Chapter Five: Langley Shakes

Morning at CIA headquarters began with silence. Three levels underground, twenty-seven analysts in the anomaly response room stared at the same screen. At the center was a capture of the darknet status line, GHOST ACTIVE. Around it streamed fragments from the New York bar explosion, the car wash firefight, and the abandoned subway shooting. The duty chief set down his coffee. "Confirm it is not an imitator." A young analyst slowed the final eleven seconds of bar footage to one-eighth speed. Ethan disarmed, cleared, controlled distance, and cut firing angles with movements that were textbook and somehow cleaner than the textbook. "Not an imitator," the analyst said. "It's Kane." No one in the room answered.