The warehouse doors closed without a sound. The locks slid home. The echo died fast, swallowed by insulation and steel. No one spoke.The Vanguard stood where they had stopped, boots planted on concrete stained with oil and old blood. Gear hung loose. Rifles stayed slung. Helmets came off one by one and were set on tables or the floor. Sweat dried on skin. No one wiped it away.A generator hummed somewhere deep in the building. Its steady note filled the space like a held breath.Navarro moved first. He crossed the main floor with a limp he did not try to hide. He dropped his pack near the long steel table and rested both hands on the edge. His knuckles were split. The blood had already gone dark. “Lock it down,” he said. His voice stayed flat. “All doors. All cameras. No gaps.”Two operators peeled off without answering. Their boots faded down opposite corridors.Jin did not move. She sat on a crate near the wall, back straight, hands on her knees. Her eyes stayed open. She blinked o

The first arrest happened on live television. The anchor was mid-sentence when the feed cut to the courthouse steps. The camera wobbled as a producer shouted off-screen. Marshals moved fast, jackets open, badges flashing.A man in a tailored suit stumbled as his hands were pulled behind his back. Papers spilled from a briefcase and scattered across the stone.The anchor stopped talking. The broadcast did not cut away. Inside the Vanguard warehouse, a dozen screens showed the same image from different angles. No one cheered. No one spoke.Landon stood with his arms crossed, watching without blinking. The sound was off. He did not need it.Navarro leaned against a table behind him. “That’s number three.”Landon nodded once. Another screen switched feeds. A different city. A different building. The same outcome. Aether Dominion executives escorted out under guard. Faces tight. Jaws clenched. No resistance.Claire stepped into the room with a phone pressed to her ear. She listened, turne

The rain stopped before sunrise. Water still clung to the streets. It pooled in broken cracks. It slid along the edges of sidewalks. Steam rose where warm air met cold concrete.A man stood on a roof near the river. He wore a plain jacket and dark boots. His hood stayed low. His face stayed unseen. He watched the city wake up.Sirens did not scream today. They hummed far away. Construction trucks rolled instead. Their engines growled slow and steady.Below the roof, people moved. A woman carried boards from a truck. Her hands shook, but she did not stop. A man held a clipboard and pointed at a broken storefront. Two teens lifted glass into a bin. Their arms were thin. Their backs bent. They worked anyway.Landon Hale stepped back from the ledge. He climbed down the fire escape. His boots hit metal. The sound echoed once, then faded.He walked. No armor. No mask. No weapons. Just a man moving through a wounded city.On Third Street, a wall had changed. It once held gang marks and thre

The night was quiet in Milwaukee. The city still bore scars from battles that had burned streets, toppled buildings, and filled alleys with memories that smelled of smoke and steel. Sirens had fallen silent, but tension lingered like a low hum beneath the streetlights. The Vanguard’s safehouse had become a sanctuary, a cramped space atop an abandoned warehouse, lined with screens, maps, and supply crates. It smelled faintly of electronics and coffee, of cleaning rags that had soaked up too many days of planning and surveillance.Claire sat on the edge of a metal table. Her boots scraped lightly against the floor when she shifted. She kept her notebook open, pens lined beside her, graphs half-filled with projected troop movements, enemy positions, and civilian evacuation routes.Everything was measured. Everything was precise. Yet tonight, she didn’t touch the pen. She didn’t look at the charts. She stared at the flickering fluorescent light above her, the shadows it cast in jagge

The power went out without warning. Lights cut. Screens went black. The low hum of the underground hub died.For one second, no one moved. Then emergency strips along the floor clicked on, casting red lines across concrete walls. Shadows stretched and froze.Navarro’s hand went to his sidearm. Jin lifted his head from a half-open terminal. Claire stood still at the center table, fingers resting on a paper map.Landon Hale did not reach for anything. He stayed where he was, standing near the back wall, hood down, hands open.A second later, the lights returned. Full brightness. Systems rebooted. The hum came back. Jin exhaled through his nose. “False drop,” he said. “Grid test.”Navarro lowered his hand. “Do not do that again,” he said.Jin gave a small nod and turned back to his screen. Claire tapped the table once. “Sit,” she said.They did. The room was different now. Less gear. More space. Some crates were gone.The weapons racks were half empty.The war room had become a planning r