The Perimeter Breach
It was three days later and Sebastian's lab was quiet. The eerie stillness was like a mind on the verge of collapse. Three unfinished projects sat on the two benches, gold, platinum, and dark pewter, pieces of fluidity, studded with precious and semi precious stones.
The rest of the space was devastating chaos. Broken debris littered the room, s shattered computer screen lay on its side, and the floor was littered with topography charts, and printed court documents. Sebastian had gone through a deep spiraling stint of madness when he realized he had not actually found Amber, then he fell deeper when he realized he had only just missed her.
His mind had abruptly clinked shut and he had reacted within a place of complete madness. He dove passed Rebecca's defenses and greedily devoured all the information that he could. His mind was blind with madness and fury – his madness born of his failure and his fury burn from Dan stealing what he wanted most in this world.
His life with Amber.
Now there was the Lance Ridge. The silence of the mountain was deceptive. To the uninitiated, the Lance Ridge was a cathedral of pine and granite, but to Sebastian, it was a cacophony of missed signals. He sat in a mud-splattered truck – that he rarely drove - at the base of the eastern access road, his fingers tapping a frantic, erratic rhythm against the steering wheel.
The "Echo Protocol" had humiliated him. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that digital glitch—the stutter in Amber's movement that revealed she was nothing but a ghost in a machine. They had played him. Dan Trace had treated him like a common script-kiddie, and the thought made the bile rise in his throat.
"You think the mountain will hide her from me, Dan?" he hissed, his voice cracking from days of disuse. "You think you can hide her behind your walls? I don't build walls. I carve through them."
He checked his tablet. He was running a Direction-Finding (DF) sweep, trying to catch a stray ping from the helicopter's transponder or the bunker's secondary relay. He knew they were here. The air felt different—charged with the arrogance of the Lance family.
Erratic and frustrated he began to hike. He left the truck in a thicket of brush, carrying only his essential "kit" and a high-resolution thermal monocular. He wasn't the "Polite Gentleman" today. He was an experienced hiker. He wore expensive hiking gear, his hiking boots gripping rich soil of the lower slopes. He moved with a desperate yet confident speed, driven by the fear that if he didn't find her now, his mother would never forgive him.
He had promised his mother that this one would be different and he was sure that she would be finally happy with him.
Three miles up the ridge, a High-Altitude, Long-Endurance (HALE) drone, operating under the Trace-Progressive banner, banked silently at thirty thousand feet. Its "eye"—a multi-spectral sensor suite—wasn't looking for a car. It was looking for anomalous heat blooms in the cold mountain air.
In the Lance Security War Room, the atmosphere shifted instantly.
"Movement in Sector four," a technician announced, his voice tight. "Thermal signature detected near the granite pinch-point. It's too small for a deer, too fast for a bear."
Samuel leaned over the tech's shoulder. "Zoom and enhance. Give me a facial recognition sweep on the next clearing."
On the screen, the grainy gray of the mountain forest was replaced by a sharp, high-definition zoom. Sebastian emerged from a cluster of pines, his face turned upward for a split second as he checked the sun's position.
Flash.
The drone's shutter didn't click, but the data packet hit the War Room servers like a lightning strike. The image froze. It was a partial profile—sharp cheekbones, a brow furrowed in manic concentration, and eyes that looked like shattered glass.
"Got you," Albert whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Run it," Samuel commanded. "I want a name, a birth record, and every flight manifest he's ever touched. I don't care if he's a ghost. I want to know the color of his soul by dinner."
"No need sir."
The room stopped as every head turned to the speaker of the last sentence. "What do you mean?" Samuel's voice was tight as he spoke.
The young tech swallowed hard. "I have already been looking into this man domestically sir, by your order, it's Sebastian Montague III."
Silence fell once again as everyone looked to the image on the screen.
Back on the ridge Sebastian froze. He didn't hear the drone, but he felt the sudden change in the "pressure" of the air. He looked up, squinting against the glare of the peaks. For a moment, the predator felt the cold shiver of being the prey.
He didn't know that he had not only been seen, but recognized as well. He only knew that his soul quaked with an eerie feeling. It was like his mother looking at one of his pieces, not for the beauty of it but to identify his mistakes. His body shook as he involuntarily moved for cover.
Something had happened and he had to calm himself to ensure that Amber was with him and that Dan died on this mountain.