Chapter 5 - The Final Move
The alley was narrow, smelling of rain and old trash.
The woman—the decoy—stood with a terrifying stillness.
She wore the same face as my mother, but her eyes were empty, like a doll’s.
"Drop the weapon, Beatrice," my father said, his voice surprisingly calm.
"She won't hesitate."
I lowered my carbine, but I didn't drop it.
"You're not going to kill him," I said, staring into the eyes of the woman who wore my mother’s skin.
"If you kill him, you'll never get the secondary decryption code."
The woman tilted her head, a robotic gesture.
"The data is already being erased from the cloud," she said.
"The only copy is in that key."
"Give it to me, and I might let him live."
I looked at my father.
He gave me a small, almost imperceptible nod.
It was a signal we had practiced when I was a child, a game we called "The Last Resort."
"Fine," I said.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the brass key.
I held it up, the metal gleaming in the light of a flickering streetlamp.
"Catch."
I tossed the key high into the air.
As her eyes followed the arc of the metal, I moved.
I didn't go for my gun.
I went for the knife strapped to my thigh.
My father dropped to the ground, sweeping her legs with a move he hadn't used in thirty years.
She stumbled, her shot going wild and hitting a brick wall.
I was on her in an instant.
I drove the blade into her shoulder, neutralizing her arm, and slammed her head against the damp pavement.
She went limp.
I stood over her, breathing hard, my heart hammering against my ribs.
My father scrambled to his feet, dusting off his coat.
"I'm getting too old for this," he wheezed.
"You did fine, Dad," I said, picking up the brass key.
Agent Miller’s SUV screeched to a halt at the end of the alley.
"We have to go!" she yelled.
"The police are two minutes out, and they aren't the friendly kind."
We piled into the car and disappeared into the night.
An hour later, we were in a safe house on the outskirts of Virginia.
My real mother was there.
When she saw us, she ran to my father, and for a moment, they weren't spies or architects of secrets.
They were just two people who had survived a long, dark night.
I sat at the kitchen table, the brass key sitting in front of me.
"What happens now?" I asked.
My father sat down across from me, looking older than ever.
"The data is being sent to every major news outlet and the few honest politicians left in this city."
"The Foundry is over."
"But Richard Sinclair is still dead."
"And Colonel Beatrice Sinclair... well, she disappeared from her father's funeral."
I looked at my hands.
They were stained with grease and gunpowder.
"So we're ghosts," I said.
"We're free," he corrected.
"For the first time in twenty years, no one is watching us."
"No one is waiting for us to fail."
He reached across the table and covered my hand with his.
"I'm sorry I put you through that grave, Bea."
"I'm sorry I made you cry for a man who wasn't there."
I looked at him and finally felt the tears I had been holding back since the cemetery.
"You buried an empty casket, Dad."
"But you gave me back my life."
We stayed in that house for a week, watching the world change on the news.
Arrests were made.
Governments shifted.
The shadows were forced into the light.
One morning, I walked out onto the porch and looked at the sunrise.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
It was a new number.
A single message:
"Unit 18 is ready when you are."
I looked back at the house, at my parents drinking coffee in the kitchen.
I smiled and tossed the phone into the tall grass.
The funeral had been a beginning.
And the story was far from over.
I walked down the steps and into the morning mist.
Colonel Beatrice Sinclair was gone.
But something far more dangerous had taken her place.
A woman who knew the truth.
May you like
A woman who knew that sometimes, the only way to live...
...is to first be buried.
