50. Evie
EVIE
The ridgeline collapses.
Stone tears through trees.
A wall of dust races toward us.
“Move!” Rook shouts.
Maverick and Rogue pull the surrendered operators toward safer ground.
Reef guides Fathom and Cobra uphill with the evidence.
Shark helps Falcon, whose wounded arm has begun bleeding again.
Caleb catches my hand.
We run.
Behind us, Mac and Rook retreat from Victor as rocks crash across the clearing.
Victor keeps coming.
He has lost his rifle.
Lost the First Circle.
Lost the Chairman.
Still, he refuses to stop.
He slashes at Mac with the knife.
Mac blocks.
The impact sends the field knife spinning away.
Victor drives him backward toward the fractured edge.
Rook tackles Victor before he can strike again.
All three men hit the ground.
The crack beneath them widens.
Rock falls into the chasm.
“Rook!” Caleb races back.
I follow.
Victor throws Rook aside and strikes Mac across the face.
Mac drops to one knee.
“You still don’t understand,” Victor says. “The Chairman is inevitable.”
Mac wipes blood from his mouth.
“No. He’s a man who was so afraid of losing power that he buried an army beneath a mountain.”
“He changed the world.”
“He poisoned it.”
Victor lunges.
Mac steps aside.
Victor’s boot lands on fractured stone.
The ledge breaks.
He falls.
One hand catches the edge.
For a second, his body hangs above the collapsing slope.
Mac drops and grabs his wrist.
Victor looks up.
Confusion crosses his face.
“You would save me?”
Mac strains against his weight.
“I won’t become you.”
The rock beneath Mac begins to fracture.
Rook catches the back of his vest.
Caleb grabs Rook.
Three men pull against the mountain.
Victor’s free hand reaches toward Mac.
For a moment, I think he’ll accept the help.
Then he smiles.
“You still don’t understand.”
His fingers open.
Mac tries to hold him.
Victor twists his wrist free deliberately.
He chooses the fall.
He chooses loyalty to a dead empire over facing the truth.
Victor disappears into the dust below.
Mac remains frozen at the edge.
Rook drags him back.
“You tried.”
Mac looks into the chasm.
“He didn’t want to be saved.”
“No,” Rook says. “But you still tried.”
That is the difference between them.
The sound of rotor blades rolls across the valley.
Two dark civilian rescue helicopters sweep above the ridge.
Their doors open.
Lines drop toward the clearing.
Falcon looks up. “I’ve never loved that sound more.”
Maverick waves toward the lead aircraft.
“About time.”
A crew chief leans through the door.
“The slope is collapsing! Move!”
No one has to tell us twice.
Cobra carries the evidence case.
Fathom keeps one hand on it all the way to the first helicopter.
Mac helps Rook toward the second.
Caleb stays beside me until we reach the line.
“You first,” he says.
“We go together.”
The ground shakes.
The bunker collapses beneath us.
I grab the line.
Caleb locks one arm around my waist.
The helicopter lifts us from the mountainside as the summit folds into itself.
The Forest Service cabin vanishes.
Then the bunker.
Then the openings where Victor and the Inner Guard emerged.
The headquarters of the First Circle disappears beneath millions of tons of rock.
But the First Circle isn’t gone.
Charles Whitmore escaped.
Walter Graves escaped.
Part of Protocol Ash succeeded.
Some of their operatives are still hidden inside governments, militaries, courts, and corporations.
This war is far from over.
Caleb pulls me closer as the helicopter carries us away.
His mouth is near my ear.
“We made it.”
I look down at the Chairman’s journal against my chest.
“No.”
I turn toward him.
“We found the people responsible.”
His eyes meet mine.
“Now we make them answer.”
Below us, the mountain disappears inside a cloud of dust.
Inside Cobra’s evidence case is a list of names powerful enough to ignite the next war.
And for the first time, Shadow Division knows exactly who it is fighting.