Chapter 5 - Valkyrie’s Choice
At 3:17 a.m., Allison woke before the alarm sounded.
Training.
Instinct.
Or maybe the simple truth that she hadn't slept deeply in five years.
She sat upright.
Something felt wrong.
The secure apartment was silent.
Nathan had insisted she stay there after the press conference.
Two agents outside.
One downstairs.
Encrypted communications.
No obvious threat.
Yet Allison's pulse increased.
Her phone showed no messages.
Then she noticed something.
The hallway light beneath the door had gone dark.
Power failure?
Possible.
But emergency lighting should activate.
It hadn't.
Allison moved quietly.
Shoes on.
Leather jacket.
Phone.
Challenge coin.
No weapon.
She approached the door.
A soft vibration came from her phone.
Message.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
Her father.
Sitting in a wheelchair inside what appeared to be a service hallway.
Timestamp: twelve minutes earlier.
Below it:
YOU CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD FOR HIM. WOULD YOU DIE AGAIN FOR HIM?
Allison's blood turned cold.
She called Nathan.
No response.
Again.
Nothing.
Then a second message.
NO POLICE. NO CALDWELL. COME ALONE.
Location attached.
Industrial waterfront.
Baltimore.
Forty-five miles away.
Allison stared.
Exactly what Richard had predicted.
Make her choose.
She opened the door.
One agent lay unconscious in the hallway.
Alive.
Pulse strong.
Injection mark near his neck.
Professional.
Allison found the second agent near the stairs.
Same condition.
No blood.
No gunfire.
They had been infiltrated without noise.
Kessler's access.
She called 911 for the agents, then stopped.
If she contacted Nathan, Viktor might know.
But going alone was exactly what he wanted.
Allison needed a third option.
Pilots lived by third options.
She removed the battery from one compromised phone and found the emergency device Nathan had hidden inside her jacket lining.
She typed one message.
HE HAS DAD. TRACK ONLY. DO NOT APPROACH UNTIL SIGNAL.
Then she left.
The waterfront location was an abandoned cargo terminal.
Rain fell lightly.
Of course it did.
Some memories arrived through smells before images.
Wet concrete.
Diesel.
Rust.
Allison was suddenly back in captivity.
Thirteen months of corridors.
Locked rooms.
Footsteps outside doors.
Viktor asking questions.
She forced herself into the present.
Megan Foster would have been terrified.
Allison Reed was terrified too.
The difference was Valkyrie knew what to do with fear.
She entered the terminal.
Lights activated one by one.
A voice echoed.
"Five years."
Viktor.
Allison looked upward.
He stood on a metal walkway.
Older.
Scar along his neck.
Still controlled.
"You look well," he said.
"You look disappointingly alive."
He smiled.
"Still funny."
"Where's my father?"
"Safe."
"Show me."
A door opened below.
Richard sat inside.
Hands restrained.
Angry rather than frightened.
"Allison, don't do anything stupid."
She almost laughed.
"Nice to see you too, Dad."
Viktor walked down the stairs.
Allison watched his hands.
Empty.
For now.
"You exposed me," she said.
"I freed you."
"You sabotaged an aircraft with 238 people."
"A calculation."
"Children were aboard."
"Collateral outcomes."
Allison's expression hardened.
"You always did like hiding evil behind vocabulary."
Viktor stopped ten feet away.
"Do you know why your government kept you dead?"
"To protect me."
"No."
"Then enlighten me."
"To protect themselves."
Allison said nothing.
Viktor continued.
"The network you memorized did not merely involve foreign traffickers."
"I know."
"You know pieces."
"Enough to destroy you."
"I am not the important piece."
He held out a drive.
"Everything is here."
Allison didn't move.
"Why give it to me?"
"Because Thomas Kessler betrayed all of us."
Allison frowned.
Viktor laughed softly.
"You still think Kessler worked for me?"
"Didn't he?"
"He worked for whoever paid most recently."
"Where is he?"
"Gone."
"Convenient."
"He planned Flight 427."
Allison stared.
"Then why were you at Portland?"
"I was trying to stop him."
That made no sense.
Yet some details shifted.
Viktor had been on surveillance footage.
But sabotage hadn't been shown.
Only proximity.
The men at Redstone?
Maybe not Viktor's.
"You're lying."
"Perhaps."
"Prove it."
Viktor tossed the drive onto the floor between them.
"Flight 427 maintenance access logs. Payments. Video. Communications."
Allison didn't reach for it.
"Why?"
"Because Kessler wants the network erased."
"Why?"
"So he becomes the only person holding its secrets."
Richard spoke.
"Extortion."
Viktor nodded.
"Your father remains intelligent."
Allison looked at him.
"If you wanted to help, kidnapping him was an unusual approach."
"I needed you here before Kessler reached me."
"Where is he?"
Viktor glanced toward the windows.
"Closer than you think."
A gunshot shattered glass.
Viktor dropped.
Allison moved instantly toward Richard.
More shots.
A light exploded.
Darkness.
Richard shouted.
Allison cut his restraints using a metal edge from the wheelchair assembly.
Footsteps approached.
Kessler's men.
Viktor fired back from behind machinery.
So he had been armed.
Allison dragged Richard behind a concrete barrier.
"Can you walk?"
"Heart patient. Not corpse."
"That's encouraging."
"Where are federal agents?"
"Waiting."
"For what?"
"My signal."
Richard glared.
"Maybe send it."
Allison activated the emergency transmitter.
Three quick taps.
Outside, Nathan Caldwell received the signal.
Teams moved.
Inside, Kessler appeared on the upper walkway.
"Commander Reed!"
Allison recognized his voice.
The man responsible for her new identity.
The man who had promised to protect her.
"You should've stayed dead!"
Allison shouted back.
"You first!"
Richard whispered, "That's my girl."
Gunfire echoed.
Viktor moved toward another position.
Kessler fired.
Viktor fell.
Allison saw the drive still lying in the open.
Evidence.
Everything.
She could retrieve it.
Or move Richard.
Choice.
For a fraction of a second, five years of sacrifice screamed inside her.
The network.
Truth.
Justice.
Then she looked at her father.
Easy.
She helped Richard toward the exit.
Kessler shouted, "Leaving your evidence?"
Allison didn't turn.
"I already made copies."
Kessler froze.
She was bluffing.
Again.
But he didn't know.
That hesitation gave Nathan's team time.
Doors exploded inward.
Federal agents entered.
Commands.
Weapons dropped.
Chaos.
Kessler ran.
He reached a side exit.
Daniel Mercer stood outside.
Allison stared in disbelief.
The airline captain held a tire iron.
Kessler stopped.
Daniel looked equally surprised to be there.
"Long story."
Kessler turned.
Agents captured him.
Later, Allison learned Daniel and Lauren had insisted on helping investigators reconstruct Flight 427's sabotage timeline.
That work led them to the cargo terminal's shipping records.
Daniel hadn't intended to confront anyone.
He'd simply been in the wrong parking lot at the right time.
Viktor survived his gunshot wound.
Barely.
The drive survived too.
It contained enough evidence to expose dozens of people.
Bank accounts.
Arms transactions.
Bribery records.
Flight 427 sabotage orders.
And one file Allison didn't expect.
Her original mission.
Someone had deliberately leaked her aircraft's route five years earlier.
Kessler.
Allison stared at the document.
He had caused her capture.
He had helped create Megan Foster afterward.
He had spent years controlling the witness whose life he'd destroyed.
Nathan looked sick.
"We trusted him."
"So did I."
Richard squeezed her hand.
"And now?"
Allison looked at Kessler being loaded into an armored vehicle.
"Now he gets to live long enough to explain everything."
For the first time, justice seemed possible.
But another decision remained.
With Allison's identity public, the government offered her protection again.
New name.
New location.
Disappear.
She looked at the paperwork.
Then tore it in half.
Nathan stared.
"That's dramatic."
"I've been dead long enough."
"What will you do?"
Allison looked toward her father.
"Go home."
But home was no longer simply a place.
It meant rebuilding everything the lie had taken.
Her family.
Her name.
Her future.
And perhaps the hardest challenge of all:
learning how to live when survival was no longer the mission.
May you like
The network was falling, but Allison's most difficult landing would happen on the ground.
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