Chapter 6 Burn the House Down

Chapter Six: Burn the House Down

The first flashbang detonated at 4:17 a.m.

Zara dropped low behind the table as the room flooded with white light. Leo was already moving-silent, practiced, a phantom in the dark. The steel door shuddered as booted feet slammed against it.

"They're breaching!" she shouted.

"No," Leo said, voice calm, deadly. "They already have."

The ceiling vent exploded inward. Two bodies dropped fast-black-clad, silent, goggles gleaming.

Zara fired first.

Her shot caught the lead attacker in the throat. He crumpled. Leo pivoted, shot the second center-mass before he could even lift his weapon.

Then came the gas.

Thin and bitter. Not enough to knock them out-just to make them cough, blink, lose seconds.

Seconds they didn't have.

Leo hit the backup fan switch, clearing the haze, and yanked Zara behind the shelves.

"They're not trying to kill us yet," he muttered. "They want confirmation. A live target."

Zara wiped blood off her cheek. "We'll disappoint them."

Three more entered through the broken stairwell, tactical gear whispering against the walls. Leo laid down cover fire. Zara flanked left, sliding behind a cabinet and knifing one low in the leg before finishing him with a double-tap.

The bunker rang with gunfire and breath.

Zara's arms ached. Her side burned from a graze, but she didn't stop moving. This was muscle memory now. Survival burned into her bones.

One of the last men tried to retreat.

Leo caught him with a shot to the spine.

The man collapsed.

Leo stalked over, flipped the attacker's helmet off.

Then froze.

Zara joined him.

The man on the ground-young, pale, maybe twenty-had a SIRS insignia tattooed behind his left ear.

Leo looked at her. "They sent in kids."

She felt sick.

"This isn't a clean kill order," she whispered. "It's a training op. They're testing recruits-on us."

Leo stood slowly.

"Then let's teach them what war tastes like."

The bunker smelled like gunmetal and burned wires.

Zara knelt beside one of the attackers, pressing two fingers to his throat. Still breathing-barely. Blood pooled from a shoulder wound. She checked his ID badge. Fake name. Generic clearance.

"None of them are real agents," she muttered. "Ghost units. No trace."

Leo crouched beside the one he'd shot in the spine. His face was unreadable, but his hands shook slightly-rage or adrenaline, she couldn't tell.

"They were meant to fail," he said.

Zara nodded. "A distraction. Or a sacrifice."

Leo looked up at her.

"How far does this go?"

She met his eyes. "Far enough that they'd rather bury us quietly than face what we know."

He stood, brushing blood from his sleeves like dust. "Then we bury them first."

They spent the next hour wiping the bunker clean.

Phones smashed. Drives removed. Shell casings collected and dumped in bleach. The young attacker still breathing was sedated and locked in the panic cell-Zara wanted answers, and Leo let her have that. For now.

When they resurfaced, it was just past sunrise. The city buzzed in the distance, unaware that a war had almost started underground.

They drove in silence, ditching the vehicle twice before settling into a stolen hatchback. No GPS. No tail. No signal.

Zara's hands gripped the steering wheel tight.

Leo watched her. "You're thinking of running."

"I'm thinking of surviving."

"Same thing, to me."

She didn't respond.

He leaned back in his seat, gaze drifting toward the broken skyline. "They'll come again. Better prepared. Faster. Cleaner."

She nodded. "Which means we have to strike first."

Leo gave a grim smile. "And burn the house down."

They parked in a warehouse near Marina-one of Leo's old caches, long abandoned and off-grid. Rats scurried in the corners. The roof leaked. The walls smelled of mold and rust.

It felt safe.

For now.

They sat on the floor, backs against the wall, weapons within reach. Zara patched the burn on her side while Leo rebandaged his knuckles from the last fight.

"This isn't going to end clean," she said softly.

"No," he agreed.

She looked at him. "Do you still want revenge?"

He turned to her. "I want clarity. That's more dangerous."

Zara gave a tired laugh. "Clarity gets people killed."

Leo leaned closer, voice quiet. "So does loving the wrong person."

She didn't flinch.

He didn't back away.

For a long moment, they said nothing.

Then she spoke, barely above a whisper.

"They'll come for us both."

"I know."

"And we'll lose people."

"We already have."

She reached for his hand. He didn't resist.

"And when it's over?" she asked.

Leo's jaw tightened.

"If we're still breathing... we decide then."

They spent the rest of the morning preparing.

Leo spread out a weathered map across the concrete floor, stained with old coffee and newer blood. On it: a network of storage units, safe houses, and server farms-all under false names, all connected by one thing:

Leo's paranoia.

"This one," Zara said, pointing to a facility near Abuja. "It used to be a data center, right?"

Leo nodded. "Until I turned it into a vault."

"What's in it?"

"Everything," he replied. "Emails, financials, audio recordings. All the leverage I've ever collected. Politicians. Generals. Contractors. Including SIRS."

Zara whistled softly. "You've been preparing for this since the beginning."

"No," Leo said. "I was preparing for someone like you."

Their eyes locked. No apology. No anger. Just truth.

Zara looked down at the map again. "We leak it."

Leo raised a brow. "Everything?"

She nodded. "The whole system's built on silence and shadows. You want to survive this? Expose them."

Leo leaned back. "You're suggesting we turn whistleblower?"

"No. I'm suggesting we go nuclear."

By nightfall, the plan was in motion.

Zara reached out to Obsidian-her last loyal contact inside SIRS. A message, coded and buried under six layers of misdirection.

Burn file ready. Standby for detonation.

She received only one word back:

Received.

At 2:03 a.m., Leo and Zara arrived at the vault.

It was buried beneath a fake telecommunications hub on the edge of a dead industrial zone-guarded only by dust and time. Leo unlocked it manually, disabling booby traps and old surveillance lines. Zara followed him into a narrow corridor lined with reinforced glass and concrete.

At the heart of it was a terminal, blinking green.

Leo inserted the encrypted drive.

"Last chance to back out," he said.

Zara stepped beside him. "Last chance to become someone else."

He smiled faintly. "We passed that chapter."

She input the final key.

Transfer engaged.

Compromising files targeting SIRS, Joint Operations Command, and allied private defense contractors queued for upload.

Leo exhaled. "Three... two..."

Zara hit send.

The screen flickered once.

Then:

DISTRIBUTION COMPLETE.

MULTIPLE NODES. NON-REVERSIBLE.

TRUTH CANNOT BE UNSEEN.

The silence afterward was different.

It wasn't peace.

It was fallout.

Leo leaned back against the wall and ran a hand through his hair. Zara sat across from him on the floor, legs stretched out.

"It's done," she whispered.

"No," he said. "It's only started."

The first alert came an hour later.

Obsidian sent a string of red-flag names that had gone dark.

The deputy director. Two foreign defense liaisons. A weapons financier in London.

All missing.

Or in hiding.

Or dead.

Leo looked at Zara as the messages kept flooding in.

"What have we done?"

Zara stared at the screen.

"We've changed the board."

He nodded.

"But the knives will come for us now."

She reached for his hand again.

"Then we stay sharp."

Somewhere in Lagos, as the sun rose behind cracked glass and new ruins, the first headline appeared on a secure network leak:

EXPOSÉ: SIRS Tied to Illegal Black Ops Across Africa – Whistleblower Files Released.

And beneath it, the first line:

"No one is innocent when secrets are currency."