Location: Fort Liberty, North Carolina
Status: Administrative Stand-down (Unofficial)
Zane Cross sat alone in a concrete briefing room on base. No windows. One chair. One camera in the corner. No clocks. No watch.
The mission debrief on Crow had ended two days ago. But no flight orders came in. No comms from his team. No follow-up.
He wasn't being deployed.
He was being parked.
The Interrogator
The door opened. A man stepped in wearing a cheap blue suit. Government issue. Smile like wet paper.
"Zane Cross," he said, dropping a folder on the table. "Or should I say, Ghost-9?"
Zane said nothing.
The man flipped open the file. Inside were satellite images, heatmaps, kill logs — all from the Syria op.
"You followed orders, technically," the man continued. "But unofficially? You stepped over lines you weren't supposed to see."
Zane's stare was unblinking. "Then you shouldn't have sent me."
The man leaned in, voice low and sharp. "Delta's a hammer. Not a camera. You weren't supposed to think."
Zane grinned, dead-eyed. "That your threat or your confession?"
The Setup Unfolds
That night, Zane left the holding wing. His quarters had been moved — a sterile room in an empty barracks building.
On the cot was a burner phone and a folded slip of paper.
"Check your father's file."
— V
Vandal.
His old team leader. The man he saw with the CIA handler. The same one he no longer trusted.
The Father File
Zane accessed an old terminal in the comms vault at 0300 hours. Used a backdoor login Shade-7 once showed him in Syria.
He searched his father's military records.
What he found?
Redactions. Dozens.
But through the gaps, something emerged.
His father had been part of Unit 13 — a pre-Delta kill squad under CIA command. Black book operations in the '90s. South America. The Balkans. Domestic counterintelligence.
Zane blinked.
His father didn't "retire broken."
He was broken by the same machine Zane was now in.
The Confrontation
Zane called Vandal using the encrypted channel still active from OTC.
Vandal answered. Face rough, voice tired.
"I figured you'd find it."
"You were CIA?" Zane asked.
"No. But I answered to people who were. Still do, sometimes."
"You set me up in Syria."
Vandal didn't deny it. "I protected you from the fallout. If you hadn't killed Crow, they'd have killed you and burned every trace of your ops."
Zane's voice was ice. "Why send me at all?"
"Because you're too useful to waste — but too sharp to control."
Zane didn't reply.
"I'm not your enemy," Vandal said. "But you're not a soldier anymore. You're something else. And soon, you'll have to choose—keep taking orders, or write your own."
Final Page
That night, Zane left base with a duffel and no destination.
He didn't go AWOL.
But he was no longer just a Delta operator.
He was now a variable — an unmonitored asset the government couldn't fully account for. Too dangerous to stop. Too valuable to waste.