Page 58 of Echo: Burn
And stops dead when she sees six weapons pointed at her head.
She raises her hands slowly. "I'm not here to fight. I'm here because I need help. And because you need what I know."
"Talk fast," Kane says, rifle steady on center mass.
She meets his eyes without flinching. "My name is Karina Miles. I'm number eight on Protocol Seven's termination list. And I know where the Committee's staging their chemical weapons cache. The one your dog can lead us to. The one they're planning to deploy in seventy-two hours against a civilian target."
The room goes absolutely silent.
"What target?" Kane asks.
Karina's smile is cold. Bitter. "The one that will give them everything they want. The one that will let them reshape American policy for the next fifty years."
She pauses, letting the weight of that sink in.
"They're going to attack the Capitol."
13
KANE
Karina's words hang in the operations center like a grenade with the pin pulled. She's telling us the Committee plans to deploy chemical weapons in one of the most visible and protected cities in America in or around the time of the inauguration. Nobody moves. Nobody speaks. We're all processing what she just said—what it means if the Committee succeeds.
Thousands dead. Maybe tens of thousands depending on dispersal patterns and wind conditions. The entire chain of command wiped out in one coordinated strike. And in the chaos that follows, the Committee steps in to "restore order" with whatever authoritarian measures they've been planning.
"You're certain?" My voice comes out flat. Controlled. The only way to handle intel this catastrophic.
"I spent two years inside their operational planning division." Karina lowers her hands slowly, reading the room, understanding that six weapons are still trained on her center mass. "I know how they think. How they operate. The inauguration would give them maximum impact with maximum deniability. They'll blame it on domestic terrorists, foreign actors, anyone except themselves."
"Seventy-two hours," Willa says beside me. "That's three days."
"Which means they're already moving the weapons into position," Karina confirms. "And anyone who might know enough to stop them—anyone on Protocol Seven's list—needs to be eliminated before they can interfere."
I lower my rifle. The math is simple and brutal. If we don't stop this, thousands of people die. If we try to stop this, the Committee throws everything they have at us.
Either way, the next seventy-two hours decide whether we win or die trying.
"Tommy, I need confirmation on the inauguration timeline," I order. "Expected attendance, venue layout. Everything."
"Already pulling files." His fingers blur across keyboards. "Kane, if they're planning this, they've had months to prepare. Maybe years. We're three days out with incomplete intel and a target list on our heads."
"I'm aware." I turn to Karina. "You said you know where they're staging the chemical weapons. Where?"
"A facility outside Whitefish. Same one your dog alerted on." She nods toward Odin, who's watching her with that unsettling canine intensity. "Former industrial site, now converted into a Committee black site. They've been synthesizing nerve agent precursors there for the past eighteen months."
"How do you know this?" Mercer asks, rifle still trained on her.
"Because I helped plan the operation before I figured out what it was really for." Bitterness cuts through her voice. "I thought we were developing defensive countermeasures. Turns out we were building the weapons."
Stryker moves closer to the tactical display. "If the facility is that close, why haven't we found it?"
"Because it's not on any map." Karina pulls a flash drive from her vest. "I've got the coordinates, security layouts, guard rotations. Everything you need to hit it. But Kane?" Her eyes meet mine. "You'll need to move fast. If they've activated Protocol Seven, they're probably moving the weapons tonight."
"Tommy, verify her intel," I say. "Cross-reference with satellite imagery, utility records, anything that confirms a facility at those coordinates."
"Running it now." Tommy plugs in the flash drive, code scrolling across his screens. "Give me five minutes."
Five minutes to verify intel that could stop a mass casualty event or lead us into a trap designed to eliminate the last obstacles to the Committee's plans.
