Chapter 23 - Confession in the Fog
The industrial yard fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the rhythmic lapping of dark water against the concrete seawall and the hiss of air brakes from the idling transport trucks. The Vanguard operatives were zip-tied and lined up against the side of a rusted shipping container, while Commander Hayes was shoved down onto his knees on the damp asphalt before Adrian.
Adrian walked slowly toward him, his boots crunching on the gravel. He stopped a few feet away, looking down at the disgraced special ops commander with absolute indifference.
Hayes spat a glob of blood onto the ground, glaring up. "Do it, then. Kill me and get it over with. The Syndicate doesn't stop because one cell goes dark."
Adrian didn't pull his weapon. Instead, he pulled a small leather-bound notebook from his jacket, clicked his pen, and wrote a single sentence before tossing the pad onto the pavement right in front of Hayes’s knees.
Who is funding the Vanguard revival?
Hayes looked down at the words, letting out a sharp, cynical laugh. "You think you own Chicago, Voss? You're just a relic running a dying corporation. Someone with much deeper pockets and much more influence than a corporate board is backing us. You'll never find out who."
Emma stepped forward, her expression impassionately cold. She knelt down beside Hayes, looking him dead in the eye.
"We don't have to guess," Emma said quietly, tapping the encrypted drive she had retrieved from Vance's terminal earlier that day. "Your entire communication network runs on the same encrypted relay we traced out of our Loop server room. The moment you opened your mouth just now, our forensic algorithms matched your voice print to the Zurich routing server."
Hayes’s arrogant smirk instantly vanished. The color completely drained from his face as he realized the trap was far deeper than a simple ambush at the docks.
"You're bluffing," Hayes stammered, his voice losing its steely edge.
May you like
Adrian picked up his legal pad, wrote another line, and slid it forward.
Take him to the Lake Forest basement, Adrian wrote. Let him think about his choices until morning. Then we pull the rest of the weed up by the roots.
