Ethan's sketches covered Maria's table — Kestrel, as he'd watched it for two days: the medical building, the mast, the floodlights, the patrol routes, the rear window with the broken latch he'd memorized.
"I know this place," he said. "Not like Central. Better. I watched it."
He talked them through it, and his photographic memory did the rest — every detail from the two-day watch, laid out like photographs. The patrol routes: every two hours, clockwise, with a gap on the east side when the shift changed at midnight. The refrigeration crate by the medical building's loading dock — still there, still humming. The grey-coated woman's routine: clipboard rounds at dawn and dusk, always the same path.
"The rear window," Ethan said. "Medical building, ground floor. The latch is broken — I saw it from the ridge. That's our way in."
Hale studied the sketches. "Talk me through it."
"The medical building's the heart. That's where they had Sam — rear window, vial racks, the works. Vane's people consolidated there; Nora said everything's being pulled in." Ethan's finger moved to the mast. "And that's the prize. Their relay mast. I tapped it for a week — I know the burst windows, the encryption, the net it talks to."
"You're saying we use their mast," Marlene said slowly.
"I'm saying we use everything." Ethan looked up. "We go in small — medical building, get my mother, get the files. Then we get to the mast, and we broadcast it all. The harvest schedules. The manifests. The transfer logs. Everything Vane's been hiding."
"To who?" Dana asked.
"To everyone." Marlene was already nodding, fast. "My people have receivers in six settlements. FEDRA remnants monitor that band. Every warlord with a radio will hear it." She looked at Ethan. "You can't sell protection by the dose if the whole valley knows where the doses come from."
"And if they don't believe it?" It was Tommy, from the window, his sling a white slash. "Words on a radio. Vane'll say it's Firefly propaganda."
"Then we give them more than words." Marlene's voice was steel. "The manifests have names. Dates. Transfer routes. The harvest schedules have Vane's initials on every page — Ethan saw them." She looked around the table. "I've spent two years building credibility with these settlements. They'll listen to me. And when they hear a fourteen-year-old boy read his own harvest schedule on the air —" she looked at Ethan, "— they'll believe him."
"That's the theme," Hale said. "What's the plan?"
The plan took shape in pencil and argument.
In through the medical building's rear — Ethan knew the window, the corridors, the vial room. Marlene knew Vane's protocols: shift changes, code words, the way her people thought. Joel and Hale would be the muscle; Dana would run the perimeter with the horses.
"The east gap," Ethan said. "Midnight shift change — eleven minutes where the patrol's blind. That's our window in. The window latch is broken; we go through it, not around it."
"Eleven minutes," Hale repeated. "Tight."
"It's what we've got," Ethan said. "It's enough."
"Mira first," Ethan said. "She's in the secure wing — same place they had Sam. We get her, we get the files from the office, then the mast."
"And Vane?" Joel asked.
Nobody answered for a moment.
"We're not going for Vane," Marlene said finally. "Kill her and the money just sends another one. We burn the market. That's the war."
"She'll be there," Hale said. "Kestrel's hers. She won't run."
"Then we go around her," Ethan said. "Fast and quiet. We're not an army."
David found Ethan at the sketches that night, and the look on his face was the look of a man about to lose an argument he'd already lost.
"I should go," David said. "She's my wife. I've been in a cell for three years, Ethan. I can't —" His voice cracked. "I can't sit in that clinic while you go back in there for her."
"The doctor said you'd tear open in a day." Ethan didn't look up from the mast diagram — couldn't. "And Maria needs someone here who knows Vane's protocols if —" He stopped, and finally looked at his father. "Dad. I need you here. If something goes wrong in there, you're the one who gets the kids out. Sam, Wren, Milo, Nora — you're the only one besides me who's been inside their system. They need you breathing more than I need you beside me."
David was quiet a long moment. Then his hand landed on Ethan's shoulder — the same weight Joel's had, the same language.
"Bring her home," David said. "All of them."
"That's the whole job," Ethan said.
Ellie found him on the wall walk after, and they stood looking west together, the way they had a hundred times.
"After Kestrel?" she asked.
Ethan considered. "After Kestrel, we get to be bored."
She snorted. "You wouldn't know bored if it bit you."
"Probably not." He paused. "But I'd like to try. You, me, Sam — the whole loud mess. No more rooms. No more files." He glanced at her. "Tomatoes."
"Tomatoes," Ellie agreed solemnly. Then, quieter: "Come back, Ethan."
"You too." He nodded toward the east, where her overwatch would be. "You're the one with the rifle."
Her hand found his on the rail — and this time, in the dark, with nobody watching, she didn't let go first. Neither did he.
Dawn. The table was clean, the plan in pencil, the team ready.
Hale checked his rifle. Marlene checked her pistol. Joel checked Ethan's pack — once, not three times. Dana saddled the horses. Ellie was already gone, up the east slope of wherever they'd put her.
Maria looked at the map — at Kestrel, circled in red — and then at Ethan.
"We don't bring an army," she said.
"We bring the truth," Ethan said.
They left under a grey sky, six riders, and Jackson watched them go.
Sam stood at the gate with Wren and Milo and Nora — four kids in a row, none of them waving, all of them watching. Nora lifted her chin as Ethan passed, the way Sam had, like a soldier. Ethan nodded back, and kept riding, and didn't look back — because if he looked back, he might not keep riding.