Page 46 of Keeper of Talon Mountain
"Bed or couch?"
"Couch. I don't want to be alone in a room if the nightmares come."
She doesn't argue, just pulls a blanket from the closet and spreads it over the couch cushions. I collapse onto it, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. The adrenaline that's been carrying me has burned out completely, leaving only the bone-deep fatigue of survival.
Mara settles into the chair across from me, her own mug of coffee cradled in both hands. "I'll be right here. If you need anything, just say."
"Stay," I manage before exhaustion pulls me under. "Just stay."
I wake to afternoon light slanting through the windows and the smell of something cooking. Mara's in the kitchen, her back to me as she stirs something on the stove. The rifle's gone from the corner—probably locked back in its case where it belongs. Normal is slowly reassembling itself from the fragments of chaos.
My phone shows three missed calls from Sarah and a text:
FBI wants to interview you. I bought you 48 hours. Rest first, then we'll figure out the debrief.
Forty-eight hours. Two days to process everything that's happened, to decide how much of the truth I want to share with federal investigators. The Committee's exposed, but there are still classified operations, still secrets that could get people killed if they became public.
"You're awake." Mara turns, a slight smile softening her face. "How do you feel?"
"Like I got hit by a truck, dragged behind it for a mile, then asked to run a marathon."
"So, normal post-adrenaline crash. Good." She ladles soup into bowls—vegetable beef from a can, nothing fancy. "You need food. Real food. Not just coffee."
The soup tastes better than it has any right to. I eat mechanically at first, then with more awareness as my body wakes up to the fact that it's been running on empty for too long.
Halfway through the bowl, it hits—a memory fragment so vivid it stops my spoon mid-motion.
A kitchen. Different from this one, smaller, warmer somehow. A woman with grey hair and kind eyes, flour dusting her hands. Sarah younger, maybe sixteen, watching intently as the woman demonstrates something. "Patience," the woman says. "That's the secret to good soup. You can't rush it." Her eyes find mine across the room.
"Gabe?" Mara's voice pulls me back. "What is it?"
"Memory. My grandmother's kitchen. She was teaching Sarah to cook." I press my palm against my forehead. "It just came. Clear as anything."
"That's good, right? A sign your brain is starting to let go?"
"Maybe." The fragment sits strangely in my mind, familiar but foreign. A piece of someone else's life that's somehow mine. "It doesn't feel like my memory. Feels like watching someone else's home movie."
"Give it time. The more memories that come back, the more they'll feel like yours."
I finish the soup in silence, processing the memory and what it means. My grandmother existed. Sarah had a life with her that included me. There's a history there, relationships and moments that shaped who I became, all of it locked behind walls I built to protect information that's now public anyway.
My phone buzzes. News alert:BREAKING: Federal Raids Target Covert Operations Group. Multiple Arrests.
I show it to Mara. She reads it, then looks up at me. "It's really over. The Committee, Crane, all of it."
"The immediate threat is. But Sarah's right—this isn't finished. There will be trials, testimony, people looking for revenge or trying to cover their own involvement. We bought ourselves time and safety, but we didn't end the war."
"Then what did we do?"
"Survived." The word feels inadequate but true. "We survived when they wanted us dead. Everything else comes after that."
Later, after the sun sets and the lodge settles into evening quiet, Mara and I sit on the couch with coffee and silence and the weight of everything that's happened. The fire crackles in the hearth, orange light dancing across the walls.
"What happens now?" she asks.
"FBI debrief in two days. After that..." I trail off. The future stretches out, uncertain but possible. "I don't know. Depends on what they want from me, what charges they might bring, whether the amnesia complicates legal proceedings."
"And if they don't charge you? If this actually ends with you walking away free?"
