ONE
Sawyer
The mountain doesn't carethat I can't sleep.
At 0200, the Guardian HRS training facility is a ghost town except for me and the automated systems that track my progress up this manufactured cliff face. My fingers find purchase on holds designed to test limits, and I'm three hundred feet up when my forearms start to burn—not from exertion, but from memory.
The scar tissue doesn't stretch the way normal skin does. Every reach, every grip, reminds me of melted helicopter metal and Tyler Brennan screaming while flames ate him alive.
"Morrison! Get me out! Get me—" Tyler's voice, raw with agony, still echoes in the worst dreams.
I can smell it even now—aviation fuel mixing with burning flesh, the acrid smoke that made my eyes stream as I gripped superheated metal with bare hands, skin blistering and peeling as I tried to bend what wouldn't bend.
His eyes through the cracked visor, wide with terror and trust—trust that I'd save him, that I'd be enough.
I wasn't.
The fuel tank exploded while my hands were still on the twisted frame, the concussive burst throwing me back, and when I came to, there was only silence and char where my buddy used to be.
The challenge coin around my neck swings free as I reach for the next hold. Tyler's unit coin, pulled from what was left of his flight suit after the fire died down enough to let me close enough to recover his body.
Two years, four months, sixteen days. The math runs constantly in my head, marking time since that Afghan mountainside became his grave.
The next hold is a crimper, enough for fingertips, but not much else. I have to dyno for it—a controlled explosion of movement that launches me upward. For a moment, I'm weightless, suspended between earth and sky, and the freedom of it almost makes me forget. Then my fingers lock onto the hold, tendons screaming, and I'm back in my body with all its scars and memories.
Three more moves to the crux—the hardest section where the wall goes past vertical into overhang. My core burns as I flag. My leg stretches out for balance, hooking a heel to maintain position.
This is what I come here for. The absolute focus required, the way everything else fades when it's just flesh and will against stone and rock.
My satellite phone vibrates against my ribs, the buzz traveling through my climbing harness. Only one person calls at this hour.
I rappel down fast enough that the rope heats through my gloves. My boots hit the ground in under a minute. CJ's name lights up the screen.
"Hawk." His voice carries the particular tension that means lives are on the line. "How fast can you get to San Francisco?"
I'm already moving toward the equipment room, stripping off my climbing gear. "What's the situation?"
"Emergency extraction. FBI analyst uncovered an imminent domestic terror attack—coordinated strikes in less than ninety-six hours. She tried to report it, and now her own agency is hunting her."
My shirt sticks to the sweat cooling on my back as I pull on tactical gear. "FBI doesn't eat their own without cause."
"Our CIA contact says she's got the only proof that can stop the attack. Someone inside wants her dead before she can share it." Papers shuffle on his end. "Savannah Cross, twenty-nine, Cybercrime Division. Photos on your phone."
I open the encrypted file while stepping into my tactical pants. Dark hair pulled back in a professional bun, hazel eyes that look directly into the camera rather than through it. Sharp intelligence in her face, something stubborn in the set of her jaw. Pretty in a way that makes me notice despite myself.
"What's her tactical background?"
"FBI analyst for five years. MIT graduate with dual degrees in computer science and mathematics. No field experience listed, but..." CJ pauses. "Her file's been sanitized. Someone deleted portions within the last seventy-two hours."
Interesting. Someone's trying to erase her before they erase her.
I strap on my shoulder holster, check the Glock 19's magazine, and chamber a round. "Location?"
"Apartment in Nob Hill. Address incoming. Hawk—" CJ's tone shifts. "Local FBI tried to bring her in six hours ago. Three agents went up. None came back down. SFPD is holding a perimeter, but they're being told to stand down by someone with federal pull."
Three dead agents changes the math.
This isn't a pickup—it's a recovery from hostile territory.
