Chapter 17: The Final Clone
The convoy didn’t stop moving for three days.
They kept to back roads, abandoned airfields, and half-buried fuel caches built into the bones of old wars. Every safehouse they touched was cold, prepped in silence by allies they’d never meet. Because now, everyone knew:
Mercer wasn’t a ghost anymore.
He was a movement.
And the ones who built him wanted the last version buried before it grew roots.
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Contact Lost
On day four, Pierce’s signal vanished mid-transmission.
No noise.
No glitch.
Just—gone.
Sienna’s fists slammed the console. “Encrypted or not, someone scrubbed him from the air.”
Jax’s jaw set. “That’s not containment.”
“That’s extraction,” said Echo-02 grimly.
They knew exactly who’d done it.
Because buried in the last packet Pierce sent
