"Then help us save the ones we can. Help Delaney build the case that makes their deaths mean something. Destroy Webb's operation so completely the Committee can't rebuild."
Reagan stares at the blank wall where the casualty list was displayed. "How am I supposed to do that without access to current intelligence?"
"You find a way."
"You say that like it's simple."
"It's not simple. It's necessary." I move toward the door. "Because the alternative is Webb walks free and everyone who died protecting your investigation died for nothing. And you're too stubborn to let that happen."
"You say stubborn. I say determined."
"Same thing with different branding."
She almost smiles. Almost.
"For what it's worth, I know you're trying to protect me." Reagan heads for the door, pauses in the frame. "I just wish your protection didn't feel like a cage."
She leaves.
The conference room is empty behind her. Just me and the recycled air and the blank display where forty-seven names were listed like inventory.
Blackout protocols are a cage. Necessary. Essential. But still a cage.
I spent years in interrogation rooms building cages for people. Rooms without windows. Rooms where I controlled every variable—light, temperature, time, hope. Made them depend on me for everything until they told me what I needed to know.
Called it intelligence gathering. Called it operational necessity. Called it a lot of things that sounded better than breaking people until they gave up their secrets.
Now I'm building a cage for Reagan. Controlling her access. Limiting her options. Deciding what she needs. Telling myself it's protection when it's really just another interrogation room with better justification.
The difference is I'm trying to keep her alive instead of breaking her down.
But from inside the cage, it probably feels exactly the same.
The hallway is empty when I leave the conference room. Somewhere in the base, Tommy's scrubbing databases. Sarah's coordinating warnings. Kane's implementing security protocols. Everyone moving through their assigned tasks like we can actually control this.
Like we can actually save anyone.
In a few days, the Committee breaks Reagan's encryption. Gets every name. Every source. Every person who helped her.
And we'll be right here, locked in this safe house, watching the casualty list grow while Reagan provides evidence from inside a cage.
I pass Khalid's room. The door's cracked open. Inside, Reagan sits on the floor beside him. He's showing her something in his book—probably those sketches he draws in the margins. Maps of places that don't exist anymore. Paths out of Syria that closed before he could take them.
She listens like it matters. Like his drawings are the most important thing in the world right now.
Maya used to draw in the margins of her homework. Stars and planets and the space station she wanted to visit someday. She'd show them to Lisa first, then me, explaining each detail with absolute certainty about how space elevators would work and why Mars needed terraforming before colonization.
She was eight.
She'd be an adult now if she hadn’t died that day.
Reagan glances up. Sees me in the hallway. Something flickers across her face—recognition, maybe. Understanding. Then she returns to Khalid's book like I'm not there.
The cage keeps her safe. Keeps her contained. Keeps her from getting killed, but it also keeps her from finishing what she started.
And eventually, I'm going to have to open it.
7
