breathe, to regroup, to cling to the fragile promise of survival. My chest expands full for the first time in six months, lungs finding room for air that tastes like freedom. Not from the adrenaline or the successful extraction, but from something simpler and more essential, something that had been dying in the warehouse's sterile security.
Purpose.
The warehouse had been survival, existence measured in heartbeats and empty days. This—Stryker alive in the back, Tommy's terrified but breathing presence, the weight of decision and consequence—this is living. The difference has the distinctive metallic taste of copper, familiar as coming home to a place I'd forgotten I was looking for.
"Where we going?" Stryker asks, voice carrying curiosity instead of fear, trust instead of doubt.
"Echo Base. My place."
"Secure?"
"As it gets." My voice carries conviction earned through six months of paranoid preparation.
Stryker laughs, the sound rusty but real, like machinery finding its rhythm after long disuse. "Been a while since I had a roof that wasn't trying to fall on me."
We drive through the Montana night, three burned operators in a truck held together by primer and determination, brotherhood and the refusal to abandon our own. Behind us, Brennan's operation collapses into chaos, professional mercenaries suddenly without a target, reduced to explaining to wealthy clients how two million dollars bought them nothing but embarrassment. Ahead, the warehouse waits, about to transform from my fortress of solitude into something else entirely, something that involves other heartbeats, other voices, other souls marked by the same wars.
Tommy tilts his screen so only I can see. County bands have been noisy—two separate calls flagged a ‘chemical odor’ complaint from a rural vet clinic east of town. He already stood up a geofence on the clinic and the vet’s truck, with a ping to my satphone if either trips. I file the name without comment and drive on.
Something that feels dangerously close to hope.
2
COLTON STRYKER
Eyes crack open to fluorescent hell. The lights hanging from Kane's warehouse ceiling burn through my skull like white phosphorus, each pulse of my heartbeat a hammer against bone. My tongue feels like sandpaper soaked in battery acid, and every breath tastes of rust and regret. The familiar taste of shame and Jack Daniel's coats my mouth—morning's first reminder that I'm still breathing when better men aren't.
The cot beneath me is military surplus, thin mattress over a metal frame. Same kind we used in Kandahar, the same kind I've woken up on in a dozen different countries where nobody cared whether you lived or died. My body knows the feel, even through the haze of whatever the hell I drank last night. Everything hurts. Ribs from where Brennan's boys worked me over during that disaster in Whitefish. Knuckles from fighting back, though I can barely remember connecting. But mostly it's the poison in my blood, alcohol withdrawal starting its familiar dance with trembling fingers and cold sweats.
I push up slowly, vertebrae popping like rifle shots. The world tilts, steadies, tilts again like I'm on the deck of a ship in rough seas. My hands shake as I plant them on my knees,scarred knuckles white with the effort of staying upright. The warehouse spreads out before me in painful clarity, each detail sharp enough to cut.
Kane's built himself a fortress.
Weapons racks line the north wall—rifles, sidearms, enough ordnance to outfit a platoon. Everything clean, organized by caliber and purpose. The kind of methodical arrangement that keeps a man sane when the world's trying to kill him. Surveillance monitors glow along another wall, showing multiple angles of approach. No blind spots. Smart positioning. The man always was thorough.
Tactical maps cover an operational planning table like a military war room. Montana. Wyoming. Routes marked in different colors—red for primary escape routes, blue for supply runs, yellow for dead drops. Fallback positions. Supply caches. The work of a man who's accepted that running is just tactical repositioning. Above it all, a whiteboard covered in names, some crossed out in red marker, others circled in blue. A war room for battles that never end.
My throat feels like I've been gargling gravel for a week. When did I last have water that wasn't mixed with whiskey? The question hangs in my mind, unanswered because I genuinely can't remember.
"Coffee."
Kane sets a mug beside me, the ceramic warm against the metal table. Steam rises, bitter and black as my current outlook on life. No sugar, no cream, no mercy. Exactly what I need. He pulls out a chair, sits across from me with his own mug, movements careful and deliberate. His eyes are steady, assessing. Not judging—Kane's never been one for that—but measuring. Seeing if there's anything left worth salvaging from the wreckage I've made of myself.
"Mosul makes us even." His voice is quiet, matter-of-fact. "What you did in Kinshasa—executing that Belgian bastard for using kids—that's something else entirely."
The coffee burns going down like liquid fire. Good. I need the pain, the heat, something real to focus on besides the memory of Van Der Berg's eyes when I put the Sig against his temple. Surprised. Like he couldn't believe someone would actually hold him accountable for the children in his cobalt mines. Like he thought money could wash the blood off his hands.
"Should've walked away," I manage, voice like I've been eating glass and asking for seconds.
"But you didn't." Kane leans back, still watching me with those calculating eyes. "You could have taken the extraction fee. Two hundred grand for looking the other way while he relocated to another operation. Instead, you painted his office with his brains and executed his entire security detail."
"They knew." The words come out flat, emotionless. "Every one of them knew about the kids. Stood guard while eight-year-olds dug cobalt sixteen hours a day. Beat them when they slowed down. Fed them just enough to keep them working."
"That's my point." Kane's fingers drum once on the table, then still. Military discipline. "You put a bullet in him because it was right. Not smart, not profitable, but right. That's the kind of man I need." His tone doesn’t rise, doesn’t harden. He speaks like he’s briefing a mission—steady, disciplined, no wasted words.
