Page 10 of Echo: Spark
"General David Morrison authorized chemical weapons testing on a Syrian village." The words taste like ash and sulfur, like the acrid smoke that still rises from Khalid's nightmares."Three hundred and forty-seven civilians used as test subjects for his delivery systems. Men, women, children—entire families burning from the inside out while Morrison's scientists took notes on dissolution rates and pain thresholds."
The temperature in the warehouse seems to drop ten degrees. I feel it in the way Stryker's casual stance shifts into something more predatory, the way Kane's jaw tightens with barely suppressed violence, the way Mercer's fingers drum against his weapon's stock. These men have done terrible things—we all have in service to flags and causes and the greater good—but there are lines carved in blood and conscience that separate soldiers from monsters. Children writhing in agony while their parents' skin sloughs off in sheets crosses every one of them.
"Khalid here watched his entire family die so Morrison could perfect his chemical cocktails." I keep my voice steady, professional, but inside something howls with rage that threatens to tear through fourteen years of emotional discipline. "He was supposed to die with them. Survived by hiding in a well while his village became a testing ground for weapons that violate every convention we've ever signed."
Mercer's hand drifts toward his sidearm with the casual inevitability of a man accustomed to solving problems with controlled violence. Slow, casual, but I track the movement with the automatic threat assessment of someone who's survived this long by never missing details. "You're the Committee's monster." Not a question—a statement of fact delivered with the flat certainty of someone who's heard the stories. "The one who made people disappear without a trace. The interrogator who could break anyone."
"Yes." The word comes out flat, empty of justification or apology. “I do the ugly work, not because I like it. Because someone had to, and I was stupid enough to answer.”
No point denying it or softening the truth with euphemisms and operational necessity. They've all heard the stories whispered in special operations circles, passed down like dark folklore among men who traffic in violence. The interrogator who could break anyone within hours, who never needed enhanced techniques because his reputation did half the work before he entered the room. The enforcer who never missed a target, who could make entire families vanish so completely that even their neighbors forgot they'd ever existed. The Committee's personal demon, unleashed on whoever threatened their carefully constructed empire of shadows and classified budgets. All true. Every bloody, soul-damning word.
The weight of those years presses down like lead blankets, each life taken, each scream extracted, each family destroyed in service to masters who viewed human beings as expendable resources. I've told myself it was necessary, that the greater good demanded sacrifices, that someone had to do the terrible work so others could sleep safely. But standing here, facing men who've been betrayed by those same masters, the justifications crumble into ash.
Khalid reads my tension through micro-movements I don't even realize I'm making—the slight shift in stance, the unconscious flexing of scarred fingers, the way my breathing changes when violence becomes a possibility. A slight adjustment brings him closer, protective despite the fact I'm the adult here, despite knowing these men could end us both without breaking stride. He's seen me fight in Ankara safe houses and Beirut back alleys, knows what I'm capable of when the leash comes off. But these men are different—operators like me, trained to the same lethal edge, shaped by the same unforgiving crucible.
"My wife and daughter died in a building the Committee bombed to eliminate witnesses to their Syrian operations. Youneed to understand, Morrison is the face of the operation, a name with departmental letterhead. The Committee is the machine. Morrison pulled a lever. The machine wanted silence and used him to get it.” I meet each suspicious gaze without flinching, letting them see the controlled madness that drives me. "Maya was eight. Loved horses and wanted to be a veterinarian. Lisa taught kindergarten, believed every child deserved a chance to dream."
The silence stretches like a wire under tension. These details matter—names and ages and dreams cut short transform statistics into human cost, abstractions into tragedies that demand accounting.
"I hunted down every man involved in their deaths. Took them apart piece by piece until they begged to die, until they told me everything about their families, their fears, their regrets." My scarred hands flex involuntarily, memories of violence that still wake me in cold sweats. "Then I went back to work for the people who ordered their murders."
Stryker's disgust is palpable, radiating off him like heat from a forge. His bloodshot eyes—damaged by too much alcohol and too many betrayals—narrow with something approaching contempt. "Why?"
I level a look at him. “Because if I did not do it, they would have kept killing people in the dark until there was nothing left to mourn.”
Stryker spits, “You do the math, I hate the numbers.”
He keeps his gun ready. I keep my hands steady. Different languages, same fight.
"Because they promised me targets. People who deserved what I did to them. Terrorists. Traffickers. Killers who preyed on innocents." The words taste bitter, poisoned by hindsight and hard-earned wisdom. "They lied. Half were just witnesses. People who knew too much about operations that wouldembarrass certain senators, compromise certain assets, threaten certain budgets. Like Khalid's village."
The boy doesn't flinch at his name, doesn't react to being discussed like evidence in a war crimes tribunal. He's learned to be furniture when adults discuss the horror he survived, another survival skill I never wanted him to need. His small hands remain steady, dark eyes continuing their endless security sweep of potential threats and escape routes.
"You want us to trust you?" Kane's voice cuts through the tension like a blade through silk, each word precisely weighted and measured. "The Committee's torturer wants to join our brotherhood of the betrayed and abandoned?"
"I want Morrison dead." Simple truth, stripped of pretense and tactical consideration. "I want every name on that drive to pay for what they've done to villages and families and anyone who threatened their empire. And I want Khalid safe when the shooting stops and the bodies are counted."
The warehouse speakers crackle to life with Tommy's nervous voice—he's monitoring everything from his electronic nest in the tech station, surrounded by screens and communication arrays that keep them connected to a world that wants them dead. For a second we are not soldiers but people in a box. I taste dust and old coffee, the dull comfort of a life that pretends this is optional. That second closes fast.
"Uh, guys? We've got movement. Three helicopters, approaching fast from the southeast. Military birds, flying in a low altitude to avoid detection."
My blood goes cold as professional training processes the implications. The timing, the vector, the tactical approach—I know these patterns like hymns learned in childhood. "They followed us here."
The perimeter alarms shriek confirmation, electronic banshees announcing that our brief sanctuary has beencompromised. Through the high warehouse windows, rotor wash kicks up dust clouds in precise formation patterns, professional insertion doctrine that speaks to Committee tactical training. They're not here to negotiate or offer terms—this is a kill mission, pure and simple.
"Everyone move, now." The command voice takes over, fourteen years of tactical leadership overriding personal animosity and suspicion. Years of leading men through hell have taught me that survival trumps politics when the bullets start flying. "Mercer, high position, northwest corner—they'll breach through the skylights in classic urban assault pattern. Stryker, cover the rear exit, watch for flanking maneuvers. Kane, get Tommy and Sarah to the vehicles before they establish a perimeter."
For a heartbeat that stretches like eternity, nobody moves. These men don't take orders from Committee dogs, especially ones with my reputation. The hesitation could kill us all—indecision in tactical situations becomes mass graves and closed-casket funerals.
Then glass shatters overhead like crystalline thunder. Rappelling lines drop through the skylights with military precision, black-clad figures descending like avenging angels of a bureaucracy that views human life as acceptable losses in service to the greater good.
Mercer moves first, his crossbow already tracking upward toward the descending figures with the fluid grace of a natural killer. Stryker flows toward the rear exit like water finding its level, checking magazine and chamber in one smooth motion born of experience and survival instinct. Kane grabs the encrypted drive, shoving it into a cargo pocket before heading for Tommy's station where the young communications specialist frantically shuts down sensitive equipment.
I push Khalid toward cover as the first boots hit the warehouse floor with tactical precision. "Stay low, move with Kane. Don't try to be a hero."
"La." No. In Arabic, because stress always brings out his first language, the tongue of his dead family and burning village. "I stay with you."
No time to argue as gunfire erupts like deadly fireworks, muzzle flashes strobing in the warehouse shadows. The assault team moves in coordinated patterns I recognize from years of joint training exercises, could execute in my sleep if necessary. Rodriguez is dead. I trained half his team myself in the killing arts, taught them everything about close-quarters combat and room clearing. Now that knowledge is turned against me, a blade I forged with my own hands.
