Chapter 15 - The Lowest Point
At dawn a search team entered the building suggested by the audio clue and found nothing but a speaker, a timer, and a child's prerecorded voice.
We had chased a sound designed to lead us away.
The same morning, an independent review suspended my security clearance pending investigation of the forged approval records.
Mercer told a reporter that I might have mishandled classified materials before my attack.
By lunchtime, headlines suggested I had caused the very crisis I'd uncovered.
My mother called in tears.
Lily was still missing.
Ben was still dead.
My legs were still held together by surgical hardware.
And now the command I had served for thirteen years was treating me as a possible criminal.
I stared at the television until Dom switched it off.
"They want you isolated," he said.
"It's working."
He didn't argue.
That was why I trusted him.
Ellison arrived with another setback.
Ward's secure location had been compromised; she had moved again, leaving investigators unable to reach her for several hours.
The ledger remained intact, but without her testimony some of the links were still vulnerable to challenge.
Dr. Park told me that swelling had delayed the next procedure.
I asked whether I'd walk normally again.
She answered carefully: recovery would take time, and there were outcomes she couldn't promise.
After everyone left, I listened to Ben's video a second time.
He had trusted me to finish his work, but I couldn't even stand beside my daughter if she needed me.
A nurse found me crying silently.
She didn't offer slogans.
She sat nearby and let me finish.
That evening my phone rang from an unknown number.
A small voice whispered, "Mom?"
I couldn't breathe.
"Lily?"
"I don't have long."
"Where are you, sweetheart?"
There was a scrape, then she spoke faster.
"The bad man calls the woman Admiral."
The line broke.
And for the first time I knew the person holding Lily wasn't only connected to Vale.
May you like
Lily had heard her name.
