Chapter 10 - The Truth Behind the Ghost
Before I could cross the room to close the distance between us, Ghost bolted across the floor, launching himself directly at Ethan with a force that nearly knocked the grown man off his feet. Ethan laughed—a real, rich sound that had been absent from my life for seven long years—as he wrapped his arms around the massive Belgian Malinois's neck, burying his face in the dog's thick fur.
"Hey there, old boy. You missed me, didn't you?" Ethan murmured, scratching Ghost right behind his ears where the fur was softest.
Miller shook his head slowly, holstering his Sig as he walked into the command center, staring at the banks of active monitors in disbelief. "I don't believe it. You survived the strike in Jalalabad. Everyone in command thinks you're fertilizer."
"Command needed me to be fertilizer," Ethan said, straightening up, though he kept one hand resting securely on Ghost’s head. He looked at me, his expression turning serious as he walked over until he was standing just inches away. The familiar scent of gun oil, cedar, and old memories washed over me. "The moment we discovered that Project Oberon wasn't just a military K9 enhancement program, but an illegal bio-neural integration test using human subjects, they tried to wipe the slate clean. They bombed our ridge, staged our deaths, and locked down the files."
"Vance and his men," I said, remembering the violent confrontation at the clinic. "They're still hunting you."
"They're hunting the data," Ethan corrected, walking over to the central tactical display and tapping a key sequence. A massive holographic wireframe map of the United States lit up the center of the room, covered in dozens of blinking red and blue nodes. "Oberon wasn't just about dogs, Madison. The neural-link tech we tested in the Hindu Kush... it wasn't one-way. Ghost isn't just a smart dog. He's a living, breathing encrypted data drive. His neural pathways were genetically and surgically mapped to store the entire master archive of the conspiracy."
Miller’s eyes widened. "Are you telling me the dog has classified military secrets wired into his brain?"
"Not just secrets," Ethan said grimly. "The names of every corrupt official, every black-budget contractor, and every high-ranking Pentagon officer who authorized the illegal human trials. That's why Vance’s syndicate has been tracking him across three states. If they capture Ghost, they can extract the decryption keys directly from his neural cortex."
"Which means," I said, a cold anger replacing my shock, "they'll kill him the second they get their hands on him."
"Not if we strike first," Ethan said, turning around with a look in his eyes that I hadn't seen since our final deployment together—the look of a man who was done running, done hiding, and ready to take the war directly to the doorstep of the people who started it.
"What's the play, Ethan?" I asked, stepping up beside him, my hand resting naturally on the handle of my modular pistol.
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Ethan tapped a final key on the console, bringing up a secure satellite feed of the Joint Chiefs of Staff headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"We upload the master archive to every major news network and federal oversight committee simultaneously," Ethan said coldly. "And we bring the whole rotten house of cards down in flames."
