Chapter 39

Rain slashed sideways across the summit compound as the storm hit in full. Thunder rolled in overlapping waves, loud enough to shake the windows in their frames. The halls buzzed with more than weather—the kind of static that comes when people sense a change in the air but don’t yet know its shape. Conversations dipped to whispers. Doors shut faster. Everyone moved like they were trying not to be seen.

An emergency meeting was called just after dawn. Beta stood at the front of the operations room, the walls humming with tension as the council filtered in. Most of them still looked half-asleep. No one asked questions. They could feel the gravity. Not just the literal storm, but something larger—coiled, waiting, inevitable.

“Two masked figures approached the west perimeter fence last night,” Nathan said, clicking through grainy surveillance footage. “They didn’t get through. But this wasn’t a random test.”

The image on screen was jerky and obscured by rain, but the shapes were clear—two shadows slicing across the landscape, purposeful in their movements. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t run. They reached the electrified fence and stalled, standing just far enough back to avoid triggering a full alert. A moment later, they retreated into the storm.

“They wanted us to see them,” Beta continued. “This was intimidation.”

A quiet murmur rippled through the room, but I wasn’t listening to the reaction. I’d already turned to Emma, and we were moving. The footage looped again in a quieter side room as we sat shoulder to shoulder at the monitor, scrubbing through frame by frame.

“Right here,” I said, pointing as one figure twisted slightly, weight shifting onto his left leg. “There. Zoom in.”

Emma did, and even though the resolution was a mess, my stomach dropped. The limp wasn’t dramatic, but it was familiar.

Jason.

He’d once called it a badge of honor, bragging about how he’d gotten it in a bar fight that he “won” with a broken glass and a broken femur. It had become part of his walk, part of his swagger. It hadn’t been impressive then. It was infuriating now. I remembered him chuckling over drinks, acting like the pain made him more interesting, more dangerous. That same limp was now tied to something far darker.

I pulled up the internal logs, highlighted the timestamp, and cross-referenced Jason’s keycard activity. Just as I thought—he wasn’t on duty. But he had access. Too much access.

“I need Nathan,” I said, already rising.

Nathan didn’t hesitate. Jason was pulled into a closed-door meeting and never reemerged. By noon, he was removed from his post. No ceremony. No debate. Just gone. But the fallout lingered—people whispered, glanced over their shoulders. One less mask, but too many still in play.

The council meeting later that day was more crowded than usual. People packed in elbow to elbow, the room thick with tension and the smell of rain-damp wool. The air inside felt electric, charged by a mix of suspicion and dread. Richard stood at the front, shoulders squared, Nathan and Emma flanking him like shields. I took my place beside them, my pulse steady even as eyes turned to me.

We began with the metadata—system logs, digital breadcrumbs, a timeline that painted a picture no one wanted to see. I laid it out cleanly, clearly, with the kind of precision that didn’t invite rebuttal. This was no theory. It was a story written in ones and zeroes.

“Server access logs,” I said, tapping the projected file tree, “show consistent pings from a subnet registered to a front company owned by David’s finance manager. We didn’t touch the files—we traced them. This is what’s been leaking.”

Murmurs turned into quiet curses. A few Alphas leaned in, their expressions shifting from skepticism to discomfort. One elder whispered to another, the corners of his mouth tightening with worry.

David stood, every movement of his body slow, deliberate. “This is slander,” he said, voice rising with practiced outrage. “Manipulated data. Fabricated nonsense from a camp that’s losing ground.”

I didn’t flinch. “If you’re so confident,” I said, my voice steady but sharp, “release your internal comm logs.”

He stared at me, a beat too long. His hands curled slightly at his sides.

Then he turned and left. No fanfare. No rebuttal. Just the heavy slam of the chamber door as the silence swallowed everything he left behind.

The silence that followed was volcanic.

Back in the strategy room, I spread out the latest folder Richard had brought. The fire crackled in the corner, the warmth completely at odds with the chaos we were sorting through. Coded messages, fragmented reports, half-legible scrawl from intercepted field notes.

Again and again, the same phrase: Echo Sector—Phase Four.

My spine prickled. I reached for the folder we’d archived from Sector Delta, flipping through until I found the map fragment. There it was—bottom right corner, almost erased by time. Same words.

“We’ve been looking in the wrong place,” I said, pushing the pieces together. “It’s not about what happened. It’s about what was supposed to happen next.”

The phrase wasn’t a memory.

It was a plan.

And it was still in motion.

Richard leaned over my shoulder. “This might be bigger than anything we’ve thought.”

I looked up at him. “Then we need to make it louder.”

“I think it’s time we stop hiding,” I said later, as Richard joined me on the balcony outside the strategy room. Rain pelted the glass. The city below flickered with lightning.

He studied me for a moment. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “If we wait, we lose the narrative. And if we lose the narrative, we lose the chance to protect people before they become collateral.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t need to. His trust was wordless and complete. But his gaze lingered, longer than it needed to. A question behind it. One he didn’t ask.

With his blessing, I called a press briefing. Last-minute. No spin. No time for it. The announcement sent tremors through the summit—there was no precedent for this kind of direct transparency. But we didn’t have the luxury of precedent anymore.

The forum chamber lights buzzed overhead as I stood beneath them, the board we’d once kept in secret now behind me in full display—maps, strings, photos, documents. The investigation laid bare.

I walked them through it all.

The photo of my mother. The Clearwater name. The tampered drafts. The spyware. The surveillance. The war records. The threats. The disappearances. The map. The words that kept coming back—Echo Sector.

It was the first time I’d ever spoken her name in front of a crowd.

“Elena Clearwater was more than a medic,” I said. “She was a witness. And for that, someone made her disappear.”

You could’ve heard a pin drop.

When I finished, I let the silence hang. I didn’t fill it. I let them sit in the weight of it, because they needed to. Because I needed them to feel how heavy truth can be.

Then Richard stepped forward.

“We stand for truth,” he said, voice firm. “Even when it’s dangerous. Especially then.”

Flashbulbs burst. Reporters scrawled furiously. I could see the shift begin—eyes changing, postures adjusting. Some of them were still unsure. But some of them believed.

We walked offstage together, side by side.

Just before the corridor split, Richard slowed.

“There’s no turning back now,” he murmured.

I stopped, turned to face him.

“Good,” I said. “I’m tired of hiding.”

We stood there for a moment longer, close enough to feel the electricity in the air—not just from the storm. Something had shifted. Not in the room. Not on the board, between us.