Vengeance Protocol

The Breakout

“Thirty-seven minutes until Chen’s transport, people. That’s not a suggestion, it’s a goddamn guillotine hanging over our heads. We get her, we get her codes, or Patriot’s Dawn burns this country to the ground before sunrise.” Agent Maria Torres’s voice was a serrated edge, cutting through the tense silence in the back of the armored FBI tac-van as it barrelled towards the Fort Carson Consolidated Brig. The first faint streaks of dawn were bruising the eastern sky, a grim omen.

Rich Hartman, strapped in beside a stoic Brill Wingfield, felt the familiar cold clench of fear mixed with a desperate, almost reckless resolve. His body still throbbed from his escape from Whitmore’s office tower, but the physical pain was a dull counterpoint to the searing agony of his mentor’s betrayal and the horrifying knowledge of the biological agents [source: 1300–1301] The Alliance intended to unleash. Brill, his injured arm tightly splinted and immobile against his chest, was a study in focused lethality, his good hand methodically checking the action of a compact H&K MP7. Across from them, Dr. Aris Thorne, the Alliance software engineer Brill had extracted from the Mojave facility [source: 1309], was a quivering wreck, his eyes wide with terror, his earlier coerced cooperation now seeming fragile in the face of imminent, overwhelming violence. Carver, in a separate vehicle, was their electronic eyes and ears, running interference and coordinating their desperate, last-ditch assault.

The reports of the initial drone strikes [source: 1288] were already trickling in — isolated power grids flickering out, communication blackouts spreading. The Alliance’s overture had begun.

“Chen’s knowledge of Hastings’ custom drone command system is our only prayer of overriding this,” Torres reiterated, her gaze sweeping over her small, handpicked team. “Thorne,” she jabbed a finger at the trembling engineer, “claims he can access their network’s kill switch, but he needs Chen’s specific authorization protocols to bypass the final firewalls without triggering what he calls a ‘scorched earth’ countermeasure — basically, an automatic full launch of everything, biologicals included, if the system detects an unauthorized breach.”

The plan was audacious, bordering on suicidal. Torres and her primary team would create a diversion at the brig’s main entrance, demanding Chen’s immediate transfer under a fabricated national security directive. This, they hoped, would draw the bulk of the brig’s security, allowing Brill and Carver to infiltrate through a supposedly less-guarded maintenance access point and extract Chen. Rich, armed and wearing an FBI raid jacket that felt like a stolen skin, would accompany Brill and Carver, his knowledge of The Alliance’s duplicity and his lawyer’s ability to improvise under pressure deemed a potential asset in the chaos. Maya, their remote intelligence lifeline, was poised to unleash a devastating package of evidence to international media [source: 1315] the moment Rich gave the signal — a digital dead man’s switch if their desperate gambit failed.

As their small convoy, lights flashing, screamed through the pre-dawn quiet of Fort Carson, Rich felt a profound sense of unreality. Days ago, he’d been a grieving widower, a broken man. Now, he was part of an unsanctioned black ops mission to prevent a coup, armed, hunted, and running on nothing but rage and the fading image of his murdered family.

The brig loomed ahead, a brutalist concrete monolith. As Torres’s lead vehicle screeched to a halt at the sally port, initiating a loud, confrontational engagement with the startled military police, Brill’s voice came sharp and urgent over their encrypted comms. “Carver, Hartman, change of plans. The service tunnel access is… problematic. Looks like our friends from the United Patriots have been moonlighting as prison architects.” Rich could hear the faint, distinctive hiss of a cutting torch in the background. “We’re going loud. Through the laundry chute. Less elegant, more direct. On my mark.”

Before Rich could process the change, the back doors of their van flew open. Brill, despite his injured arm, was already moving, a dark blur against the grey concrete. “Hartman, with me! Carver, cover our entry, then link with Torres, create maximum confusion at the front. We need them looking everywhere but where Chen actually is.”

Rich scrambled out, his MP5 feeling heavy and unfamiliar in his grip. He followed Brill at a dead run towards a less conspicuous section of the brig’s outer wall, where a large, industrial laundry chute offered an unlikely point of ingress. Carver, emerging from his own vehicle, laid down a blistering hail of suppressive fire towards the brig’s guard towers, drawing shouts and return fire, the sudden eruption of gunfire shattering the morning’s deceptive quiet.

Brill kicked open the heavy steel door of the laundry chute access. “Smells like betrayal and bad coffee,” he muttered, then plunged into the darkness. Rich followed, sliding down a steep, narrow metal passage, the reek of bleach and stale sweat assaulting his nostrils. He landed hard on a pile of rough canvas laundry bags in a dimly lit basement room.

“Cell Block D, sub-level two,” Brill said, already consulting a downloaded schematic on a wrist-mounted display. “Chen’s supposed to be in solitary. Let’s move.”

They encountered the first resistance almost immediately. Two guards, their uniforms standard MP, but with the subtle, snarling wolf insignia of a United Patriots cell [source: 1314] visible on a patch beneath their body armor, rounded a corner, their expressions shifting from surprise to murderous intent.

Brill reacted instantly. His MP7, held one-handed, spat a short, precise burst. The lead guard crumpled. The second managed to raise his weapon, but Rich, acting on pure instinct, fired his own MP5, a wild, panicked spray that nevertheless stitched across the man’s chest, sending him staggering back. The recoil slammed Rich’s shoulder, the noise deafening in the confined space.

“Controlled bursts, Hartman!” Brill snapped, already moving past the downed guards. “Save your ammunition and your hearing!”

The fight to reach Chen was a brutal, disorienting blur of concrete corridors, clanging steel doors, and sporadic, vicious firefights. The brig was infested with United Patriots, seamlessly integrated with the regular prison staff, turning the facility into an Alliance stronghold. Alarms blared, emergency lights strobed, and the air filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder and fear. Brill, a whirlwind of deadly efficiency even with one arm compromised, led the way, his movements economical, his shots precise. Rich, his initial terror giving way to a grim, adrenaline-fueled focus, fought to keep up, to cover Brill’s back, to not become a liability.

They found Captain Elise Chen [source: 1313] in a high-security isolation cell, a fresh bruise purpling her cheekbone, her eyes blazing with defiant fury.

“Wingfield?” she gasped as Brill blew the cell door’s magnetic lock with a shaped charge. “What in God’s name…?”

“Your chariot awaits, Captain,” Brill said, offering her his good hand. “We’re a little short on time and red carpets.”

As they fought their way back towards a pre-designated emergency exit, Chen, moving with a soldier’s ingrained discipline, shouted over the cacophony, “They’ve initiated the final launch sequence for Patriot’s Dawn! It’s not a countdown anymore, it’s active! Hastings has a bio-linked dead man’s switch — if his vital signs terminate, the entire drone network launches autonomously, including the biologicals from Pennsylvania! We have to get to a command interface, input the master override codes before his next system-wide heartbeat authentication! We have minutes, maybe less!”

Outside, the diversion Rich had called for from Maya was in full, chaotic swing. News alerts were hitting the internet, international media outlets broadcasting fragmented reports of a high-level military conspiracy within the U.S., citing leaked documents and unnamed sources. The Master Sergeant at the brig’s main entrance, his face pale with fury and panic as his own phone lit up with frantic calls, found his authority evaporating as loyal military personnel and now-exposed United Patriots members began to openly clash. Torres and her team, using the sudden confusion, had disarmed their initial captors and were now fighting to secure the brig’s main control room.

Brill, Chen, and Rich burst out of a fire exit into the grey, chaotic dawn, the sounds of the internal prison battle and the approaching sirens a symphony of desperation. Carver’s van screeched to a halt beside them, its side door sliding open.

“Get in!” Carver roared, laying down covering fire with a heavy machine gun mounted in the van’s doorway. “The main TechCore bunker, Whitmore’s command center [source: 1318] — that’s where the primary Alliance control for Patriot’s Dawn is, according to Thorne! It’s our only shot to access the system-wide kill switch before Hastings’ next heartbeat check!”

Rich scrambled into the van, pulling Chen in after him, Brill providing covering fire before diving in himself. As Carver slammed the vehicle into gear, tires smoking, Rich looked back at the Fort Carson brig, now a full-blown battleground, smoke and the flicker of muzzle flashes painting a hellish tableau against the first rays of the rising sun. He gripped his MP5, its metal cool against his sweat-slicked palms.