Chapter 5 - Seventeen Seconds of Darkness
Darkness did not rescue Brennan. It changed the odds.
Ortiz had worked one wrist free against the sharp edge of the chair. When the lights failed, she pulled the emergency release beneath the crane controls. A suspended cargo net dropped between Brennan and Garrett's men.
Brennan rolled behind a pallet as Garrett fired a suppressed pistol. The round punched through metal where her head had been.
"You said no guns," Cole shouted.
"Find her!"
Red emergency lights flickered on. Brennan threw a loose chain across Marcus's legs, brought him down, and took his knife. She cut Ortiz free. Together they ran toward the eastern exit.
Travis locked it remotely.
Ortiz pointed toward a maintenance hatch beneath the conveyor. Brennan forced it open, shoved Ortiz inside, and followed as bullets struck the floor. They crawled through dust and oily water while alarms began howling above them.
At the far end, the hatch opened onto the storm channel outside the depot. Price waited in an unmarked vehicle.
Brennan collapsed in the back seat. Two ribs were cracked, her left knee was badly damaged, and every breath felt sharpened. She stayed conscious long enough to ask about the video.
Price's expression told her the answer.
"We got seventeen seconds," Price said. "Then the signal died."
The recording showed Garrett admitting the frame-up and ordering the attack. It did not show the kidnapping clearly. It did not capture the gun. Worse, the ledger's tracker had stopped moving inside base headquarters.
At dawn, military police arrested Brennan in the clinic. Restricted components had been found in her vehicle. Garrett claimed Brennan assaulted his team during an authorized inspection. Marcus, Cole, and Travis supported him. Ortiz was accused of helping Brennan steal classified property.
Captain Voss played the exhausted commander forced to act.
"I trusted you," he told Brennan as officers placed her in restraints.
"No," she said. "You measured me. There's a difference."
The hidden video should have saved her, but Price discovered it had been replaced on the evidence server by seventeen seconds of static. Someone inside the Inspector General's office was working for Harbormaster.
Brennan was transported to a secure holding facility. Price vanished before she could be detained. Ortiz was separated from Brennan and taken to an unknown location.
During intake, a guard slipped Brennan a folded strip of paper.
The handwriting belonged to Price.
VOSS IS NOT HARBORMASTER. TRUST NO ADMIRAL.
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On the back was a time and one instruction.
CONFESS AT 0900.
