Page 9 of Echo: Spark
The thought terrifies me more than any assassination team ever could.
Sarah stirs against me, her voice barely audible above the whisper of wind through pine boughs. "The list... there are others. More operators in immediate danger. You have weeks before they're eliminated."
‘You’ instead of ‘we,’ she knows her injuries are serious.
"We'll find them," Kane says with quiet certainty that suggests he's already operational planning three moves ahead.
I adjust my grip on Sarah, feeling her blood warm and sticky on my hands, life leaking away one drop at a time. Behind us, smoke rises from what used to be my perfect defensive position, a pillar of destruction marking the end of one chapter. Ahead lies uncertainty and danger and the possibility of answers that might justify the risks we're taking.
For the first time in eight months, I'm moving toward something instead of away from it.
The vehicle cache appears through the trees exactly where I left it—an old Forest Service maintenance shed I appropriated months ago, hidden among dozens of similar structures scattered across the wilderness. Inside, a beat-up Toyota Land Cruiser with stolen plates and enough supplies for a week off-grid. Military rations, medical supplies, ammunition, communications gear. Everything needed for extended operations in hostile territory.
I ease Sarah into the back seat with infinite care, noting how her skin is pale beneath layers of dirt and dried blood. Shock is setting in and her, body temperature dropping despite the warm morning. She needs IV fluids, antibiotics, possibly surgery if the shoulder wound has damaged major vessels.
"Drive," I tell Kane, tossing him the keys while sliding into the back beside Sarah. "I need to keep direct pressure on this wound, try to stabilize her for transport."
We pull out onto a logging road as the sound of helicopters circles back toward the explosion site like angry hornets. In the distance, more vehicles approaching—reinforcements that will find nothing but scorched earth and ghost trails leading nowhere useful.
Sarah's hand finds mine with surprising strength, weak but insistent. "The intelligence... it's all backed up. Multiple secure locations." Her eyes flutter, fighting to stay conscious as shock battles determination. "They won't stop hunting us. None of us are safe alone anymore."
I meet Kane's eyes in the rearview mirror, seeing my own grim understanding reflected there. We both know what she's not saying directly—together, we're just a bigger target, easier to track, more vulnerable to coordinated assault. But at least we'll see the bullet coming. At least we'll have a chance to fight back as a unit instead of being picked off one by one.
The cab goes quiet except for the heater’s tired rattle. I taste iron at the back of my throat as I realize with a jolt that the idea of choosing a unit again scares me more than any kill team. Trust is a cliff. You don’t ease over the edge—you jump and pray the fall is short. Sarah shifts against me, breath catching, and my decision stops being theoretical.
The Land Cruiser disappears into the Montana wilderness, four damaged souls running from a war we didn't start but might be the only ones capable of finishing. My cabin burns behind us like a funeral pyre, eight months of solitary preparation reduced to ash and memory. But Sarah's blood on my hands feels like possibility, like purpose beyond mere survival.
Like the first honest mission I've had since Syria, when I chose conscience over career and painted a target on my back that will never fade.
The mountain road stretches ahead, winding through wilderness that suddenly feels less like a sanctuary and more like a battlefield. Behind us, the sound of helicopters fades into the distance. Ahead, uncertainty and alliance and the slim chance that together we might actually survive what's coming. The thought claws at me worse than any kill team. I know how to fight enemies. I don’t know how to fight the part of me that wants to believe in them.
For better or worse, I’m no longer alone.
4
DYLAN ROURKE
The warehouse door feels heavier than it should as my scarred fingers close around the cold steel handle. The air inside smells faintly of machine oil and an old cigarette someone thinks they can hide. It makes my teeth ache the way memory can, bitter and metallic.
Maybe it’s because I know what’s waiting inside—men who would shoot me on sight, men whose names I’ve memorized from Committee kill lists. My shadow falls across the threshold, all six-foot-four of me blocking the afternoon light that pours through the industrial windows.
Montana air tastes clean compared with the copper tang of blood and the acrid bite of cordite that have flavored my world for too many years. Beside me, Khalid shifts his weight with the quiet, precise grace of a predator, ready to move in whatever direction I give the nod. I taught him that in the bombed-out ruins of Damascus, in the safe houses of Istanbul, and in a dozen places where hesitation cost people their lives.
Three weapons track to me instantly, barrels finding center mass with the smooth inevitability of professionals who've survived because they never give quarter to unknown variables. Professional positioning that speaks to hard-earned experience—Kane positioned at the tactical table with clear lines of fire and egress routes, Stryker stationed by the vehicles where he can control access and retreat, Mercer elevated on the metal stairs with the high ground advantage. They know exactly who I am through reputation and whispered horror stories. What I am. The Committee's enforcer. The interrogator who could break anyone without leaving marks. The one who made problems disappear into black sites and unmarked graves scattered across three continents.
My reputation precedes me like a toxic cloud. For years I let that cloud do the work. It kept men afraid, and questions shut. Tonight the fear in their eyes costs me nothing but it costs Khalid everything, and that stings sharper than any badge ever did.
In the special operations world, some names carry weight beyond rank or ribbons. Mine carries the weight of screams trapped in concrete cells, of families erased without explanation, of witnesses who discovered too late that certain secrets demand blood as their price. These men have heard the stories. The Committee's personal demon, unleashed on whoever threatened their carefully constructed empire of shadows and lies.
Khalid stays within arm's reach, his small frame coiled tight as a compressed spring. His dark eyes—too old for fifteen, aged by horrors that would break grown men—catalog every exit, every defensive position, every potential weapon within reach. The boy reads rooms like a thirty-year veteran analyzes battlefields, seeing angles and threats and opportunities where others see furniture and shadows. Fifteen years old and already more tactically aware than operators twice his age. My fault. My responsibility. The only good thing to come from all the blood that stains my hands, the single spark of light in fourteen years of shadow.
I move slowly and deliberately. Each step is calculated to telegraph non-hostile intent. No sudden movements thatmight trigger trained reflexes honed by years of kill-or-be-killed encounters. These aren't weekend warriors or desk jockeys playing soldier—they're apex predators who've survived because they shoot first and process intelligence from corpses later. The encrypted drive weighs nothing in my tactical jacket but feels like lead against my ribs, a digital gravestone for every innocent life Morrison's chemical weapons program has claimed.
Three steps to Kane's tactical table, each one measured and telegraphed like a formal dance between killers. The warehouse around us echoes with the weight of secrets and shared trauma, concrete walls that have witnessed the birth of something new—a brotherhood forged from betrayal and abandonment. Maps cover the table surface, marked with red zones and Committee assets, a spider web of conspiracy that spans continents.
The encrypted drive clicks against the metal table with the finality of dice thrown in a high-stakes game. Committee files. My voice stays controlled, neutral, stripped of emotion despite the chaos raging beneath the surface. Years of interrogation training have taught me to mask everything—rage, guilt, desperate hope. "Everything I could steal before they burned me for refusing to bury a war crime that would make Mengele proud."
Kane doesn't reach for the drive, smart enough to know that information this volatile comes with a price paid in blood. His weathered face remains impassive, but his eyes stay on me, calculating threat assessment versus potential intelligence value with the cold precision of a man who's learned that trust is a luxury that gets good people killed. I recognize the look—I've worn it myself too many times to count, weighing the worth of human assets against operational necessity.
