31. Wade
WADE
The lights never went out.
Not once in five years.
The fluorescent bulbs buzzed overhead through every hour of every day.
Morning.
Night.
Winter.
Summer.
It didn’t matter.
The lights stayed on.
At first, Wade had thought it was meant to prevent him from sleeping.
Later, he realized it was meant to erase time.
A man who didn’t know whether it was day or night began to lose pieces of himself. He forgot the sound of rain. The shape of clouds. The warmth of sunlight against his face.
Eventually, he forgot what freedom felt like.
Wade sat on the edge of the narrow bunk with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped between them.
Listening.
Waiting.
The habit had become automatic years ago.
The facility had rhythms.
Patterns.
Changes.
You learned them if you wanted to survive.
Three guards passed his cell every hour.
Meals arrived twice a day.
Interrogations happened whenever someone above them grew impatient.
And every few weeks, someone disappeared.
Sometimes the missing prisoner returned.
Sometimes he didn’t.
The steel door rattled.
Wade didn’t move.
He didn’t lift his head.
He didn’t react.
The guards hated that.
Good.
The slot opened and a metal tray scraped across the floor.
Cold food.
The same gray mixture they had served hundreds of times before.
The slot slammed shut.
Silence returned.
Wade stared at the tray before turning toward the wall behind his bunk.
The marks were hidden where the guards wouldn’t notice them.
Hundreds of tiny scratches.
Years of them.
Every mark a day.
Every row a month.
Every section a year.
He didn’t know whether the count was exact anymore. There had been interrogations that left him unconscious for days. Drugs that distorted time. Illnesses he survived only because one of the other prisoners had whispered instructions through an air vent.
But the marks gave him something the men upstairs wanted to take.
Proof that time still belonged to him.
Five years since the ambush.
Five years since the world buried them.
Five years since he had last seen Sarah.
He wondered if she still wore her hair pulled back when she was angry.
He wondered if she had forgiven him for leaving without saying goodbye.
He wondered whether his father had finally stopped searching.
That thought hurt worse than the beatings.
Wade closed his eyes.
The mountain returned.
The explosion.
The gunfire echoing across the snow.
His men falling.
The smell of blood, ice, and burning fuel.
The realization that the extraction route had been compromised before they ever arrived.
Then the black hoods.
The restraints.
The first interrogation.
The voice asking what they had found.
The same question repeated for five years.
A metallic clang echoed through the corridor.
Wade opened his eyes.
Something was different.
The prison had a mood.
Most days, it felt bored.
Cold.
Mechanical.
Today, it felt nervous.
Guards walked faster.
Doors opened more often.
Voices carried farther than usual.
Twice, Wade heard heavy equipment moving through one of the lower tunnels.
The facility was unsettled.
That made him uneasy.
Nervous men made mistakes.
Desperate men killed witnesses.
The lock disengaged.
Wade stood before the door opened.
Two guards entered with rifles raised and faces hidden behind tactical masks.
Neither spoke.
They rarely did.
One of the first things Wade had learned was that the guards were kept separate from the interrogators. Compartmentalization protected the facility.
A man couldn’t reveal names he had never been given.
The larger guard motioned toward the hallway.
Interrogation.
Again.
Wade almost smiled.
Five years.
Five years, and they were still asking the same questions.
He stepped into the corridor.
Gray walls.
Gray floors.
Gray doors.
The entire facility felt dead, as if it had been built beneath the mountain and abandoned by the world.
Wade counted automatically.
Fourteen steps.
One turn.
Twenty-two steps.
A security door.
Another turn.
Habit.
Always habit.
The day you stopped paying attention was the day you died.
They passed a corridor he had never been allowed to enter.
For one second, Wade heard someone coughing beyond the door.
Three sharp coughs.
A pause.
Two more.
A signal his team had used since their first month in captivity.
Alive.
Wade dragged his fingers along the seam of his pants.
Three taps.
A pause.
Two more.
I hear you.
The guard behind him struck him between the shoulder blades with the barrel of his rifle.
Wade stumbled forward but stayed on his feet.
He hid his smile.
At least one of his men was still alive.
The interrogation room waited beyond the final door.
Metal table.
Metal chair.
Camera mounted in the corner.
A drain beneath the floor.
Same room.
Same routine.
Different day.
The guard pointed at the chair.
Wade sat.
The restraints remained attached to the table, but neither guard used them.
That was another change.
The door closed behind him.
Silence settled over the room.
Then the opposite door opened.
Wade studied the man who entered.
He didn’t recognize him.
But he recognized the expression.
Fear.
The interrogators were usually arrogant. Confident. Certain the mountain made them untouchable.
This man was afraid.
That was new.
Very new.
The interrogator dropped a file onto the table. His hands trembled slightly.
Wade noticed everything.
The nervous glance at the camera.
The sweat along his hairline.
The pulse beating too quickly in his throat.
Something had changed outside the mountain.
The man opened the file.
Photographs spilled across the table.
Satellite images.
Buildings.
Vehicles.
People.
An Alaskan harbor.
A warehouse beside the water.
Operators moving across a dock.
Wade kept his breathing even.
The interrogator began sliding the photographs toward him one at a time.
A retired SEAL Wade recognized from an old deployment roster.
A dark-haired woman stepping out of an SUV.
His pulse slammed once.
Sarah.
Five years disappeared.
He saw her at twenty-two, furious because he had missed her birthday. He saw her sitting beside him on the dock, stealing his beer and telling him he worried too much. He saw her the night before his final mission, asking why their father had suddenly become so secretive.
Sarah was alive.
And she was hunting.
The next photograph showed a broad-shouldered man standing in the snow near the warehouse.
James Callahan.
Rook.
Wade had met him only once during a joint operational briefing years earlier, but everyone in their world knew the man’s reputation.
Shadow Division.
Wade had heard the guards discussing the team when they believed the prisoners couldn’t understand them.
An ambush on the same mountain.
Multiple casualties.
Three survivors.
Now one of those survivors was standing beside Wade’s sister.
Hope struck him.
Violent.
Sudden.
Dangerous.
He shut it down before it reached his face.
Hope could get a man killed.
The interrogator watched him carefully.
“You know them.”
Wade said nothing.
“You know exactly who they are.”
Still nothing.
The man’s composure cracked.
“How much did you tell your sister before the operation?”
Wade’s gaze remained fixed on the table.
“How much does your father know?”
His father was alive too.
The knowledge nearly broke through Wade’s control.
The interrogator leaned closer.
“How much have you told Shadow Division?”
Wade slowly lifted his eyes.
The facility wasn’t nervous because of him.
It was nervous because Sarah had found Rook.
Because Shadow Division had survived.
Because someone outside the mountain had begun putting the pieces together.
The interrogator slammed his palm against the table.
“Answer me!”
The sound echoed through the room.
Wade leaned back.
Calm.
Patient.
The same patience that had carried him through five years of captivity.
Then he spoke.
The first words he had given an interrogator in months.
His voice came out rough from disuse.
But steady.
“You look scared.”
Silence.
The interrogator froze.
Wade held his gaze.
Five years in a cage had taught him how to recognize fear.
This man wasn’t merely afraid.
He was terrified.
The interrogator stood abruptly, sending the chair scraping across the floor.
“Your family can’t save you.”
Wade said nothing.
“They don’t even know where you are.”
Another lie.
If that were true, the photographs wouldn’t be spread across the table.
The man gathered them too quickly, nearly dropping the file.
Wade caught one last glimpse of Sarah before the photograph disappeared.
She looked older.
Harder.
Her eyes held something he had never seen in them before.
She had become a hunter.
The interrogator slammed the file closed and headed for the door.
Wade’s voice stopped him.
“You should run.”
The man turned.
Wade smiled.
A real smile.
The first one he had worn in five years.
“They’re coming.”
The color drained from the interrogator’s face.
That was all the confirmation Wade needed.
The door slammed shut, leaving him alone beneath the merciless fluorescent lights.
For several seconds, he sat perfectly still.
Then he looked toward the ceiling.
Toward thousands of tons of rock and ice.
Toward the prison that had held him for five years.
Toward the men who believed no one would ever find what they had buried beneath the mountain.
For the first time in a very long time, Wade allowed himself to feel hope.
Sarah was alive.
His father was alive.
Rook was hunting the people who had betrayed them.
And somewhere beyond the mountain, ghosts were moving.
Shadow Division was coming for him.