Twenty minutes later, Tommy has the connection established. Reagan's at the terminal, files pulled up, already diving into financial records and authorization documents. Professional. Efficient. This is her element.
"You're good at this." The observation comes out before I can stop it.
"It's what I do." She doesn't look up. "Follow the money, follow the power, find who's trying to hide what they did. Morrison thought he could bury his crimes under classified stamps and bureaucratic layers. He was wrong. And now Webb's trying to do the same thing."
"Webb thought taking over after Morrison's death would give him a clean slate. Most generals in his position do." I lean against the wall, arms crossed. "They've operated above the law for so long, they forget laws still exist."
"Do they?" Reagan glances at me. "Exist, I mean. You're former Committee. You operated above the law. Did it feel like laws existed when you were disappearing witnesses and eliminating threats?"
The question is pointed. Testing. She wants to know if I'm like Morrison or if I'm something different.
"Laws existed. I chose to ignore them because they told me I was protecting something more important." The admissioncomes easier than it should. "I was wrong. They lied. And by the time I figured it out, I'd done things that can't be undone."
"Like what?"
"Like making witnesses disappear who weren't guilty of anything except knowing too much." The words taste like ash. "Like torturing people for information while telling myself it was necessary. Like spending years becoming exactly what they needed me to be."
Reagan's fingers stop moving across the keyboard. "Why'd you stop?"
"Because I saw Morrison's files on the Syrian operation. Saw what he did to Khalid's village. Saw an eight-year-old girl's medical records documenting how chemical weapons burned her from the inside out while scientists took notes." The memory still cuts. "She was the same age my daughter would have been. And I realized every justification I'd built was just permission to be a monster."
The room goes quiet. Through the encrypted connection, I can hear Sarah and Tommy typing at Echo Base. Khalid's somewhere in the building, helping Stryker with security checks.
Reagan studies me. Not with fear or judgment. With something closer to understanding.
"So you saved Khalid instead of following orders."
"I chose to stop being what they made me after my wife and daughter were murdered." The correction matters. "Saving Khalid was the first choice I made that wasn't about revenge or justification. It was choosing right over orders."
"And they burned you for it."
"They burn everyone eventually. I forced their hand." I move toward the wall, away from the intensity of her gaze. "Now you need to help us burn Webb and the Committee before they burn us all. Can you do that?"
Reagan turns back to her laptop. "Watch me."
For the next three hours, she works. Relentless. Pulls up financial records, traces transactions through shell corporations, identifies authorization signatures buried in classified documents Tommy and Sarah access remotely. She finds patterns in communications that connect Morrison and now Webb to operations across four continents. Systematic elimination of witnesses, targeted assassinations, cover-ups spanning two decades.
"Morrison had been doing this since the nineties." Reagan displays a timeline. "Started small. Eliminating embarrassing witnesses to friendly fire incidents. Graduated to covering up war crimes. Eventually evolved into systematically silencing anyone who threatened operations."
"Protocol Seven." Through the connection, Sarah's voice comes through. "We knew it existed. Weren’t sure Morrison was the architect."
"Morrison designed it, but he didn't implement it alone." Reagan links documents together. "Whitmore provided personnel and logistics. Turner provided cyber security and digital cover. But there's someone else. Someone above Morrison who authorized the entire program. Someone who's likely still in command now that Morrison's dead—probably Webb's superior."
"Who?" The question pulls me closer to the screen.
"I don't know yet. The authorization signatures are redacted. But the pattern is clear. Morrison reported to someone with higher access, more authority. Someone who's been running operations since before Morrison was promoted to general. And if Webb took Morrison's position, he's reporting to the same person."
This is the piece we've been missing. The command structure above Morrison. The person who can authorize Protocol Seven without oversight.
"Can you find them?"
"Maybe. If I can access personnel records from the eighties and nineties. Cross-reference operational deployments with current leadership. Find who was in position to authorize classified programs when Protocol Seven was first implemented."
"Tommy, can you get those records?" I ask.
"Some are archived in systems that require physical access," Tommy's voice comes through the encrypted connection. "But I can find backdoor access to most of them. It'll take time."
"How much time?"
