A Star Fire corporate jet, jet black and branded with the company logo, tore through the Colorado night sky on a course for the East Coast.
Inside the cabin, Ryan leaned back in a leather seat, flipping through a classified file on the Penamstan Incident. Sunlight slanted through the window across the cool lines of his profile, and nothing in those dark eyes gave anything away.
"Is everything arranged? Did those two I mentioned earlier agree to cooperate?" Ryan looked over at Jill.
"All set. Ryan, Leon's already gone in ahead of us." Jill closed her laptop and turned her head. "Though Wilson, that old fox, seems to have prepared for this. He's citing a national security system upgrade to tighten the outer perimeter. Looks like he plans to keep us locked out."
Ryan shut the file, a faint, amused curl at the corner of his mouth. "Keep Star Fire out? He must have forgotten he doesn't get the final word here. He probably doesn't know we already got our invitation."
Two hours later, the northwest gate of the White House, in the District.
A squad of armed soldiers blocked Ryan's motorcade. The officer in charge rapped on the window with a blank expression, his tone clipped. "Sorry. This area is under temporary lockdown. No agency personnel are permitted inside, regardless of credentials."
Ryan didn't even lower the window. He just tapped his phone screen once with a fingertip.
Less than thirty seconds later, the communicator at the officer's hip started blaring. The moment he answered, the arrogance drained right out of his face and left it pale. Even his stance stiffened up.
"Ye... yes, Mr. Graham! Understood!"
He gave a shaky wave of his hand, signaling the barrier to be raised, and didn't dare meet the eyes of the man in the back seat.
The motorcade swept through.
...
West Wing conference room, the White House.
When Ryan pushed the door open with Jill at his side, the atmosphere in the room froze.
Wilson, who had been seated on the sofa mid-report to Graham, cut off abruptly. Those sharp, hawkish eyes locked onto Ryan, and the composed, in-control set of his expression fractured a little.
"Ryan, it's been a while." Graham rose from his seat, a flicker of visible relief in his eyes, and came over personally to shake Ryan's hand. "I heard about what happened with Javier. Star Fire's performance was outstanding. I'm counting on you for this one."
"It's part of the job, Mr. Graham." Ryan gave a slight nod, then let his gaze drift past Graham and settle on Wilson. "So this must be Mr. Wilson. I hear you've been very 'patient' with Star Fire's contract approvals lately. I came down personally to thank you."
Wilson forced a thin, humorless smile. His voice was rough. "Mr. Ryan is too kind. In extraordinary times, it's always better to be thorough. After all, nobody wants to see the Umbrella tragedy play out a second time, do we?"
"My thoughts exactly." Ryan walked straight to the seat across from Wilson and sat down, the motion unhurried. "Which is why I've been invited to personally take part in this defense system upgrade. In a world full of hackers and traitors, only real rigor can guarantee real security."
Wilson's grip tightened around his pen without him meaning to. In the calm steadiness of Ryan's gaze, he had caught a threat that rattled him somewhere deep.
Right then, the lights throughout the entire White House flickered twice, strangely, and cut out completely.
"What's going on?" Wilson asked.
Ryan didn't move from the sofa. He watched Wilson opposite him put on a show of surprise, and idly fished a small object from the inside pocket of his jacket, setting it on the table. A light push of his thumb.
Click.
A cold white beam flared up from the tabletop, small but bright enough to light the whole room.
"Looks like Mr. Wilson's little show is starting early."
He tilted his head toward Jill beside him and said softly, "Go. Stick to the plan. Help them clean the place up, inside and out."
...
The White House had been thrown into chaos by the blackout, and the air felt thick and heavy.
Graham sat with his hands folded, exhaustion and confusion written across his face. Off to the side, Wilson was trying to hold onto the iron-handed composure of a man in charge, but the way his fingers kept working the nib of his pen gave away the agitation underneath.
"Mr. Ryan, the situation out there is already out of control." Wilson broke the silence, voice low with a trace of threat buried in it. "If this can't be brought back under control soon, I'll have no choice but to order the National Guard into the District."
Ryan was settled back against the sofa, taking an unhurried sip of hot coffee before setting the cup gently back on its saucer.
"No need to go to all that trouble, Mr. Wilson." Ryan raised his head, his gaze unsettlingly calm. "Before I came in to have this coffee, I already took care of the dirty little thing in this room."
Wilson's brow jumped. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means the little guy you sent in with a t-Virus syringe to pull off a poisoning is currently lying in an interrogation room, being personally entertained by the Secret Service." Ryan nodded at the glowing device on the table. "I've also brought along a few other small things."
He pulled out a chip, faintly aglow, from inside his jacket. It was the core evidence he'd gotten from Shen Mei, the one documenting the truth about Penamstan.
"Shen Mei is a smart girl. She knows Star Fire's word is worth more than some abstract idea of justice." Ryan slid the chip into the device. "Mr. Graham, this contains more than just Mr. Wilson's experimental data on developing a suppressant to control soldiers and manufacture B.O.W.s. There's also some very compelling testimony."
The screen flickered, and a pale, hard-set face appeared on it.
"I'm Jason. I go by another name too. The 'Hero' of Penamstan." Jason's voice on the screen was hoarse, with bottomless hatred sitting behind his eyes. "It was Wilson who forced us to inject that cursed Plagas suppressant. Turned us into his playthings. Every order came straight from his private terminal."
Wilson shot up from the sofa so abruptly that he dragged the whole piece of furniture with him, the harsh grating of it echoing through the quiet room. He fixed his stare on Ryan, a vein jumping at his temple. "Fabrication! This is the most despicable kind of forgery! Ryan, you really think a few synthesized recordings and some falsified lab reports are enough to frame me?"
He whipped his head toward Graham, voice nearly a roar. "Mr. Graham! Star Fire is stealing classified material! They are the biggest threat this country has!"
Ryan let out a small laugh. He wasn't in any rush to argue. He just pressed lightly on the little device sitting on the table.
"Mr. Wilson, you love putting the word 'country' in your mouth, but you seem to have forgotten that a country is made up of living people. Not those overdosed 'walking dead' of yours."
Wilson's smile locked on his face, pupils contracting sharply from the shock. "You... what are you talking about?"
"Mr. Graham, why don't we take a look at what Mr. Wilson has been up to in private?"
Ryan didn't bother waiting for Wilson to respond. The glowing device on the table came alive, and a pale blue holographic screen unfolded in the room, the feed cutting straight to the depths of Anderson Air Force Base.
On screen, Carlos's broad frame filled the shot. He was standing on a heap of blown-out incubator wreckage, waving at the camera. "Boss, the firewalls here were a lot flimsier than we expected. Also, turns out our Mr. Wilson has done a lot of homework on bioweapons programs."
The camera framed his face first, then he slowly turned, swinging the lens to show the space behind him.
It was an underground facility so vast the far end faded out of sight. Emergency lighting poured cold white light down from steel gantries set dozens of meters overhead, illuminating row after row of hibernation pods stretching into the distance. Each one stood like a coffin on end, and through the transparent lid you could make out a human silhouette, threaded with tubing and lines, floating quietly in a pale green nutrient fluid.
Carlos stepped closer to one of the pods, and the camera zoomed in until you could clearly see the warped face of the soldier inside. It had once been a face that served the country. Now it was nothing but a vessel for the virus.
Carlos flipped open a classified file stamped with the words "Highest-Level Clemency Authorization." The signature on it was unmistakably Wilson's.
Slam.
Graham's fist came down hard on the table, his voice shaking. "Wilson. What were they to you? What is this country to you?"
"No... this is impossible! That place was garrisoned by... by the most advanced ID systems!" Wilson bellowed, half unhinged. The safe haven he'd spent years carefully building had, in this moment, become a one-way ticket to hell.
Graham stared at the sickening data from the illegal human experiments on the holographic screen, then looked over at Wilson, ashen-faced and stripped of any ability to talk his way out. As a father, he thought of the daughter who had nearly been killed in Spain. As a man in charge, he felt a fury of betrayal he'd never felt before.
"Enough."
Graham's roar came down like thunder. He slammed the desk, the sound ringing through the silent room.
"Wilson. As of now, in my official capacity, I am formally relieving you of all duties."
Graham turned to the Secret Service agents posted outside the door, his voice frigid, not a shred of warmth in it. "Take over Anderson Base immediately. Arrest everyone involved. As for Wilson, freeze every one of his accounts and access permissions. I don't want to see that name still attached to that position in tomorrow morning's papers."
"Yes, Mr. Graham."
Two agents took Wilson by the shoulders, one on each side. The man who had once walked with such untouchable arrogance looked now as if his spine had been pulled clean out. He was dragged out of the office.
"Ryan." Graham turned to him, a tangle of emotion in his eyes. "This whole farce finally ends in your hands."
"No, Mr. Graham." Ryan stood back up, composed. "It ends in human hands. The real threat was never here. It's always been with the madmen who think of themselves as gods."
Ryan walked out through the door, the lights stretching his shadow long behind him. Jill, Sherry, and Becky followed close at his back.