"We finish this. We bring it down."
I nodded once. "Then we start now."
Miles stood abruptly, walking to the sink, gripping the counter edge. He'd seen death before—his work as a therapist brought him close to trauma daily—but this was different.
I looked at the faces on the screen—ordinary people who had no idea lines of code had judged them. Fathers, mothers, students, workers. Targets.
Miles broke his silence. "They killed these people?"
Evelyn explained. "Neutralized is the term they use. Clean. Clinical. Distanced from the reality that these were flesh and blood humans with constitutional rights."
Alex touched the screen gently, as if he could somehow reach through it to Marissa. "This is government-sanctioned murder."
"The government insists there are safeguards." Evelyn opened another folder labeledOVERSIGHT MANIPULATION. "This information proves they've been deliberately misled. Reeves-Halvorsen has been feeding doctored data to oversight committees for years."
"So the US government is fully complicit." Marcus's voice was grim.
"The scariest part isn't the domestic program." Evelyn pulled up sales projections and meeting minutes. "It's that Reeves-Halvorsen has been quietly selling variations of the system to multiple buyers. Foreign governments. Private military contractors. Even corporate security divisions."
The implications hung heavy in the air. This wasn't only about one rogue operation or a few compromised officials. It was about a global shift, fundamentally reshaping power and surveillance beyond national borders or democratic oversight.
I stared back at Evelyn. "How close are they to full implementation?"
"The second-generation system goes live next month. It eliminates the human approval stage entirely. Pure machine judgment and execution."
Miles stood abruptly, walking to the window. His silhouette was tense against the gathering darkness outside. "This is—I can't even—" He shook his head, unable to complete the thought.
Alex's reaction was more visceral—skin flushed, breathing shallow. I recognized the transformation happening behind his eyes. The academic in him was receding, replaced by something more primitive.
His voice was hoarse. "Lars wasn't a villain. He was trying to stop this. He was a flawed man who finally tried to do the right thing."
"And he acted too late," Evelyn confirmed. "But yes. He couldn't live with what he'd created anymore."
Marcus, ever the pragmatist, leaned forward, palms flat against the table. "So what now? This is global. What the hell are we supposed to do from a cabin in the woods?"
The question lay on the table before us—impossibly large and unanswerable. What could five people possibly do against a system embedded in governments, corporations, and military structures worldwide?
It sounded impossible, but something shifted in the room. I felt it in the way Marcus's shoulders squared. Miles turned back toward us, away from the window.
Exposure. Evidence. Truth. They were our only weapons, but they weren't nothing.
Evelyn answered Marcus's question indirectly. "I spent years believing all I could do was survive. Hiding. Moving. Watching from the shadows as the monster I helped create grew beyond control." She looked directly at me. "But Lars's death changed everything. He chose action over hiding, even knowing the cost."
The shadows lengthened across the cabin floor as evening settled around us. Alex rose from his chair, movements stiff from sitting too long in one position.
"We're not surviving anymore." He turned back to face us. "Now, we're resisting. Neither Lars nor Marissa, or any of those over 200 people died in vain."
He'd drawn the line and dared the rest of us to cross it.
Miles remained silent, shoulders hunched as he processed everything we'd learned. Marcus watched him with the protective vigilance of an older brother while his own face revealed the calculations already running behind his eyes. My tactical mind absorbed Evelyn's revelations.
"Resistance sounds noble." Evelyn closed her laptop. "But it comes with a price."
"We've already lost enough." I thought about my badge, career, and the life I'd built. "What's left to lose?"
"Everything. Your lives. Your families. The ability to ever feel safe again."
Marcus said what we all were thinking. "We lost safety the moment they put us in their crosshairs. The primary question is, what's our next play?"
