Chapter 9
In its place, glowing with a soft, ethereal blue light against her pale skin, was a picture.
It wasn’t a weapon blueprint. It wasn’t a topographical map, and it wasn’t a list of coordinates.
It was a portrait.
A hyper-realistic, impossibly detailed image burned directly into the flesh of her forearm.
I stared at it, my breath catching in my throat, completely unable to comprehend what I was looking at.
It was a man in a military uniform.
His head was bare, his hair slightly messy, and he was sitting down, his arms wrapped fiercely and protectively around a little girl.
They were hugging.
It was an incredibly intimate, deeply emotional pose. The man had his face buried in the little girl’s hair, and even in the monochromatic blue glow of the ink, you could see the absolute, unconditional happiness radiating from them both.
The young mother looked down at her own arm, and a sound escaped her throat that I will never, ever forget.
It was a sound of pure, shattered heartbreak.
“Daddy,” she whimpered, her voice cracking into a thousand pieces.
She collapsed against the cold metal of the exit door, cradling her glowing arm as if it were the most precious thing in the entire world.
The man in the trench coat stared at the image, his cruel smile instantly evaporating.
His face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage.
“What is this?” he hissed, taking a step back, staring at the metallic device in his hand.
The blue lights on his scanner were flashing red now, emitting a harsh, angry beep.
“Where is the ledger? Where is the data!” he screamed, his calm demeanor completely shattering.
He lunged forward, grabbing her by the collar of her wet, gray hoodie, slamming her violently against the steel door.
“A memory?” he roared, spit flying from his lips. “He encrypted the entire global black-ops ledger behind a goddamn childhood memory?”
The mother didn’t answer. She was sobbing uncontrollably, her eyes locked onto the glowing image of her father on her arm.
“Unlock it!” the man demanded, pressing the barrel of the General’s stolen gun directly against her temple.
“Whatever the secondary biometric trigger is, do it right now, or I swear to God I will shoot this kid!”
He reached out with his free hand, violently grabbing the baby carrier strapped to her chest.
The toddler, who had been eerily silent, suddenly let out a piercing, terrified scream.
“No!” I yelled, pushing myself off the wall, adrenaline overriding my common sense.
I threw myself at the man in the trench coat, aiming for his gun arm.
I didn’t even make it halfway.
He didn’t even look at me. He just swung his heavy boot backward, catching me squarely in the ribs.
The impact lifted me off the floor. I crashed into the wall of the hallway, all the air rushing out of my lungs in a violent whoosh.
I slid down to the wet linoleum, gasping for breath, the edges of my vision turning black.
“Unlock it,” the man whispered to the mother, cocking the hammer of the gun.
“Three.”
The mother closed her eyes, wrapping her arms around her screaming child.
“Two.”
I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t work. I was going to watch them die.
“One—”
A massive shadow suddenly blotted out the blue light from the hallway entrance.
It moved with a speed and ferocity that didn’t seem humanly possible.
Before the man in the trench coat could pull the trigger, a thick, scarred hand reached out from the darkness and clamped down over the cylinder of the revolver.
The gun fired, but the heavy hand forced the barrel upward.
The bullet tore into the ceiling, raining plaster and dust down on us.
It was the General.
He looked like he had walked through a meat grinder. His pristine uniform was shredded, his face was covered in blood, and his left arm hung at a sickening, unnatural angle.
But his eyes were burning with the terrifying, lethal intensity of a man who had spent his entire life fighting wars in the dark.
He didn’t say a word.
With his one good arm, the General twisted the gun backward with a sickening snap of bone.
The man in the trench coat screamed, dropping the weapon.
The General didn’t stop. He drove his forehead directly into the man’s nose with a brutal, crushing impact.
The man stumbled backward, dropping his blue metallic scanner. It hit the floor and shattered into pieces.
The General grabbed him by the throat, lifted him inches off the floor, and slammed him headfirst into the heavy brick wall of the hallway.
Once. Twice. Three times.
The man’s body finally went completely limp, sliding down the wall and collapsing into a heap on the floor.
