Rick's mind raced, cataloguing exits that didn't exist, strategies that couldn't work, miracles that wouldn't come. His father's Colt felt impossibly heavy. Six rifles against two pistols. No cover. No escape route.
Catherine's hand found his. A last gesture. An acknowledgment.
Then Rick saw it—a detail he'd missed before. The crates they were standing near. The stenciled marking: HIGH EXPLOSIVE. HANDLE WITH CARE.
He didn't hesitate.
Rick fired three times—not at Webb's men, but at the crate five feet to their left. The rounds punched through wood. For one crystalline moment, nothing happened.
Then the world became fire.
The explosion was massive, instantaneous, world-ending. Rick dove sideways, pulling Catherine with him, his body covering hers as the blast wave rolled over them in a tsunami of heat and pressure. The bunker's concrete walls focused the force, turning the space into a kiln.
When Rick's ears stopped ringing—when he could think past the pain and the ringing and the copper taste of blood—the bunker was chaos. The lights were gone. Secondary fires cast everything in hellish orange. Smoke burned his lungs. Two of Webb's men were simply gone, vaporized. The others were scattered, broken, one screaming with a sound that barely registered as human.
Catherine was beneath him, stunned but moving. Her arm hung wrong—dislocated or broken, Rick couldn't tell. Blood ran from a cut above her eye.
"Move," he rasped, pulling her up.
Webb was on the floor near the stairs, his expensive suit shredded, face a mask of blood. But his eyes were open. Conscious. Looking at Rick with an expression that might have been respect.
"You'll... fail," Webb managed. Blood bubbled at his lips. "Protocol... bigger than me. Bigger than... you."
Rick didn't answer. He half-carried, half-dragged Catherine toward the stairs.
Behind them, ammunition cooked off in stuttering chains of detonation. The bunker was collapsing, concrete cracking, steel groaning. They climbed through smoke and heat and falling debris.
They burst into the courtyard just as headlights blazed to life from the barracks. More men. Of course there were more men. Prometheus Protocol had resources that made Rick's father's investigation look like amateur hour.
A bullet cracked past Rick's ear. He returned fire with his last two rounds, not aiming, just creating hesitation. Catherine was running despite her injured arm, faster than seemed possible, pure adrenaline overriding pain.
They reached the Ford. Catherine fumbled one-handed with the keys, dropped them, grabbed them again. The engine roared to life as Rick fired his last round at the approaching headlights.
They tore through the fort's gate, Catherine driving one-handed, the Ford fishtailing on loose gravel. Rick reloaded with shaking hands, his ribs screaming where flying debris had caught him.
"Hospital," he managed.
"No hospitals," Catherine said through gritted teeth. "They'll be watching." Her face was grey with pain and shock. "Safe house. Baltimore. We have to—"
She gasped, nearly losing control of the wheel. Rick grabbed the steering wheel steady as Catherine's good hand pressed against her injured arm.
"We need to stop the bleeding," Rick said, seeing it now—her sleeve was soaked, darker than just the bunker's grime. Shrapnel must have hit an artery.
"Not yet," Catherine said. "Get distance first. Then—" She didn't finish. The Ford accelerated.
Rick pulled Scott's blood-stained paper from his pocket with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. The explosion had singed one corner, blurring some of the names. But the critical information remained: Senator Morrison. Winter Gala. December 6th.
"The senator," Rick said. "He's the key."
Catherine nodded, jaw clenched against pain. "Then we find him. Before Prometheus—"
Something metallic clattered in the Ford's engine compartment. Then another. The steering wheel jerked in Catherine's grip.
"What was that?" Rick asked.
Catherine's face went pale. She pulled over, killed the headlights. In the sudden darkness, they heard it: the distant sound of an engine. Multiple engines. Not behind them—ahead. Blocking the road.
"They knew," she whispered. "They knew which route we'd take."
Rick's mind raced. Webb's men couldn't have positioned blockades that quickly. Which meant—
"The car," he said. "They've been tracking us. Probably since Baltimore."
Catherine was already moving, injured arm be damned. She grabbed the manifests, the decoded sheets, everything they'd pulled from the bunker. Rick took his father's files from the trunk—the original investigation materials he'd been carrying since Washington.
Behind them, headlights appeared on the road they'd just left. Ahead, more lights. They were boxed in.
"Woods," Catherine said, pointing to the tree line. "Now."
They ran.
Into Virginia darkness, carrying stolen evidence and borrowed time. Behind them, men shouted orders in the professional cadence of former soldiers. Flashlight beams cut through the trees. Dogs barked—actual tracking dogs, Rick realized with sinking dread.
He'd thought destroying the arsenal would buy them time. Instead, he'd just confirmed to Prometheus Protocol exactly how dangerous they were.
Catherine stumbled, caught herself on a tree. Her breathing was ragged, each inhale costing her. The blood loss was worse than Rick had thought.
"Keep moving," he told her, supporting her weight. "Safe house. Two miles northeast."
"The manifests," Catherine managed. "Webb said... Protocol bigger than him. We need those names. Need to—"
She didn't finish. Her legs gave out.
Rick caught her, lowered her against a tree. In the moonlight filtering through branches, he saw how pale she'd become. Shock setting in. The arm was bad—possibly arterial damage. Without medical attention soon, they had hours at best.
Behind them, the tracking dogs were getting closer.
Rick pulled out Scott's paper again, reading by moonlight. The blood had smeared some names beyond recognition. The senator's information remained. But something else caught his eye—a notation in Scott's handwriting he'd missed before: Webb has partner. Higher up. Find M.
Another architect of Prometheus Protocol. Someone Webb reported to.
Someone still out there.
Rick looked down at Catherine, unconscious now, her breathing shallow. Looked at the incomplete evidence in his hands—enough to ask dangerous questions, not enough to prove anything. Looked back at the approaching lights, the hunting party closing in.
His father had died investigating And Rick understood why his father had died trying to expose Prometheus Protocol. Scott had died helping them expose it. Catherine might die in the next hour.
And Rick was beginning to understand why.
You couldn't fight a conspiracy this large, this well-funded, this embedded in the machinery of government and industry. Not with evidence. Not with exposure. Not with justice.
You could only fight it the way Webb himself would—with mathematics. With acceptable losses. With the willingness to make impossible choices.
Rick heard his father's voice in his memory: Some battles can't be won cleanly, son. Sometimes you just have to make sure you're still standing when the smoke clears.
He lifted Catherine—she weighed nothing, all bone and determination—and moved deeper into the woods. Away from the dogs. Away from the lights.
Toward Senator Morrison. Toward December 6th. Toward whatever confrontation awaited at the winter gala.
Toward a reckoning that would cost him everything.
Behind him, the hunting party spread through the trees like a plague.
And Rick Forsyth kept walking.