Red Line protocol

The rain came down hard on Interstate 90, turning the road into a silver blur. Ethan Cole gripped the steering wheel, jaw tight, eyes locked on the black SUV two cars ahead. His earpiece crackled. “Target confirmed. License plate matches,” the voice said. Ethan didn’t answer. He had learned long ago that hesitation got people killed. He pushed the accelerator. The engine roared as his car cut through traffic. Horns blared. The SUV swerved, realizing it was being hunted. The chase exploded into chaos—tires screaming, metal flashing, rain splattering like gunfire. The SUV took the exit too late. It crashed. Ethan slammed the brakes, jumped out, and raised his weapon. The SUV’s door creaked open. A teenage girl stumbled out, shaking, blood on her forehead. “Please,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening.” Ethan froze. This wasn’t the man he was sent to eliminate. Before he could react, headlights flared behind him. Black vans. No plates. Armed men in tactical gear. Not police. One of them spoke calmly. “Agent Cole. Step away from the asset.” Asset. Ethan looked at the girl again. She met his eyes—terrified, confused, but alive. That was the moment he understood. He had been sent to kill the wrong target. Gunfire erupted. Ethan grabbed the girl’s hand and ran. They didn’t stop running until the city sounds faded behind them. Ethan dragged Lena through a rusted service door and down a stairwell that smelled of oil and old water. The underground parking garage was half-collapsed, concrete pillars cracked like broken teeth. Only one flickering light still worked. Lena bent over, gasping. “I—I didn’t do anything,” she said, panic rising. “I swear.” “I know,” Ethan replied, already checking the exits. “That’s the problem.” Above them, engines growled. Doors slammed. Boots hit pavement. “They’re fast,” Lena whispered. “They always are.” Ethan pulled out his phone, smashed the SIM card, and dropped it into a drain. Then he turned to her, really looking this time. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. No hardened criminal. No trained operative. Just a kid carrying a secret powerful enough to get her erased. “Listen to me,” he said, voice low but steady. “Whatever you think you know—don’t say it out loud. Walls listen.” Her eyes widened. “You sound like my dad.” The words hit harder than the bullets upstairs. “Where is he?” Ethan asked. Lena swallowed. “He worked for the government. Then he disappeared. Two weeks later… they came for me.” Gunfire cracked above them. Concrete dust rained down. Ethan cursed under his breath. “Okay. Plan B.” He led her to an old muscle car hidden beneath a tarp—dark red, dented, forgotten by time. He yanked the cover off. “This thing runs?” Lena asked. Ethan smirked grimly. “Barely. But it’s loud, fast, and invisible to their systems.” The engine roared to life just as flashlights cut through the darkness. “GO!” Lena shouted. They burst through the garage exit, smashing the barrier as bullets sparked off metal. The car shot onto the street, tires screaming. Sirens wailed behind them—but not police sirens. Military-grade. Lena clutched the dashboard. “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?” Ethan glanced at her. “No,” he said. “They’re going to try.” His earpiece suddenly crackled—an old, dead frequency he hadn’t heard in years. “Cole Nevada didn’t care who you were. The desert stretched endlessly, flat and cruel, heat shimmering over cracked asphalt. Ethan’s car tore through the emptiness, fuel needle hovering just above empty. Lena hadn’t spoken in over an hour. That scared him more than the gunmen. They finally pulled off onto a dirt road marked by a rusted sign: NO TRESPASSING – FEDERAL PROPERTY. Ethan ignored it and drove straight toward a cluster of half-buried buildings that looked abandoned… unless you knew where to look. He stopped beside a concrete bunker camouflaged with sand and rock. “Welcome to my retirement plan,” he said. Inside, the air was cool and dim. Old weapons lined the walls. Maps. Radios. A generator hummed to life. This wasn’t a hideout—it was a failsafe. Lena stared. “You planned for this.” “I planned for betrayal,” Ethan replied. “There’s a difference.” She sat, rubbing her temples. Sweat beaded on her skin despite the cold. “You okay?” he asked. “I hear things,” she said quietly. “Not voices. Patterns. Like… signals.” Ethan stiffened. “When did that start?” “After my dad disappeared.” The lights flickered. Then the radio—silent for years—spat out static. Lena screamed and dropped to her knees. Ethan rushed to her side. “Lena, look at me. Breathe. Stay with me.” The static twisted, reshaping itself into sound—numbers, coordinates, encrypted bursts. Ethan’s eyes widened. “She’s a transmitter,” he whispered. The Red Line Protocol wasn’t about weapons. It was about control. A human system that could intercept, decode, and override military networks—drones, missiles, satellites—using the brain as the interface. And Lena was the final successful test. Outside, the ground vibrated. A shadow passed over the bunker. Ethan grabbed his rifle. “Get behind the wall. Do NOT move.” The sky split open. A stealth drone hovered silently, scanning. Lena’s head snapped up. “I can feel it,” she said, voice unnaturally calm. “It’s looking for me.” The drone’s weapons armed. “No,” Ethan said sharply. “You don’t touch it.” But Lena stood anyway. The radio screamed. Lights exploded. The drone jerked in midair, systems spiraling out of control. Ethan watched in disbelief as the machine turned on itself, spiraling into the desert and detonating in a fireball. Silence followed. Lena collapsed. Ethan caught her just before she hit the floor. From the smoke, a voice echoed from loudspeakers hidden in the rocks. “Well,” Maya said smoothly, amused. “Now there’s no doubt.” Red lights ignited across the desert. They had found her. And they were coming in force. The first missile hit the sand a hundred yards from the bunker. The shockwave knocked Ethan and Lena off their feet. Dust rained from the ceiling. Alarms screamed—old ones, brutal ones, built for war. Ethan dragged Lena behind a reinforced wall just as the desert outside lit up like daylight. “They’re not here to extract you,” he growled. “They’re here to erase the whole grid.” Lena’s ears rang. “How many?” Ethan checked the monitor—thermal signatures everywhere. “Too many.” Black helicopters crested the horizon. Armored vehicles tore through the sand. Drones swarmed like metal insects. And then— Gunfire. Ethan moved like muscle memory itself. He fired, reloaded, rolled, covered angles he hadn’t thought about in years. Men went down. Others took their place. “Stay down!” he shouted. But Lena wasn’t hiding anymore. Her eyes glowed faintly—not light, but focus. The radios screamed again. The helicopters wobbled midair, rotors desyncing. “Lena, stop!” Ethan yelled. “You don’t know the cost!” She cried out as blood trickled from her nose. “They’re all connected,” she said through clenched teeth. “If I touch one… I touch all.” A helicopter spiraled into the sand and exploded. Then another. Maya’s voice cut through every speaker at once, furious now. “Lena Ward! Your father died to keep you alive. Don’t make it meaningless!” Lena froze. “What did you say?” she whispered. Ethan turned slowly toward the speakers. “You said he disappeared,” Lena said, shaking. “You said he left.” Silence. Then Maya spoke softly, carefully. “He refused to hand you over. So we tested the protocol… on him.” Lena screamed. The desert answered. Every drone dropped dead. Vehicles stalled. Satellites blinked offline across the western hemisphere. Ethan stared at the screens in horror. She wasn’t just a weapon. She was a failsafe extinction switch. Ethan grabbed her shoulders. “Lena. Look at me. This isn’t you. You’re not their machine.” Her eyes met his—broken, furious, terrified. “I don’t want to be this,” she sobbed. “I know,” he said quietly. “That’s why we run.” A final explosion tore open the bunker wall. Through the smoke, a squad advanced—and with them, a familiar face. A man Ethan thought he buried. “Hello, Cole,” the man said, raising his rifle. “Long time.” Ethan’s blood ran cold. “Jackson,” he whispered. “You’re the traitor.” Jackson smiled. “No,” he said. “I’m the cleanup.”