Kane nods. "I'll inform the team. Everyone needs to be prepared for what comes after. Once this goes public, we're committed. No going back."
He leaves. The command center feels suddenly quiet. Khalid watches me from his corner, book forgotten in his lap.
"You are frightened," he observes. Not a question.
"Terrified," I admit. "But not of the Committee. Of failing. Of six months of work amounting to nothing because I didn't structure the story correctly. Of people dying because I missed something important."
"You will not fail," Khalid says with absolute certainty. "You are like Sarah. You see patterns. You understand how pieces connect. The Committee will break apart because you will show them how."
My breathing steadies. This kid survived horrors I can only imagine. If he believes this will work, maybe it will.
I turn back to the files. Start building the framework for an exposé that will either destroy the Committee or paint targets on all our backs.
Dylan works beside me, pulling operational records that corroborate Cross's intel. Adding context to the dry intelligence reports. Making the story breathe with human detail instead of just data.
Hours blur together. Coffee appears periodically. Stryker brings it. I barely register. The exposé takes shape. Morrison's war crimes in vivid detail. Protocol Seven's chemical weapons program with casualty counts and locations. Webb's financial transfers connecting him to defense contractors and politicians. Names. Dates. Evidence that can't be dismissed as rumor.
By midnight, I have a draft. Forty pages of documentation and narrative. The story of how a covert military organization operated outside civilian oversight for decades. How they committed atrocities in the name of national security. How they murdered anyone who threatened to expose them.
How they're vulnerable now in ways they've never been before.
Dylan reads it through twice. Makes notes. Suggests changes that strengthen weak points. By three in the morning, we havea story solid enough to survive legal challenges and Committee attempts at discrediting.
A story that might actually work.
"We should rest," Dylan says. "Tomorrow's going to be long."
"Can't sleep." I stare at the screen. "Keep thinking I've missed something. Some detail that makes this all fall apart."
"You haven't." He covers my hand on the keyboard. "This is good, Reagan. Better than good. This is the kind of story that changes things."
"Or gets us killed."
"Maybe both." He pulls me up from the chair. "Either way, you need sleep. Can't publish an exposé if you're passing out from exhaustion."
We walk back to his room. The safe house is quiet. Khalid went to bed hours ago. Kane and Stryker are on watch rotation. Just us and the weight of what we're about to expose.
Dylan's room still has that photograph on the nightstand. Lisa and Maya smiling at a camera thirteen years ago. I think about how different his life would be if they'd lived. Whether he'd still be with the Committee. Whether we ever would have met.
"Tomorrow changes things," I say quietly.
"Yeah." Dylan sits on the bed, pulls me down beside him. "For better or worse."
"Think it'll work?"
"I think we're about to find out." He wraps an arm around me. "But whatever happens, we tried. That has to matter."
I lean into him. Let the warmth of his body chase away some of the fear coiling in my chest. Tomorrow we publish. Tomorrow the Committee learns what we've compiled. Tomorrow they either turn on each other under pressure or come after us with force.
"Dylan?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For believing this could work. For not just running."
"I'm tired of running too," he says quietly.
I close my eyes. Try to find sleep that probably won't come. Outside this room, the Committee's cyber division continues their systematic search. Getting closer. Running out of time.
