I find the pen they missed in my jacket pocket—small mercy—and write on the only paper I have available. I tear a strip from inside my shirt hem where the fabric is doubled, flatten it, and write in careful block letters.
MICAH STOP HARPER KILLED STOP COMMITTEE HIT STOP NEED EXTRACTION STOP COMPROMISED STOP SARAH
I fold it small and hide it back in the shirt hem, waiting for an opportunity.
Days blur together. The interrogations continue with clinical efficiency. They want to know about NSA monitoring capabilities, encryption protocols, and who else knows about their Baltimore operations. I give them nothing useful, which earns me more expert violence and longer stretches in isolation.
The message stays hidden in my shirt hem. I look for opportunities—a moment of inattention, a gap in surveillance,any chance to get it out of this warehouse. But the Committee operatives are professionals. They watch me constantly. Even the bathroom escorts are supervised, the door left open, a guard standing right there.
The emergency protocol is useless if I can't actually trigger it.
Days stretch into a week with no opportunity. No way to get the message out. No rescue team materializing to extract me. No sign that anyone knows I'm missing.
Just silence, stretching endlessly.
I start to wonder if anyone even knows I'm missing. If Harper managed to send a distress signal before they killed him. If NSA has noticed my surveillance van went dark. If Micah is too deep in his own operation to be reached even if someone tries.
The wondering is almost worse than the interrogations.
After over a week, an opportunity finally presents itself. Guard change happens with sloppy overlap, a brief window where no one is actively watching my door. The camera feed flickers as someone adjusts monitoring equipment. The magnetic lock on my door isn't fully engaged—I can see the indicator light is amber instead of red.
Someone made a mistake.
I wait until the footsteps fade, then test the door. It opens with barely a whisper of sound.
The hallway is empty. I keep to the walls, moving as quietly as possible despite ribs that scream with every breath. Down the hallway, a window shows late afternoon light. Ground floor. I could make it.
Shouts behind me mean they've discovered I'm gone. I run despite the pain, hit the window with my shoulder, crash through glass and land hard in an alley that smells like garbage and rain.
I don't stop. Can't stop. I run through Baltimore streets with blood on my clothes and terror in my throat, expecting gunfire or pursuit or capture any second.
Blocks from the warehouse, I collapse in an alley behind a Thai restaurant and finally let myself shake apart. I'm free. I'm bleeding. I'm alone.
The safe house is a studio apartment in Fells Point that officially doesn't exist. Like most safe houses, it is fully equipped with everything someone would need—money, burner phone, food, etc.—some of it is easily seen and identified but things like the cash, phone and weapons are hidden away. I shouldn't know about it, but Harper mentioned it once during a debriefing, and I filed the address away with all the other intelligence fragments my brain refuses to let go. Breaking in through the back door takes the last of my strength.
The bathroom has medical supplies. A basic field kit, nothing sophisticated, but enough. I spend the first day cataloging my injuries in the mirror—split lip healing crooked, bruises blooming purple and yellow across my ribs, cuts from the window glass that need cleaning and bandaging. The second day I can stand without the room spinning. The third day I can think clearly enough to search the apartment properly.
Harper's emergency stash is exactly where NSA protocol says it should be—false panel behind the bathroom mirror. Burner phone. Cash. Encrypted thumb drive. And a laptop with satellite uplink capability, probably left over from when this location was actively used for surveillance operations.
I boot it up with shaking hands. The system is old but functional, security protocols still active. I use Harper's backup credentials—the ones he gave me months ago "just in case"—and access the NSA monitoring network remotely.
I still have the coded message hidden in my shirt hem. I find the nearest dead drop location—a loose brick behind a dumpsterthree blocks away that routes through the established network. My hands shake as I place the folded fabric inside, as I mark it with the emergency signal that should route to Micah if he's in any position to receive it.
If he's even alive to receive it.
Micah is silent, wherever he is, and I'm on my own.
Weeks crawl by in that safe house. The bruises fade. The cuts scab over and heal. My ribs stop screaming with every breath. The physical damage repairs itself while I stay hidden and wait for some sign, any sign, that I'm not completely alone in this.
Nothing comes.
When my phone finally rings, it's a forwarded call from my land line back in DC. I don't recognize the number, but it’s a military exchange in Alaska.
I almost don't answer. Almost let it go to voicemail because I'm not sure I can handle one more catastrophe. But something makes me pick up.
"Ms. Andrews?" The voice is professional, measured. Navy liaison officer. "This is Lieutenant Commander Harris. I'm calling regarding your brother, Gabriel Andrews."
The world tilts. "What happened?"
