Chapter 18 - The Blood Debt
Before Evelyn could process his words, a cold voice spoke directly behind her ear:
"Drop the rifle, Captain. Now."
Evelyn felt the unmistakable pressure of a steel barrel pressing firmly into the base of her skull.
Slowly, she looked in the reflection of the rain-slicked helicopter window. Standing behind her, holding the weapon with steady, unshakeable hands, was not an unknown assassin.
It was General Marcus Vance.
Her breath caught in her throat. The world seemed to stop spinning. The man who had stood as an honorary pallbearer at her father’s funeral, the four-star general who had saluted her in front of hundreds of high-society elites, the soldier her father had trusted above all others—was holding a gun to her head.
"General...?" Sully yelled from fifty yards away, freezing in his tracks, horrified.
"Stand down, Sergeant Sullivan, or I execute her where she stands," Vance ordered calmly. His voice carried the same authority that had moved divisions across war zones.
"You?" Evelyn whispered, her voice cracking with an unbearable betrayal. "It was you all along? Richard was a pawn... Dad was your brother in arms!"
"Samuel was a dreamer, Evelyn," Vance said, his face cold, carved from stone. "He believed that duty meant dying in obscurity for politicians who sell our blood to foreign corporations for campaign donations. For forty years, I watched the men I trained die in desert sand while suit-wearing cowards in Washington lined their pockets. Meridian was created to take control back. To place the military back at the helm of this decaying republic."
"By crippling our own missile defense?" she spat, tears of pure fury burning in her eyes. "By murdering Dad?"
"Samuel was going to report us to the President," Vance said, not a trace of remorse in his tone. "He left me no choice. I gave him the heart-attack compound myself. He died looking into my eyes, Evelyn. And his last words were an apology to *you* for failing to protect this family."
Richard, barely conscious on the stretcher, began to sob, his bloody hands clawing weakly at the floor of the helicopter. "Evie... Evie, I'm sorry... I couldn't stop them..."
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"Hand over the platinum transponder, Evelyn," Vance said, cocking his pistol. "Give it to me, and I let Richard live. You both walk away into exile. Refuse, and you both die here on this tarmac, buried under an avalanche of classified reports declaring you traitors to the United States."
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