Page 72 of Fallen Empire

“Do it,” I said finally. “One night. That’s all she gets. In and out. And then she’s done.”

Nic didn’t say anything else. Just gave a sharp nod and stepped away, already pulling her phone from her back pocket as she disappeared from the cafeteria.

The second she was out of earshot, I felt it—the silence wasn’t relief. It was a countdown.

Ben sat across from me, arms folded tight, jaw ticking like it was the only thing keeping him from exploding.

“I don’t like any of this,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” I said, “I got that.”

He didn’t look up.

“You usually run toward the fire,” I added. “So tell me, what’s got you flinching now?”

He finally lifted his head, and the look in his eyes wasn’t fear. It was calculation. The kind you make when the perimeter’s been breached and your fallback options are already burned.

“This isn’t a mission anymore,” he said flatly. “Not in the way we’re trained for. We’re not dropping into foreign airspace with a six-man unit and an exfil chopper waiting on standby. We’re not gathering intel from ten clicks out and planning for six contingencies before boots ever hit the ground.”

His voice was calm, but cold.

“We’re not infiltratingtheirstronghold. They’re already insideours.”

I leaned back against the wall, arms folded. “And that’s new?”

“It’s not just new. It’s wrong.” He stood and paced once. “Everything about this op feels inverted. We’re chasing ghosts on our own turf. No map. No satellite feed. No field reports from local assets. Just... guesses.”

“And Layla?”

“She’s a solo asset with no comms backup being dropped behind enemy lines with no extraction window and no safehouse,” he snapped. “That’s a goddamn suicide run.”

He exhaled hard through his nose, then looked at me again.

“Protection was never supposed to be this close to home, Jax. We work from a distance. We intercept. Disrupt. Get in, get out, clean. But this?” He shook his head. “This is too fucking close.”

I didn’t say anything right away. Because he wasn’t wrong.

“I’ve seen you kick in doors with half the intel we have now,” I said carefully. “So what’s different?”

Ben’s eyes flickered—just for a second—and then steeled again.

“There’s no perimeter to breach here,” he said. “No coordinates to plug into a drone. This one’s already inside the wire.”

“And you can’t protect what you can’t see coming.”

Ben ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I don’t like not knowing who’s watching who. Koslov plays a long game, and we just tossed Layla into the lion’s den without knowing if the lion even eats.”

“We’ve played riskier hands,” I said.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “But we held the cards then.”

Nic reentered the room, phone still in hand. Her expression was unreadable—cool, clipped, composed.

“She’s in,” she said simply. “Layla’s onboard.”

Ben didn’t flinch. He stood there for a second, arms still crossed, but I could see it, the tension tightening in his jaw, the twitch in his temple that only showed up when shit was about to go sideways.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked, voice low but sharp. “You really sure this is the call you want to make?”