ACT 1: THE BREACH

Carlos looked out the window, knowing something was coming. He couldn’t possibly have known whether what he had done would truly draw the attention of the government, yet somewhere deep inside him, he had expected this. The act itself had seemed almost innocuous. Small. But if someone out there understood what it meant, then they would come.

He pushed his chair back from the computer and sat listening to the silence of the house. The low hum of the air conditioner drifted through the vents. Outside, muted birdsong rose and fell beneath a sky thick with clouds, dimming the room in a cold gray light.

Then, in the distance, came the low rumble of a helicopter.

Carlos’s stomach tightened.

That was them.

He stepped toward the window, trying to catch sight of it through the trees and rooftops beyond the yard, but saw nothing. Maybe they were approaching from the other side of the house.

Then he noticed the red dot resting on the wall behind him.

His pulse lurched.

Maybe he’d gone too far.

He slowly backed away from the room and stepped into the second-floor hallway. A wooden railing ran along its edge, overlooking the living room below. Through the glass doors beyond the couch, he could see the porch outside, gray beneath the overcast sky.

The house suddenly felt occupied.

Not noisy.
      Not chaotic.

Occupied.

He couldn’t see anyone, but he could feel them moving through the house with impossible precision.

Then, without warning, a figure descended from above on a black rope.

A rush of wind poured through the skylight as the woman dropped soundlessly into the hallway before him, dressed completely in black. A compact machine gun rested loosely in her right hand, lowered toward the floor. Somewhere above and behind her, Carlos knew the rest of the team was there, though none of them revealed themselves.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Carlos’s eyes flicked once toward the weapon, then back to her face. The gun remained lowered, but the memory of the red dot still burned in the back of his mind.

The woman studied him carefully.

Not suspiciously.

Almost knowingly.

“We know you know,” she said calmly.

The words sent a strange chill through him. Not because they were threatening, but because they confirmed something he had already begun to suspect.

Her eyes remained fixed on him.

“Consider yourself officially recruited.”

Carlos said nothing.

A strange mixture of fear and relief moved through him at the same time.

Recruited?

Recruited into what?