Chapter 17 - The Power Grid Failure
The sudden plunge into darkness was instantaneous. Outside, the cheerful suburban streetlights along our block flickered and died in unison, plunging the entire neighborhood into a uniform, ink-black shadow.
In military intelligence, total grid failure is never a coincidence caused by a localized transformer blown in a storm. It is always the prelude to a coordinated tactical insertion.
"Martha," I whispered sharply, my voice cutting through the silence like a razor. "Get to Mom’s room. Lock the reinforced steel-core door from the inside and do not open it for anyone—not even my voice—unless I give you our childhood verification code."
Martha didn't panic. Her background as a combat medic in high-risk zones kicked in instantly. Without a word, she moved silently down the hallway toward my mother’s bedroom, her footsteps swallowed by the heavy carpet.
I slid my service sidearm into my tactical holster, grabbed my encrypted terminal from the dining table, and dropped into a low, tactical crouch behind the living room sofa. My eyes adjusted quickly to the faint moonlight filtering through the uncovered windows.
The front door didn't burst open with a dramatic kick. Professionals don't announce their arrival with noise.
Instead, the glass of the front window cracked with a sharp, diamond-cutter precision, followed by the soft, nearly silent hiss of a tactical gas canister rolling across the hardwood floor of the entryway.
Tear gas—CS gas, engineered to disorient, blind, and induce panic within seconds.
I pulled a filtered respirator mask from my cargo pocket, snapped it securely over my nose and mouth, and held my breath as the white, billowing smoke began to fill the hallway, hugging the floorboards like a creeping ghost.
Through the haze, three silhouettes materialized in the doorway. They wore matte-black tactical gear with no insignia, carrying suppressed submachine guns at low-ready, moving with the terrifying, synchronized fluidity of tier-one operators.
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They weren't local thugs or hired hitmen sent by Vanessa. These were ghost operatives—state-sponsored deniable assets sent to clean up the loose ends that Senator Vance’s trial threatened to unravel.
And they had walked straight into my kill zone.
