Chapter 17 - The Visitor
The man in the suit approached their table, stopping a respectful distance away. He raised his hands slowly to show they were empty.
"Sarah Miller. Leo Vance," the man said, his tone professional and soft.
"Who are you?" Sarah asked, her voice deadly quiet. "And why shouldn't I drop you right here?"
"My name is Agent Marcus, Department of Justice," the man replied. He pulled a badge from his jacket and placed it on the table alongside the leather briefcase. "I'm not here to arrest you. If we wanted to arrest you, we wouldn't have sent one man."
Leo looked at the briefcase. "What’s in the bag?"
Agent Marcus sat down in the adjoining booth. "New identities. Social Security cards, passports, birth certificates, and a clean line of credit funded by a sealed federal witness protection program."
Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Why would the government give us a clean slate after the chaos we caused?"
"Because what you leaked destroyed a shadow syndicate that was infiltrating our own institutions," Marcus said seriously. "You did what the DoJ couldn't do for a decade. Consider this a gesture of gratitude—and an insurance policy."
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"What kind of insurance policy?" Leo asked.
Marcus leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Vance wasn't working alone. Sterling Dynamics was just the American arm of a broader international consortium called The Pantheon. Vance is dead, but his partners overseas know that the boy who destroyed Project Aegis is still out there."
