The helicopter didn't land anywhere official.
That should have been my first clue.
Freddy guided it down onto a stretch of cracked asphalt behind what looked like an abandoned shipping depot on the outskirts of the city. There were no markings, no perimeter lights, no signs of life except the faint glow spilling from a side entrance that looked like it had no business being powered.
The blades slowed, then stopped.
Silence settled heavily around us.
"This is where we meet the head of the FBI?" I asked, my voice rough, threaded with disbelief.
Freddy unbuckled without looking at me. "Clint stopped doing things officially a long time ago."
"That doesn't answer the question."
He paused then, glancing over.
"It is the answer."
Something in his tone told me not to push—yet.
I stepped out of the helicopter, my legs steadier than before but still unreliable, like they were waiting for permission from something that wasn't me. The night air hit colder now, sharper, like it was trying to wake me up fully whether I wanted it or not.
The closer we got to the building, the louder the noise inside became—not chaotic, but active. Voices. Movement. Purpose.
This wasn't abandoned.
It was hidden.
Freddy pushed the door open without knocking.
Inside, the space had been gutted and rebuilt into something functional and controlled. Monitors lined the walls, maps pinned with layers of data, weapons laid out with military precision. People moved with quiet urgency, none of them wearing uniforms, none of them looking surprised to see Freddy.
Or me.
They'd been expecting us.
"That's not comforting," I muttered.
He gave a faint shrug. "It's efficient."
Before I could say anything else, a voice cut through the room.
"I was starting to think you'd miss your own dramatic entrance."
I froze.
Clint.
He stood near the center table, sleeves rolled up, glasses pushed slightly down his nose, looking exactly the same—and completely different.
For months, I had believed he was a traitor. Not just a bureaucrat with questionable judgment, but a mole. Mirage had infiltrated deep, and everything had pointed to him. The inconsistencies, the cover-ups, the way operations had unraveled just when we'd been close to breaking something open—
And the way he had fired me.
I remembered that moment in painful clarity. His expression had been cold, dismissive. No explanation. No defense.
Just: "You're done here, Agent Hart."
Now he was looking at me like none of that had ever happened.
"You're alive," he said simply.
"Disappointed?" I shot back before I could stop myself.
His mouth almost twitched—not quite a smile, but close.
"Relieved," he corrected.
I didn't move any closer.
"You sold us out," I said flatly.
The room quieted slightly. Not completely—they were disciplined—but enough that the tension shifted, tightened.
Clint didn't react the way I expected. No defensiveness. No anger.
Just patience.
"No," he said. "I didn't."
"That's not what the evidence said."
"It was supposed to," he replied.
That stopped me.
Freddy stepped in then, positioning himself slightly between us—not blocking, not shielding, but… grounding.
"It was a cover," He said. "For me."
My head snapped toward him. "What?"
Clint folded his arms, watching me carefully.
"When Freddy staged his death," he said, "we needed Mirage—and Frank—to believe it was real. Completely."
"So you burned me?" I demanded.
Clint didn't flinch.
"I removed you from the system," he corrected. "Publicly. Permanently."
"You destroyed my career."
"I kept you alive."
The words landed harder than anything else he'd said.
I shook my head. "You don't get to rewrite this like that. I was exposed. Cut off. Every contact, every resource—gone. I was on my own."
"That was the point," Clint said quietly. "Anyone connected to Freddy became a liability. You were one of the few people Frank believed might know the truth about him. If you had stayed in play—if you had looked useful—he would have come for you sooner."
A cold realization crept in.
"He did come for me," I said slowly.
Freddy nodded once. "Yes. Eventually. But not as priority. Not until you became one."
My stomach tightened.
"So all of it," I said, voice lower now, "the suspicion… you being a mole… the op failures…"
"Manufactured," Clint said. "Or allowed. Just enough truth mixed in to make the lie believable."
I looked at Freddy.
"You knew."
He didn't hesitate. "Yeah."
"And you didn't tell me."
"If you'd known," he said, "you would've acted differently. They would've seen it."
Anger flared, sharp and immediate—but it hit something deeper this time. Something tangled with understanding I didn't want.
I turned away, dragging a hand through my hair.
"So let me get this straight," I said. "You lied to Mirage, to Frank, to the Bureau… and to me. And somehow I'm supposed to just trust that you're still on the right side."
Clint stepped closer—not threatening, but intentional.
"You're not supposed to trust it," he said. "You're supposed to evaluate it."
I met his gaze again.
"And?"
"And right now, you walked in with the one man Frank failed to eliminate… after shooting Frank yourself instead of following his command."
My chest tightened.
Clint's eyes sharpened slightly.
"Whatever he did to you," he continued, "it didn't take completely."
"No," I admitted. "It didn't."
"But it's still there," Freddy added.
Clint nodded. "We assumed as much."
That word—assumed—didn't sit well.
"You've dealt with this before?" I asked.
Clint exhaled slowly. "Not exactly like this. But Mirage—and Frank in particular—have been experimenting with neural and biochemical control systems for years. The 'soldier serum' is just… the most refined version."
I stepped closer now despite myself.
"My dad," I said. "He's not like me. He's resisting it."
Clint's expression shifted, something heavier settling in.
"Resistance comes at a cost," he said.
"I've seen it," I replied, my voice tightening. "He's not stable."
"Then we don't have much time," Freddy said.
Clint nodded again, turning toward the central table. A map flickered to life as he activated it, pulling up schematics of a facility I recognized instantly.
The place we had just escaped.
Except now, it was layered with internal data—routes, access points, thermal signatures, patrol patterns.
"Frank will move him," Clint said. "This was a breach he won't ignore."
"Then we hit before he relocates," Freddy said.
"Too risky," Clint countered. "He'll be expecting retaliation."
"We don't have the luxury of safety," Freddy replied.
I stepped between them, forcing both of them to look at me.
"We do it smart," I said. "Not fast."
They both went quiet.
"If we rush in now," I continued, "Frank uses him. Or me. Or both. He's already built control triggers into the serum. I felt it. It's not just commands—it's layered. Reactive."
"Meaning?" Freddy prompted.
"Meaning if I step into the wrong situation, I might not get a second shot at choosing." I swallowed. "And my dad? He's already unstable. A trigger could kill him or… finish what the serum started."
Clint considered that for a moment.
"So we disrupt the control."
"Yes."
He frowned slightly. "How?"
I hesitated.
"I don't know fully," I admitted. "But I know something else—distance weakens it. When we got away from Frank, the commands lost clarity. They didn't stop, but they… blurred."
Freddy leaned forward slightly. "Signal decay."
"Or dependency," I said. "Maybe it needs proximity. Or reinforcement."
"Or a central transmitter," Clint added.
Freddy nodded slowly. "Which means instead of hitting the facility head-on, we target the control system first."
The pieces began to align.
"Take out his leash," I said, "before we grab the hostages."
Freddy let out a quiet breath. "That gives you a fighting chance if he tries again."
"And my dad," I added, "if we can weaken it enough, maybe his resistance won't kill him."
Clint looked between us.
"This becomes a two-stage operation," he said. "Phase one—locate and neutralize whatever he's using to maintain control. Phase two—extraction."
"And Frank?" Freddy asked.
I answered before Clint could.
"He won't run," I said. "Not from me."
Clint studied me carefully.
"No," he agreed. "He won't."
The room seemed to settle around that truth.
For the first time since waking up in that sterile nightmare, I felt something close to direction. Not certainty—not even confidence—but purpose sharpened by everything at stake.
Freddy tapped the map once, locking in the plan framework.
"Alright," he said. "Let's get to work."
I glanced at Clint, then back at Freddy. Trust wasn't there, not fully. Maybe not even halfway.
But for now, we didn't need trust, we needed results.
And I wasn't leaving my father in Frank's hands.
Not again.