I provide copies through Kane's secure channels, keeping the originals in our possession. Every page timestamped, every file hash-verified. If they try to claim we fabricated anything, we can prove provenance. If they try to suppress the investigation, we have backups distributed across three continents.
"The FBI's Counterintelligence Division has opened a preliminary inquiry," Delaney reports from Echo Base, her voice crackling through the encrypted connection. "Very quiet, very unofficial. But they're looking. And they're asking questions about financial transfers that Webb's people thought were buried."
"Webb's people will try to shut it down," Dylan says.
"They'll try," Kane agrees. "But the more people who look at this evidence, the harder it becomes to suppress. We've created enough public attention that making this disappear would raise more questions than it answers."
Khalid sits in the corner of the main room, wrapped in a blanket Willa gave him, staring at nothing. He held himself together through the entire testimony, answered every question with composure that would have been remarkable in an adult,let alone a teenager. Now the cost of that composure is written across his face.
I cross the room and lower myself onto the couch beside him. "Hey."
He doesn't respond. Just keeps staring at the wall, seeing something none of us can see.
"You did well today. Better than well. You were incredible."
"They didn't believe me." His voice is hollow. "The men in the suits. I could see it in their faces. They didn't believe me."
"Some of them did. The committee members. You saw their faces when you named your family."
"It doesn't matter." Khalid's hands are shaking now, tremors visible even beneath the blanket. "They'll find a way to make it go away. They always find a way."
Dylan appears on his other side, lowering himself carefully to protect his wound. He doesn't say anything. Just puts his arm around Khalid's shoulders and pulls him close.
The dam breaks.
Khalid sobs, the sound raw and ragged, all the grief pouring out in a flood that his testimony composure could no longer contain. His whole body shakes with the force of it, shoulders heaving, hands clutching at Dylan's shirt like he's drowning and Dylan is the only solid thing in a world that keeps trying to pull him under. He cries for his father, his mother, his sisters and his brother. He cries for the village elder and the pregnant woman and the old man who sold vegetables. He cries for three hundred and forty-seven people whose names he carries with him everywhere.
Dylan holds him, one hand cradling the back of Khalid's head, his own eyes wet though he doesn't make a sound. I hold them both, my arms wrapped around two people who have become my family through circumstances none of us would havechosen. And for a long time, the only sound in the hunting lodge is a fifteen-year-old boy mourning the dead.
Eventually, the sobs quiet to hiccups, then to shuddering breaths, then to exhausted silence.
Later, after Khalid has cried himself to sleep and Willa has settled him in his room with something to help him rest, we gather in the main room. The fire has burned down to embers, and the windows show nothing but darkness beyond the glass.
Kane's encrypted phone buzzes. He steps away to take the call, and when he returns, his expression is unreadable.
"That was Cross," he announces. "Webb's response to the testimony."
Everyone goes still. Dylan reaches for my hand, grips tight. Mercer straightens from his position by the window, and even Stryker stops cleaning the pistol he's been working on for the past hour.
"He's concerned," Kane continues. "The inquiry is inconvenient. The media attention is irritating. But he's not panicking."
"Why not?" I ask. "We just testified in front of Congress. Federal investigators are looking at the evidence. How is he not panicking?"
Kane meets my eyes. "Because he doesn't think testimony alone will bring him down. He's been running black operations for decades. He knows how to weather investigations. And he's betting that our evidence isn't enough to overcome the institutional protections he's built around himself."
"Cross says Webb is already working the phones," Kane adds. "Calling in favors. Reminding people what he knows about them. The Committee didn't survive this long by leaving themselves vulnerable to a single exposure attempt."
"Is he right?" Dylan's voice is quiet. "Can he make this go away?"
Kane doesn't answer immediately. When he does, his words carry a weight that settles over the room.
"That depends on what we're willing to do next."
The fire crackles, sending sparks up toward the chimney. Outside, the wind moves through the pine trees.
Webb is betting that we can't touch him. That the system he's corrupted will protect him the way it's always protected him.
He doesn't know everything we have. Doesn't know about the moves we haven't made yet.
