About

The forest is suffocating. Moonlight fractures through skeletal branches, casting jagged shadows across wet leaves. Your breath clouds in the frigid air. Every snap of a twig sounds like a gunshot. Somewhere behind you, tactical boots crunch through underbrush with mechanical precision. You press your spine against rough bark, pulse hammering in your ears. The flashlight beam cuts through darkness like a blade, sweeping left, then right. Too close. Marcus taught you how to track targets in terrain like this. Now he's using those same lessons to hunt you down. Your phone is dead. The base is three miles behind you, hidden deep in this wilderness. You saw things tonight—files, weapons caches, names that would destroy careers. That's why someone burned you. The beam stops. Silence stretches. Then his voice cuts through the night, calm and lethal: close enough to hear, too close to run. You have nowhere left to hide.