Chapter 5 - The Stolen File
Hale stared at the battered dog tag, his mind refusing to accept what he was seeing.
"That is impossible," Hale whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
"You told me you killed your father in your kitchen."
Olivia stared out the rain-slicked windshield into the dark night.
"I did kill him," she stated, her voice devoid of any emotion.
"I watched the light leave his eyes, and I buried him in the woods behind our house."
She turned to look at the hardened Colonel.
"But the parasite in his blood does not just enhance physical strength," Olivia explained.
"It radically accelerates cellular regeneration."
"He woke up underground, dug himself out, and vanished."
Hale rubbed his face in exhaustion, trying to process the absolute nightmare he was now a part of.
Her father was not just alive; he was running the most dangerous private military company on the planet.
"We need a safe house," Hale decided, shifting the vehicle back into gear.
"I know an old Grey Lantern asset who lives off the grid in the next town."
They drove in tense silence until they reached an abandoned lumber mill on the edge of a dense forest.
An older man named Elias was waiting for them inside a small, heavily fortified office.
Elias did not ask any questions when he saw the blood on Olivia's back.
He quickly patched her wounds while Hale checked the perimeter cameras.
"I need you to decrypt a drive for me," Olivia told Elias, pulling a small, waterproof USB from her boot.
Elias plugged it into an offline terminal and began typing rapidly on his keyboard.
"Where did you get this?" Elias asked, his eyes widening as the data decoded onto the screen.
"I stole it from the base commander's private vault before the training exercise," Olivia admitted.
Hale walked over to the screen and felt his stomach drop completely.
The files displayed a detailed ledger of payments made by Apex to a high-ranking military official.
The official had been paid millions to orchestrate the slaughter of the Grey Lantern unit nine years ago.
"This proves my father's unit was set up to die," Olivia said softly.
She scrolled down to the signature line of the authorization document.
Hale immediately reached for his weapon, but Olivia was faster.
May you like
She snatched Elias’s pistol from the desk and pressed the barrel directly against Hale's forehead.
The signature at the bottom of the massacre order belonged to Colonel Marcus Hale.
