Page 12 of Echo: Line
Medical supplies scattered on the kitchen table. Field dressings, still in packaging. Butterfly bandages. Bottle of antibiotics with no label. Whoever was here tried to treat significant injuries and did it recently.
The blood trail continues across the floor, disappears behind a half-open door.
"Mercer! I'm armed and I will shoot if you make a threatening move!"
Still nothing.
I move forward, every nerve screaming that this is wrong, that I should pull back and wait for tactical. But I'm here now, weapon ready, and if Mercer's as injured as the blood trail suggests, he's not a threat.
The bedroom door swings open under my touch.
He's collapsed against the far wall, wedged between a dresser and the window like he was trying to reach the glass and didn't make it. Blood soaks his shirt on the left side, dark and wet. His face is pale, haggard, carved with pain and exhaustion. There's a pistol in his right hand, but it's pointed at the floor, and his grip looks weak.
Our eyes meet.
Time does something strange. Stretches. Condenses. I'm suddenly hyperaware of everything—the way his chest rises and falls too fast, the tremor in his hands, the dried bloodon his knuckles. The absolute intelligence in his gaze despite the physical wreckage of his body. He's calculating, assessing, running the same threat evaluation I am, and doing it while barely conscious.
The surveillance photos didn't capture this. Couldn't capture it. The sheer presence of him, the discipline evident even in extremis. This isn't a terrorist. Every instinct I've honed over eight years of profiling screams that this man is what his psych evals said—a soldier with a moral compass that wouldn't bend when someone tried to break it.
"FBI," I say, because I have to say something. "Put the weapon down."
He looks at my Glock, then back to my face. He's reading me the same way I'm reading him. Looking for tells, for intention, for whether I'm here to arrest or execute.
"You're Agent Ward." His voice is rough, damaged. Like he's been screaming or hasn't had water in days. "They sent you to arrest me. To legitimize my murder."
His statement crashes through me like ice water. "I'm here to bring you into custody. You'll get due process, a lawyer?—"
"No." He shifts, and pain flashes across his face. The gun wavers but doesn't drop. "I was in Committee custody four days. Interrogation. Drugs. Kessler told me about you. Said you'd be the one to find me. Said it would be clean, legal, everything on camera."
Committee. The word means nothing to me, but the way he says it—like a curse, like something that should be obvious—sends ice down my spine.
"I don't know what you're talking about." But my voice lacks conviction even to my own ears.
"You're being used." He's struggling to stay conscious, words slurring at the edges. "They're going to stage my arrest. Tactical team kills me resisting. You become the face of asuccessful operation against domestic terrorism. Echo Ridge gets discredited. Everyone wins except the truth."
The truth. My father used to talk about truth like it was optional, like facts were just another tool to be manipulated. I spent sixteen years believing his version of truth before Internal Affairs showed me the reality.
"You're a fugitive facing federal charges," I say, but the words taste wrong. "I have a duty?—"
"To what? Orders you don't believe? I saw your face when you looked at me." His gaze holds mine, and there's something there beyond the pain, beyond the calculation. Recognition. "You don't think I'm a terrorist. Your instincts are screaming that this is wrong. So why are you still pointing that gun at me?"
Because it's my job. Because Patterson ordered it. Because following orders is what separates law enforcement from vigilantes.
Because I'm terrified he's right.
The gun in his hand finally drops to the floor. The gesture is deliberate, conscious—a choice, not surrender from weakness. "I'm not going to shoot an FBI agent," he says. "Even one being used to kill me. You want to arrest me, go ahead. But they won't let me make it to trial."
I should call it in. Radio the tactical team, get Mercer secured, let the system work the way it's supposed to work. That's what good agents do. What my father never did.
"How did you escape?"
"Waited for shift change. Generator test. Ninety-second window when the locks cycled and the cameras rebooted." He breathes through obvious pain. "Barely made it out. Found this place because it was the closest structure to the facility. Figured I had maybe six hours before they found me." He looks at me again. "Looks like I was right. This was set up."
"Where's the facility you escaped from?"
"North. Maybe ten miles. Black site, off-book. You won't find it in any federal database." He shifts against the wall, and fresh blood seeps through his shirt. "I need you to understand something. I'm not your enemy. The people who sent you here are."
The statement hangs in the small room. Outside, wind rattles the window frame. My finger is still on the Glock's trigger, but the barrel has dropped slightly. Everything about this feels like a choice—lower the weapon completely and believe him, or raise it again and do my job.
