He’d been here. Alive. Loud. Whole.
And now…
Now he was just a chair.
Cap flattened his hand on the table. The sound cut through the room.
“There’s something else,” he said. “And this part affects every single one of you.”
The shift was immediate. Chairs creaked. Someone near the back muttered, “Here it comes.”
Ghost’s fingers stilled over the keyboard.
“We’ve had movement near the compound,” Cap continued. “Not random. Not drunk locals. Controlled passes. Same vehicle profile, different plates. Twice in one night.”
A low murmur rippled through the room.
Ranger straightened fully now, relaxed posture gone. “You’re saying they found us.”
“I’m saying they’re testing us,” Cap replied. “Learning patterns. Watching rotations.”
Doc swore under his breath. Someone else, one of the older guys I didn’t know by name, leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You don’t test a place like this unless you’re thinking long-term.”
Brutus’s lips peeled back just enough to show teeth. “They want to see how hard we bite.”
My skin prickled. The walls felt closer than they had five minutes ago.
Ghost finally looked up. “This changes priority,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. “If they’re watching the compound, Scout comes first. Everything else is secondary.”
A few heads nodded around the table.
“Agreed,” someone near the door said. “We can’t split resources with eyes on home.”
Another voice chimed in. “We start chasing ghosts outside our perimeter, we leave ourselves open.”
The room was no longer unified. It wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t settled either.
Cap let the noise ride for a second. Then he spoke.
“There’s one more thing.”
Ariel went still beside me.
“Sunshine was taken during the escape,” Cap said. “She helped one girl get free. Tried to pull another. The window closed, and she didn’t make it out with us.”
The room quieted again. But this time it wasn’t reverent. It was wary.
“She told us to run,” Ariel said, voice tight. “That was it.”
Ghost braced his hands on the table. “And she’s not one of ours.”
The words landed heavy.
A couple of guys shifted. One of them nodded. Another crossed his arms. Not cruel. Just factual.
Ghost turned his masked face away from Ariel when he spoke. “Scout is one of ours. He’s alive. Somewhere. Every move we make splits attention away from finding him.”
Ranger nodded once. “We don’t know what going back in looks like. Or costs. And if they’re watching us?—”
