THEY CALLED HIM TRAITOR

The face on the screen

The battlefield was soaked in red.

Soldiers moved through the smoke in every direction — some running, some crawling, some no longer moving at all.

The air was thick with the sound of metal on metal, of orders shouted and cut short, of men spending the last of everything they had.

In the middle of it stood a figure in a navy blue uniform. Five badges on his chest. Arms dyed red to the elbow. Head wet with blood that was not all his own.

His eyes moved constantly across the field,searching for the next man who needed him.He turned toward his target.A spear drove through his abdomen.

A second pierced his neck.

"No!"

Major General Roland jolted upright, chest heaving, the scream still raw in his throat. He sat in the dark and breathed — in, out, in, out — his hands pressing flat against the mattress to remind himself where he was.

A bottle of water flew toward him from somewhere in the darkness.He caught it. Unscrewed the cap. Emptied it in one long swallow.

"Nightmare?"

Roland's head turned sharply toward the voice.

A man sat in the corner of the room on a golden chair that looked completely wrong in the otherwise bare space — no furniture, no decoration, nothing on the walls. Just the chair, the bed, and a small device in the far corner blinking slowly with a red light.

The man wore a mask.

Roland studied him in silence. The set of the shoulders. The stillness. The way he occupied the chair without sprawling , spine straight, hands rested, the controlled posture of someone who had spent decades making rooms feel smaller simply by entering them.

Late forties, Roland thought. Maybe forty-eight.

"How do you feel?" the man asked.

Roland's mind was already working. He remembered the SUV. The rain on the windows. The truck appearing from nowhere. The world turning sideways.

"You must be the so-called boss," Roland said.

The man chuckled — a dry, unhurried sound. "You have a remarkable number of enemies. People who could not wait to crush your bones beneath their feet."

Roland said nothing.

"I saved you again," the man said.

Roland nodded once. He had. There was no point pretending otherwise.

"Who are you?" Roland asked.

"Who I am is not important." The man crossed one leg over the other. "What matters is that you understand your orders."

"You will not give me orders." Roland's voice was quiet and final. "I will work with you. Not for you."

The man was on his feet before Roland finished speaking. He crossed the room in measured steps and bent until his masked face was level with Roland's eyes — close enough that Roland could see the faint lines around the eye holes, the deliberate calm of a man who had learned to weaponize patience.

"What makes you think," the man said softly, spacing each word, "that you have a choice? I. Saved. You. Twice."

"And I agreed to work with you," Roland said, holding the masked gaze without blinking. "I have already gone against my own principles for you. Do not push further."

The man searched his eyes for a long moment. Then he straightened and walked to the window, hands folding behind his back, looking out at a sky where the storm was beginning to thin.

"Cooperation," he said, as though tasting the word.

"Fine. We need each other anyway." Roland pushed himself off the bed. His body protested every movement — ribs, leg, the deep bone-ache of a man who had been broken and patched too many times.

He crossed to the window and stood beside the man, looking out at the same dark sky.

"I do not know what your aims are," Roland said. "But I am not here for revenge."

The man turned his head. "No. You are not." A pause. "But you know nothing of what was actually done to you and your comrades. And your current reputation?" He tilted his head. "It is the reputation of a dead traitor."

"My reputation is nothing less than a dead soldier," Roland said flatly. "Your words are coated in honey. I can smell the trap beneath them."

"Which means," the man said, turning fully toward him now, "that if I killed you in this room tonight, no one would come looking. They already buried you."

Roland shifted his weight. His body had very little left to give in a fight, and they both knew it. He held the masked gaze and said nothing, because the man was not wrong, and saying so would cost him nothing.

The man laughed — a low, resonant sound that filled the bare room. "They say ignorance is bliss. It does not suit you, Creed."

He turned back to the window. "You are known across Los Angeles as a traitor. Not a dead soldier. A traitor."

Roland went still. "What?"

"Major General Roland Creed exposed the backup plan to the enemy." The man recited it the way a man recites a headline — flat, practiced, already old news. "That is what the city believes. That is what they were told."

"That is a lie." The words came out stripped of everything except certainty. Roland's hands curled at his sides, the trembling now something different — not weakness, but fury held on a very short leash.

"I protected that plan with my life. If the enemy had not known it in advance, we would have won. I fought with everything I had. Every man who died on that field died because we were betrayed — not because of me."

"Victor Hale escaped," the man said simply.

The room contracted.

Roland's mind moved fast and cold through everything it knew — Victor in the house, Victor's hand on Amelia's back, Victor's smirk at the gate, Victor's two fingers tapping his chest. Powerful traitor.

The word had stung in the moment. He had not stopped to ask how Victor knew it. He had not stopped to ask how it had already become his name.

"Victor could not have done this," Roland said, but his voice had lost some of its certainty. "Even after everything — even Amelia, even the child — he could not have accused me of this."

The man said nothing. He simply looked at him.

"I need evidence," Roland said. "I will not move on words alone. Not yours, not anyone's. Bring me evidence."

The man's hands tightened behind his back , the only sign that the calm had a limit. A breath in. A breath out. Then the smile returned, quieter than before.

"My game for revenge is also yours, Major General. You want evidence?" He turned from the window and faced Roland fully. "I will give it to you. Every piece. But when you have seen it — when you have seen all of it — you will have no choice but to stand beside me."

"And if I don't?" Roland asked quietly.

The smile faded.

"Then you will find out," the man said, "exactly what I meant when I said your life belongs to me."

The silence stretched between them , taut and cold, the silence of two men measuring each other across a very small distance.

Then the door flew open.

A young man stumbled in, breathless, his eyes bright with urgency. He looked at the masked man and held up a tablet, the screen glowing in the dim room.

"Boss." His voice came out unsteady. "We restored the CCTV footage from the accident."

He turned the screen around.

The footage was grainy, shot from a traffic camera at the intersection. But the truck was clearly visible — parked in a side street three minutes before the SUV appeared, engine running, waiting. And in the bottom corner of the frame, half-hidden by shadow, stood a figure in a dark coat making a phone call.

The young man tapped the screen and zoomed in.

Roland's blood went cold.

He recognized the face.