Chapter 9 - Grandfather's Confession
The flash drive felt ice-cold against my skin, but it was the small piece of folded paper inside the torn brown paper that demanded my attention. By the dim amber glow of our burning home, I unfolded the note. My grandfather’s sharp, frantic cursive scrawl filled the page:
Elena, if you are reading this, David failed to protect the line. Do not trust Marcus. Do not trust the badge. The foundation holds the truth of what happened to your parents.
My breath caught. My parents hadn't died in a routine plane crash when I was five. The official reports had been a fabricated lie, signed off by the very agency Marcus represented.
"Elena, give me the drive!" Marcus shouted, scrambling out of the mud with his gun raised, ignoring Miller who had already vanished into the burning wreckage. "That data will destroy national security!"
"It should have been destroyed twenty years ago!" I screamed back, stepping away from him and holding the drive tight against my chest.
David raised his weapon again, locking eyes with Marcus across the burning grass. "Step away from her, Marcus. The archive is already transmitting to every major news outlet in the country. Your little syndicate doesn't exist anymore."
Marcus froze, his radio crackling to life with a frantic, distorted voice spewing panicked corporate codes. The federal backup vehicles suddenly began reversing, their drivers receiving orders to abandon the site as the digital dam broke.
"You've destroyed us all, David," Marcus whispered, lowering his gun with a defeated shake of his head. He turned and sprinted toward the treeline without looking back.
The fire sirens finally wailed in the distance, cutting through the silence of the burning suburban neighborhood. But as the first red and blue lights flashed through the trees, David grabbed my arm, his face pale with a new, terrifying urgency.
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"We have to get Leo out of the well house right now," David panted, pulling me toward the backyard. "Marcus lied about the backup. The real team isn't the FBI."
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