Stop pretending you're a nurse,” my brother ridiculed me at the military gala. I ignored him and invited the general’s disabled son to dance.

Across the city of Washington, the screens died—and then they roared to life.

In the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt, where the military gala was still trying to recover from the scandalous departure of the Vance family, the massive crystal displays flanking the stage flickered, cutting off the orchestra mid-crescendo. Carson Vance, standing with a glass of champagne surrounded by wealthy socialites and sycophants, turned toward the display, his smirking expression freezing into a mask of pure, curdled terror.

On the screen was not a socialite's toast, but a high-definition satellite feed stamped with the seal of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Beside it, bank ledger sheets scrolled rapidly, highlighting Carson’s personal signature beneath the transfer authorization for seven crates of black-market Javelin missiles sold to insurgent militias in the Helmand Province.

And below that, played on an infinite loop, was the cockpit voice recording from the medevac helicopter that had pulled Nathan’s broken body from the burning wreckage of his Humvee—a recording where Carson’s voice could clearly be heard over the radio, ordering the air support to delay their arrival by twenty critical minutes.

The gala dissolved into gasps, dropped glasses, and utter pandemonium. Carson stepped back, his face bone-white, only to find himself backed directly into the chest of two towering Military Police officers, their sidearms drawn and handcuffs already gleaming in the chandelier light.

Meanwhile, three blocks away, through the street grate above our heads, the world had exploded into sirens and flashing strobes.

The broadcast was out. The conspiracy was shattered. Marcus Thorne was finished.

Or so we thought.

A sudden, sharp metallic crash echoed from the upper rim of our service shaft. The heavy iron street grate thirty feet above us wasn't being opened by the soldiers of the Old Guard.

It had been blasted off its hinges with a shaped thermite charge.

A dark figure dropped through the opening, landing heavily on the steel service platform twenty feet above us, silhouetted against the flashing emergency lights of the street. He didn't wear a uniform. He wore the ragged, soot-stained dark overcoat of a man who had nothing left to lose.

Marcus Thorne.

He was bleeding from a shrapnel wound on his temple, his tie torn, his cold aristocratic demeanor replaced by the feral, rabid madness of a doomed autocrat. In his left hand, he held an operational command detonator linked to the gas mains feeding the city’s federal district; in his right, a heavy semi-automatic pistol pointed straight down the shaft toward my forehead.

"You took everything from me, Vance!" Thorne shrieked down the narrow brick chimney, his voice echoing off the damp walls like the wail of a demon. "You think your father's soldiers can save you down here? If I burn, this entire block drops into the crater with me!"

Nathan shoved me behind him, his boots digging into the rusted rung of the ladder, his wounded chest heaving as he stared up into the barrel of Thorne's gun.

"Drop the detonator, Marcus!" Nathan shouted, his voice steady, uncompromising, defying the pain tearing through his body. "It’s over! The broadcast has reached three hundred million people! There is no bunker deep enough to hide you!"

Thorne sneered, his finger tightening around the trigger of the pistol as his thumb hovered over the arming switch of the gas line charge.