The room was cold chilling , grey walls and gloomy atmosphere . The cold was on the metal table and the man sitting across from them —Godwin and Stephanie introduced himself as Ross . No agency no bagde no rank just Ross.
He had a file open . It wasn't about the ambush.
"So I would like you run me through your desert op Godwin" . Ross said ,his voice was like a dull blade ." When you ordered a drone strike on your location , why did you do it ? Did you have any suicidal tendencies?"
"I need to be alive for my check". Godwin replyed with a stone face.
Ross made a note "cost effective and resourceful and you Stephanie the empty room in Rio how did you feel about it?"
"To be honest I was confused, angry and frustrated"
"And you were the the one that scrutinized the Intel?"
"Yes I did"
"And your departure from the Royal Engineers. The incident with the biometric locks at the Sandhurst depot. That showed remarkable… lateral thinking for a junior officer."
Stephanie's face went slack with shock. Her breath caught. That record was sealed. Buried. Erased.
Ross closed the folder softly, the sound final in the silent room.
Ross stands. "You're dismissed." As they're led out into the sterile hallway, Stephanie grabs Godwin's arm, her fingers ice-cold, her voice a shattered whisper: "That was a sealed juvenile record. Godwin... who the hell is he? Who do we really work for?"
"The CIA who else of course they will look into they are contracting and this is usually their thing when we get job with them"
Godwin responded
The garage smelled of oil, diesel, and sweat. David leaned against a Humvee tire, watching the Delta boys. They moved with the restless energy of men who'd just been cheated. One of them, a sergeant with a bandaged hand, offered David a cigarette.
"Hell of a welcome party," the sergeant grunted.
"Yeah," David took the smoke. "RSVP must've gotten lost."
Across the bay, Makarov stood by a workbench. A Delta sniper, his face young but eyes old, was field-stripping his rifle. Without a word, Makarov pointed to a speck of carbon on the bolt carrier. The sniper nodded, wiped it clean. A silent language of competence.
The tension snapped when a young Delta trooper—couldn't have been more than twenty-two—shoved one of Linda's security contractors. "You knew! You bastards knew it was hot!"
The contractor, a slab of muscle in a black polo, didn't shove back. He just smiled. "Stand down, soldier."
"My friend's brains are on a wall in there because of your 'intel'!"
David tensed, ready to move. But Makarov was faster.
He didn't shout. He simply stepped into the space between them, his presence like a wall going up. The garage went silent.
"Stop," Makarov said, his voice a low rumble that carried to every corner. He looked at the young trooper, then at the smirking contractor. "This is what they want. Dogs fighting in the kennel." His gaze locked on the contractor, pure ice. "We are not your enemy. The enemy is the one who drew the map to the grave. Remember that."
The head guard, watching from the office, lifted a phone to his ear. A minute later, he pointed at David and Makarov. "You two. With me."
The conference room was all glass and dark wood. Linda sat at the head of the table, the data drive in front of her like a centerpiece.
Godwin and Stephanie were brought in. David and Makarov followed, their faces hard. The team was together, but a canyon had opened between them.
"The drive is corrupted," Linda said without preamble. "The asset's termination degraded the data past recovery. A loss." She steepled her fingers. "However, your operational tenacity has been noted. A new contract is being drafted. You would become an annexed covert unit. Full agency resources, legal immunity, triple your current rate. No more private side work. You report to me."
It was the dream. Legitimacy. Money. Survival.
David's shoulders eased, just a fraction. A way out.
Stephanie stared at the drive. Corrupted? After a headshot?
Makarov's expression didn't change. He saw the leash being offered.
Godwin looked from the drive to Linda's flawless mask. Corrupted. They just don't want us to see it. The psychological tests, the ambush, the empty rooms—it was all a filter. And they'd passed.
"We need to discuss this as a team," Godwin said, standing.
"Of course," Linda said, a thin smile touching her lips. "Use the side office. You have one hour. After that, the offer expires, and my obligation to protect you… evaporates."
The side office was a blank box with four chairs. The door clicked shut, sealing them in.
David spoke first. "It's a clean reset. We take it, we're ghosts with badges. We walk away from all this."
"We walk into her pocket," Makarov countered, his voice a low thunder. "She buys our silence with a shiny new cage."
"Did you see what Ross had on me?" Stephanie's voice was trembling. "They own our pasts. If we say no, what do they do with that?"
All eyes turned to Godwin.
He looked at each of them—David's desperate hope, Makarov's cold fury, Stephanie's raw terror.
"The drive isn't corrupted," Godwin said, the words final. "She's lying. Which means whatever's on it is the truth. The real truth." He let that hang in the dead air of the room. "So here's the choice. We take her deal, we become soldiers for the people who just tried to bury us. We walk out that door, we become their next target."
He let his gaze settle on them.
"Are we her team… or are we her problem?"