Neutral ground turned out to be an old grain depot forty miles east of camp, three concrete silos rising over a cracked loading yard where Valeria's contacts had agreed to meet, no base claiming ownership, no advantage to anyone who arrived first.Ethan arrived early anyway."You always do this," Diana said, climbing out of the truck behind him, scanning the yard with the same clinical attention she gave a wound. "Show up before everyone else so you can watch them walk in instead of the other way around.""Habit.""A useful one, for once." She nodded toward the horizon, where a line of dust marked a convoy still twenty minutes out. "That's probably Ashworth's people. Second base, the one that answered fast."By the time the sun stood directly overhead, three convoys had gathered in the yard alongside Reyes's own trucks and Ethan's small escort. Ashworth turned out to be a broad, gray-bearded man who'd run a logistics company before any of this started and hadn't lost the habit of coun

The gunfire got louder before the base itself came into view, muzzle flashes stuttering along a low ridge of shipping containers and sandbagged trenches, and Rebecca killed the truck's remaining lights the moment the shapes resolved out of the dusk."Formation like Foster described," Julian said from the back seat, voice tight. "See how they're not spreading out? That's not panic. That's drilled movement."Ethan counted fifteen attackers pressing against a perimeter held by maybe thirty defenders, and even from this distance the math read badly. Ashworth's people were fighting hard, but they were fighting like people who'd built their base for shelter, not for war, and the cull squad moved like they'd trained for nothing else."Flank them from the east side," Reyes said over the radio, already peeling his trucks wide of the main approach. "Draw their attention off the main gate long enough for Ashworth's people to regroup."The convoy split without further discussion, three trucks cur

The research station sat low against the horizon, half buried into a hillside like a structure meant to be overlooked rather than defended, and Julian led the team through the gap in its perimeter fence with the careful, muscle-deep certainty of someone remembering a path his body knew even when his mind couldn't fully explain why."Service entrance, forty yards ahead," he whispered, crouched low beside Ethan in the scrub brush. "There's a keypad. I remember the pattern, I think, though it's been rewired at least once since whatever version of me learned it.""Think or know?" Rebecca asked, close on his other side."Think. It's the best I've got."They moved in pairs, Ethan and Rebecca first, Julian and Chloe second, Reyes and a quiet, capable woman named Nadia from Ashworth's base bringing up the rear with the team's only heavy weapon slung across her back. Six people, no more, exactly as Reyes had insisted, small enough to move fast and quiet through a facility that didn't yet know