"Not directly. I provided intelligence support. Verified target locations. Confirmed witness identities. I did my job. They died because I was good at it."
"And then?"
"Then I hunted down everyone involved in the operation. Found the field team who planted the explosives. The intelligence officer who authorized the strike. The commander who signed off on eliminating civilian witnesses." Dylan stares atthe wall behind me. "I found them all. Spent six months tracking them down one by one."
"What did you do to them?"
"What I was trained to do. Interrogation. Extraction. Whatever it took to get answers. I wanted names. I wanted to know who gave the orders. Who decided my wife and daughter were acceptable losses."
"Did you get your answers?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"Then I went back to work. The Committee found me three weeks after I finished. Said they understood my grief. Said they could channel my anger toward deserving targets. Said I could spend the rest of my career making sure the people who deserved punishment got it."
I stare at him. "They killed your family and you went back to work for them."
"They promised me targets who deserved what I could do to them. Terrorists. War criminals. People who'd done worse than what happened to Lisa and Maya." Dylan finally looks at me. "And I was good at the work. Better than I'd been before. Because I didn't care anymore whether they were guilty or innocent. I just wanted them to hurt the way I was hurting."
"How many people did you disappear for them?"
Dylan doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away.
"I don't know. Stopped counting after the first year. Some were legitimate targets. Terrorists planning attacks. Insurgents coordinating ambushes. But some were just problems. Journalists asking questions. Whistleblowers trying to expose operations. Witnesses who knew too much."
"Innocents."
"I told myself they were all guilty of something. That anyone the Committee targeted must have done something to deserve it." Dylan's jaw tightens again. "I was wrong."
The questions pile up in my throat. How many? How long? What did you do to them? But those aren't the questions that matter.
"Did you kill innocents?"
"Not directly. But I made witnesses disappear who probably were. Detained them. Interrogated them. Handed them over to people who made sure they never resurfaced. I didn't pull the trigger but I put them in the crosshairs."
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the desk to make them stop.
"Did you torture for pleasure?"
"No." The single word is flat. Final. "For information and revenge. The Committee used me as an interrogator because I was effective. Because I could break people without caring what it cost them. The revenge was personal. Every target who screamed reminded me that Lisa and Maya didn't get to scream. They just died."
No justification. No excuses. Just the truth laid out bare.
"Did you have a choice when you burned? When you saved Khalid instead of following orders. When you took evidence of Morrison's chemical weapons program instead of burying it. Did you have a choice or were you forced into it?"
"I had a choice." The response is immediate. "Found Khalid hiding in a well. Saw the files documenting what they'd done to his village. Saw an eight-year-old girl's body with clinical notes measuring her suffering." He pauses. "I could have followed orders. Left Khalid to die. Destroyed the evidence. Could have gone back to what I was and pretended none of it happened."
"But you didn't."
"I chose Khalid over orders. Chose to stop being what they made me after Lisa and Maya died. That was the first real choice I'd made in years. Everything before that was just following the path of least resistance."
I sit back in my chair. Suddenly exhausted.
This man tortured people. Made innocents disappear. Spent years becoming the Committee's monster because the work was easier than facing what he'd lost.
And then he chose to stop.
