Page 70 of Echo: Burn
And somewhere in that narrow window, we have to find a way to stop the Committee before they deploy chemical weapons against the most protected event in America.
The odds are terrible. The risk is catastrophic. The chances of success are minimal at best.
But we're going to try anyway.
Because that's what you do when the alternative is watching thousands of people die.
You fight. You plan. You execute.
And you pray that when the smoke clears, you're still standing.
I must have dozed off because Kane's urgent voice wakes me. "Willa. We've got a problem."
I sit up, instantly alert despite the exhaustion still pulling at me. We've been asleep for maybe three hours.
"What kind of problem?"
"Tommy just intercepted Committee communications." His face is grim in the low light, already pulling on his tactical vest. "They're accelerating the timeline. The attack on the capitol won’t be in seventy hours."
My stomach drops. "How long?"
"Forty-eight hours." He's reaching for his weapons now, movements sharp with urgency. "They're moving the main weapons shipment to DC tonight. If we're going to stop this, we need to hit that Whitefish facility now. Not in Six hours. Now."
Forty-eight hours.
Two days.
The mission just became a race against a clock we can't afford to lose.
15
KANE
Countdown: 60 Hours
Tommy's voice cuts through the operations center chaos. "Kane, I need you to look at this."
I'm at his console in three strides, Willa right behind me. The rest of the team clusters around—Stryker, Mercer, Rourke, even Khalid. Everyone knows what's at stake.
"The intercept I got earlier—about the timeline acceleration?" Tommy's fingers fly across keys, pulling up the original transmission alongside new data. "I was reading it wrong. They're moving weapons tonight, yes. But the deployment window is still sixty hours out. They're staging early to avoid detection."
Relief hits first, then frustration on its heels. Not forty-eight hours. Sixty. Still not much, but enough to plan properly instead of rushing in blind.
"So we have time," Willa says.
"We need to get prepped and move out," I correct. "The Committee could already be sanitizing the Whitefish facility. Every hour we wait is evidence we lose."
Karina spreads detailed schematics across the table—facility layouts, security protocols, guard rotations. The level of detail is impressive. And damning.
"The facility is built into an old mining operation," she explains. "Main production lab is underground, accessible through what looks like a standard industrial warehouse. Security is layered—perimeter guards, internal checkpoints, biometric access controls."
"How many hostiles?" Stryker asks.
"Twelve on normal rotation. But they've been reinforcing since Protocol Seven activated. Probably twenty now, maybe more." Karina traces a route with her finger. "This is your best approach—service entrance on the north side. Less visible, fewer cameras. But you'll need to bypass the biometric lock."
"Tommy can handle that remotely," I say. "What about inside?"
"Three levels. Warehouse on ground level is just cover—legitimate shipping and receiving to maintain the facade. Real work happens on sub-level one—synthesis labs, storage, quality control. Sub-level two is executive offices and secure data storage. That's where you'll find documentation of what they produced and where it went."
